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Given the rise of sport non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and sponsorships from cryptocurrency companies in the sport industry during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, this paper aims to critically frame the partnerships between cryptocurrency and sport by exploring the reception of fan tokens amongst supporters of three English Premier League clubs: Manchester City, Everton and Crystal Palace.

Drawing upon the emerging critical scholarship on cryptocurrency and the political economy of professional football, this study uses digital ethnography in an attempt to understand the major themes emanating from the online forum discussions amongst fans in response to the issuance of fan tokens by the aforementioned three clubs, among other types of partnerships with crypto companies.

The supporters’ critical deliberations revolved around the contradictions of fan tokens (as a means for supposed “fan engagement” or for financial speculation) and the utility of cryptocurrency for the public. These reactions in turn showcase a larger tension underlying the financially unstable professional football industry: the contest between the owners and the fan bases over the exchange value (for profit) and use value (for community) of the clubs.

This paper is one of the first studies to adopt a critical framework to examine the emerging partnerships between sports and cryptocurrency companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also provides one of the first in-depth analyses of the critical receptions of sport NFTs amongst sport fans. While contributing to the literature on fan activism/protest in the context of the commercialization and commodification of sport, the paper also raises new questions on the responsible use of cryptocurrency/NFT in sport.

This chapter builds upon the analysis of the last chapter, as fans have to deal with the issues that arise from their team’s financial superiority. Here, we question what happens when that financial superiority is accompanied by significant moral and ethical issues. Recent involvement of state actors in the ownership of English football has been evidencable and occasionally appears clear. Various reflexes and cognitive distancing occur from fandoms when football club ownership engages in practices that, according to the normative models that fans ascribe to their clubs, are mutually exclusive with the values of the fanbase and the club’s history. A common form of fan reflex often takes the form of distancing the players on the pitch from the club’s institutional structures, effectively teasing out the matchday experience from the structures that benefit from the raw emotion it generates. Another reflex is questioning why the fan should surrender their club when a morally, ethically problematic ownership model has acquired it. Here we have perhaps the greatest challenge to the normative model and, rather than negotiating that tension, as often as not the response is to try and ignore it.

The paper discusses a range of aspects of the spread of sportswashing within top-flight football, identifies the motivations of its proponents, what is on offer to football clubs, their followers and local communities and the ways in which it coheres with the nature of the modern game.

A range of disparate literature, both academic and non-academic, is synthesised to provide a broad-ranging introduction to the spread of sportswashing within top-flight football.

Sportswashing is likely to increase within top-flight football in future years as a result of its resonance with aspects of the game's evolving nature. Resistance to its continuing spread presently appears improbable.

As relatively recent development within football, the sportswashing topic has produced a limited literature to which this paper contributes.

Football exists and evolves in a dynamic ecosystem, displaying a massive and multidimensional influence on most contemporary societies, and football has grown into a significant industry with a plethora of stakeholders. This research is the first to comprehensively identify the key industry stakeholders and their distinct value, from the individual club perspective, and to conceptualise and test their interrelationship toward the development of a corresponding framework of club benefits.

The study applied a multilevel approach to collect and verify qualitative data. It initially developed a preliminary conceptual framework, which was first validated by an expert panel and was subsequently extensively tested in the Cyprus-specific context, which offered fertile ground for such a study. The empirical stage rested on 41 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with very high-ranking individuals from the top nine football clubs, as well as with key industry stakeholders.

Though the examined industry is partly in line with international norms, it is also highly affected by unique characteristics that alter the various stakeholders' role, producing (even negative) value of varied typologies that is directly linked with the industry's financial, sporting, cultural and social conditions.

The research ultimately presents scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a systemic and comprehensive understanding of the individual club stakeholder value offerings, delivers a tested framework as a tool for social and business management and prescribes future avenues for research, governance and practice.

Extant studies on the subject are either partial or focus on individual stakeholders and evidently lack requisite scientific comprehensiveness. The current research bridges this significant gap in knowledge by exhaustively identifying the key industry stakeholders, explicating their relative social, economic or other value in the individual club perspective and developing a value-based stakeholder framework.

Most football clubs were founded by members of the local community within which they are based. The success of a club is built on the time, effort and resources given by these locals, which is offered due to the benefits that football promises to the community in return. However, the game has increasingly been dominated by a focus on financial (monetary) value, at the expense of such benefits being delivered to the clubs' local communities. This article examines a need for deliberation over what accountability is owed by football clubs to their local communities in the context of questioning what and for whom football is for.

This exploration is undertaken within the context of the English game, where a series of issues has resulted in the UK Government undertaking a “fan led review of football governance”. The report produced by this review is analysed to understand whether the contents and recommendations enters the debate over what accountability is owed to local communities.

While the UK Government's fan led review recognises the pivotal role of local communities in the formation of the English game, its focus and resulting recommendations are mostly on the financial sustainability of the clubs. The analysis demonstrates that, due to their focus on financial value, the implementation of the report's recommendations is more likely to exacerbate the underlying issues rather than resolving them.

The call for deliberation over whether and what accountability is owed to local communities has been repeated over time. The UK Government's fan led review provided an important opportunity to engage in that deliberation. However, the dominance of financial value within football has all but silenced any call for and action regarding this.

This paper explores the reasons why Indonesia must have legal regulations to provide protection and guarantees for health workers in carrying out the profession in overcoming corona virus disease (COVID-19). This paper also explains the legal regulations as the foundation for today’s medical workers’ protection. This paper also aims at providing an ideal legal construction that safeguards the rights and obligations of health workers in overcoming COVID-19.

In this paper, the author used qualitative research methods with a socio-legal approach. The data were obtained through literature study and analysis of laws and regulations through the socio-legal method.

Various challenges and professional risks taken by health workers in dealing with COVID-19 derive from several factors, such as shortage of personal protective equipment, ineffective implementation of informed consent from the patients and the negative stigma spreading in the community. Moreover, the current legal regulation has not particularly modulated the protection of health workers, relying only on available articles that are actually irrelevant to be applied in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research is focused on problems faced by health workers in combating COVID-19 and law concessions to ensure their protection.

The final results of this research will be useful for The House of Representatives (DPR), the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia (Kemenkes RI) and the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) in establishing legal and regulatory construction for the protection of health workers in tackling COVID-19.

This research aims at strengthening legal protections for the health workers so that their rights and obligations are well guaranteed.

This paper proposes an ideal legal construction for the protection of health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is currently still not specifically and rigidly regulated, to realize a guaranteed and sustainable life for health workers.

This article explores the concept of “heritage futures”, the role of heritage in managing relations between present and future societies. It assesses how thinking strategically about the future changes, complicates and contextualises practices of heritage. What might an attention to the future bring to work in heritage, and simultaneously, what challenges—both practical and ethical—arise?

This article takes the form of a conversation about the nature of heritage futures and how such a project may be implemented in both heritage practice and field research in heritage studies. The two authors are heritage scholars who integrate heritage futures questions into their research in different ways, and their conversation uncovers potentialities and difficulties in the heritage futures project.

The discussion covers the particular ethical issues that arise when the dimension of time is added to heritage research and practice, including questions of continuism, presentism and specificity. The conversation argues for the importance of considering the future in heritage studies and heritage practice and that this forms a key part of understanding how heritage may be part of building a sustainable present and future.

The future is an under-examined concept within heritage studies, even as heritage is often framed as something to be preserved “for future generations”. But what impact might it have on heritage practice to really consider what this means, beyond the platitude? This article suggests that heritage scholars and practitioners direct their attention to this often-neglected facet of heritage.

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of brand attribution on consumer behaviour. The authorsare interested in finding out if consumers are more likely to purchase a new sports product when it is attributed to a brand. The authors are interested in finding out if the brand positively influences the consumer's appreciation of the product in the case of the launch of a new product.

The authors completed a quantitative survey with 320 people who are familiar with the toning concept, aged between 20 and 45 years old. The questionnaire was conducted face to face in six large cities in France.

Main results show that belief in the effectiveness of the product is positively correlated with purchase intention. However, the attribution of the product to the brand does not guarantee belief in the effectiveness of the product nor does it guarantee purchase intention. Brand credibility has a positive impact on belief in the effectiveness of the product. Furthermore, exposure to advertising allows the product to be attributed to the brand. Yet, it does not have an impact on belief in the product's effectiveness or purchase intention.

Whereas studying consumer behaviour is not new, analysing consumer perceptions of innovative products and how these perceptions relate to the product brand can provide interesting implications both for consumer behaviour research and from a practical perspective for brands. Indeed, this paper shows the importance of exposure to advertising for a product to be attributed to a brand but this is not enough to induce its purchase. It is the credibility of the brand in the product category as well as the belief in the effectiveness of the product that can lead consumers to buy it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on medical education and training, with many medical schools and training programs having to adapt to remote or online learning, social distancing measures and other challenges. This paper aimed to examine the disruption for clinical training, as it has reduced the opportunities for students and trainees to gain hands-on experience and interact with patients in person.

The ethnographic qualitative research design was chosen as the research methodology. Using Gibbs' reflective cycle, the researcher explored the psychiatry clerks' (final-year medical students) reflections on the disruption of their clinical training during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings demonstrated that the students had a significant psychological impact on their coping capacities as the crisis progressed from shock and depression to resilience. The students being the key stakeholders provided a concrete foundation for the development of a framework for improving practices during uncertain times.

Students' reflections provided valuable insight into the pandemic’s impact on their psychosocial lives with uncertainty and incapacity to cope up with changing stressful dynamics. The results will assist in planning how to best support medical students' well-being during interruptions of their educational process brought about by similar future crises.