Who and what owns the sports sections first page? : A quantitative content analysis of the tabloid newspapers sports sections first pages

The purpose of this study was to illustrate how the Swedish tabloid press construct their sports sections front pages and what they present on these pages. A second purpose, and by the first following, was to investigate the items these newspapers offer the audience to add to their daily agendas. The aim to show a bigger picture of the front pages content was reached by implementing a content analysis of 196 front pages from the two largest tabloid newspapers in Sweden, Aftonbladet and Expressen, during a period of four years. The study examined 98 items per newspaper and since the aim was to examine sports journalism the units were chosen from the two newspapers sports sections, Sportbladet and SportExpressen. The great conclusions that were made during this process were the differences in between genders, the dominating sports and what big part sponsors have in sports. The most common front page shows a Swedish man playing football in the age between 20-35. A less common page is woman, playing any sport. She is only found on nine of a hundred front pages. As in the case of men, football is the dominating sport in Swedish tabloid press. On second place we found ice hockey. What we also could find was the big part sponsors have in sports. We saw the logos of sponsors on every second front page