The expectations of the public from the sports media:A qualitative and quantitative analysis

The sports media which informs the public of sports events has a big power in our country which influences large audiences just like in other countries. This research was undertaken to determine the situation of the sports media in Turkey and to identify the expectations of the public interested in sports regarding the print media. According to the opinions expressed by seven writers in the qualitative section, it was decided that the concept of informing the public and the concept of coverage of sports events by the sports media can be evaluated in two groups: `populist approach? and `sportsmanlike approach?. The results show that at the present time the majority of the sports media uses populist approaches in their publications and coverage. In this approach, the media degenerates under the hegemony of the football clubs which have the highest number of supporters. The sportsmanlike approach, on the other hand, comprises of the concept of publication which brings the core values of sports in the foreground and which embraces all of the sports branches. The research results indicate that if the sports media gives more coverage to the other sports branches in addition to football, they will be able to address larger audiences, thus the number of people interested in sports events will increase. In the quantitative section, a new scale which was called `Scale of the expectations from the sports media? was developed with the aim of measuring the expectations of the sports fans from the print media in sports. This scale was applied to 1360 persons through Internet. The scale was developed originally with 18 items to determine the expectations from the sports media but after factor analysis was conducted, these items were reduced to 6. These items are `Sportmanship and Fair Play?, `Language and Expression?, `Information?, `Intensive Content?, `Visual Content? and `Football News?. The majority of the participants stated that they are not content with the general coverage approach of the sports media (71.84 %). The 48.57 % of the participants do not find the sports media convincing. The sports fans in Turkey state that they expect a better quality publication, broadcast and coverage from the media.