Abstract

The children and the youth are not only active participants of various forms of sport activities, but undoubtedly also passive consumers of sport in the role of sport spectators. It is above all popular sport with significant media publicity which attracts the attention of youth as sport spectators. The youth can, in this case, form the majority of spectator community. This passive intake of sport spectacle can have a positive as well as negative influence of the youth. What appears here is on one hand a certain negativism, opposition towards the traditional social norms and attitudes, effort for self-expression - often any form, strong tendency towards imitation, affection to non-formal authorities and groups. But on the other hand, the influence of the positive models, which results frorn watching of the important sport events, cannot be underestimated. With respects to the significant media popularity football was chosen as a sport on which the research of the youth as sport spectators was carried out. Altogether 940 football spectators took part in the research. It was found out that the youth under the age of 18 forms 40.74 percent of all football spectators who attend the football matches in the football stadiums. So, this age group is a marked element which forms the look of the football spectatorship. The inquiry has shown the tendency to form a certain sub-cultures of football spectators and a strong emotional identification of the youth with their favourite football clubs. Nevertheless, it also indicated possible tendencies of forming and a subsequent occurrence of negative spectator actions. Zusammenfassung (geändert)