Abstract
Football plays a primaryrole in the global business of sport.. Neoliberal trends of commodification and globalisation permeate contemporary football. However, the impact of these trends is not homogeneous across football; commercialisation and globalisation manifest themselves unevenly, with local specificities reflecting divergent sociopolitical contexts in different regions of Europe. Central and Eastern Europe offers a case in point. The Introduction outlines the objectives of the volume, its geographical scope, the structure of the volume as well as its specificity compared to other studies. Methodologically, the individual chapters of the volume are based on the analytical framework provided by the field of political economy. The volume argues that despite globalisation, football remains a regional game with divergent characteristics and outcomes. There are clear (and in most cases worsening) inequities and inequalities between different regions of Europe.