This article examines the cultural and economic characteristics, as well as the historical trends, of Swedish football and ice hockey, two of the country's national sports. Utilizing Arjun Appadurai's theory of globalization flows (scapes), the historical development of these sports from the early twentieth century to the present is analyzed. The study highlights how football and ice hockey have been shaped by ideological, media, technological, and economic factors, as well as their relationships with audiences and supporter cultures. The findings reveal that football, with its grassroots development and club-based organization, contrasts with ice hockey's more nationalized structure and top-down development, heavily influenced by North America. During the 1980s, ice hockey surpassed football in economic, media, and audience aspects, and soon also technologically. However, through a robust supporter culture, football regained strength in the 2000s, leading to a growing cultural divergence between the two sports. The future appears bright for both, but football seems to have a greater economic potential, due to revenue generated from player transfers and participation in European tournaments.

The article investigate the impact of National Hockey League (NHL) and its hegemonic cultural impact on the Swedish Hockey League (SHL). This is done in light of the concept of Americanization. Thus, the study traces two different stages in the Americanization process, in relation to the first commercial hockey club in Sweden: i.e. Rögle BK. In this respect, the immature experiences of the first trend of Americanization, with e.g. alien mercenaries, seems to have worked as a shield against a second stage of Americanization, more shaped by a ballyhooed management. In the wake of a certain resistance of the NHL-culture, Rögle BK seems to have developed a ‘glocal’ hockey culture, captured in the Rögle BK Oiler’ logo.

In this paper, we explore the Canadian fitness advocate and coaching legend Lloyd Percival's fabled The Hockey Handbook, and its influence on player development and team strategy in Canada, Sweden and the former Soviet Union. Utilizing the notion of global 'scapes', as developed by Arjun Appaduari, to more fully understand the complexity of the global development of ice hockey, we argue that globalization of the game must be perceived as a multi-faceted interaction at both the global and local levels, i.e. as a critical binary relationship. According to the conventional, evangelistic narrative, Percival's instructional manual was responsible for the rise of ice hockey in Europe and the USSR. Our contrary argument is that the global cultural flow of The Hockey Handbook was a complex combination of factors related to the movement of capital, technologies, people, ideological considerations and mediated images. As such, it brings into question, the presumed status of The Hockey Handbook, as a dominant influence of the global hockey world. Rather, our argument suggests, it is a manufactured 'scape', serving to privilege a Canadian ice hockey system while relegating other 'narratives' and ice hockey systems to that of mere receivers.

Special Issue: The Progress of Elite Ice Hockey, Beyond NHL: A Focus on (G)local culture(s), Migration, Entrepreneurship, Americanization and Oligarchism. Guest Editors: Bo Carlsson, Jyri Backman and Tobias Stark