Players gripped by injury fear as World Cup draws near
The World Cup in Brazil, meanwhile, is the only major event in the sports calendar that remains largely outside the reach of most British sports fans, with just 1% of the United Kingdom population having any connection at all to football, according to a survey by the Nuffield Foundation.
A survey of almost 4,600 sports fans found that only 1% of those in Britain had ever set foot at a club game, and more than half had never gone to a major football match.
More than 60% of respondents said they did not have friends or colleagues who were involved in sport.
There was also a startling number of people in Britain who said they did not have any interest in watching other sports, while almost half (49%) said they had never watched ice skating, and almost a third (32%) said they had never watched a golf tournament.
The research also found that almost four thirds (69%) of football hooligans were male and of an age range from 18 to 59, while 35% were under 18 and 3% were over 60.
The Nuffield Foundation’s research found more than half (54%) of British sports fans had never seen the BBC’s coverage of any sporting event.
The survey of almost 4,600 Britons by the Nuffield Foundation for the Sports in Society programme, which was launched in October, found more than half (54%) said they had never seen any live football coverage as their main source of sport news, with almost a third of Brits (28%) saying they had never seen any live golf coverage, while 15% said they had never seen any live cricket coverage.
The research also found almost a third of football fans (32%) were unaware of the TV coverage of the World Cup, with 12% unaware about the coverage of ice hockey and 5% unaware of the coverage of golf.
The Nuffield Foundation’s survey of more than 4,600 sports fans found that only 1% of respondents had ever set foot at a club game and more than half (55%) had never gone to a major football match.
There was also a startling number of people in Britain who said