Floodlights and Touchlines

"Focusing on spectator sports and their accompanying issues, tracing their origins, evolution and impact, inside the lines and beyond the boundary, this book offers a thematic history of professional sport and the ingredients that magnetize the world. It tells the stories that matter: from the gladiators of Rome to the runners of Rift Valley via the innovator-missionaries of Rugby School ; from multifaceted British exports to the Americanisation of professionalism and the Indianisation of cricket. Rob Steen traces the development of the sports that capitvate the turnstile millions and the…