Sports Mad: How Australia Became the World's Strangest Sporting Nation

Talks on Tuesdays: Real lectures in your favourite venues. 45-mins + Q&A with Dr Hunter Fujak Talks on Tuesdays is a live event series bringing big ideas, real experts, and curious minds together - at your favourite local venues. Think thought-provoking lectures, audience questions, and post-talk mingling over drinks and dinner. This isn’t a uni lecture. It’s a social, intelligent night out.Come alone or with friends, leave with something to talk about. Event Schedule: 6.30pm Arrival & Doors Open 7pm Lecture Starts 7.45pm Q&A 8pm Talk Concludes 8.30pm Event Closes. *Please arrive close to 6.30pm A La Carte menu and full bar available throughout the night - pay as you go. Accessibility: The Laneway Social is upstairs and there is no lift. Please get in touch before booking if stairs are a problem for you. Your Topic: Sports Mad: How Australia Became the World’s Strangest Sporting Nation Australia is truly a 'sports mad' nation, supporting over seventy professional sport franchises, four discrete professional football codes, hosting three Summer Olympic cities, and staging major events like the F1 and Australian Open. Australian sport is also globally unique, underpinned by a cultural rivalry that divides the nation along footy preference. Yet, being an AFL or NRL fan is no longer just a topic for pub debate; it's now a billion-dollar business. How does a geographically isolated country of just 27 million become one of the world's great sporting nations? How did Australia end up divided by a sporting fault line found nowhere else on earth? Which football code is, in fact, the best? Part celebration, part exploration, Dr Hunter Fujak, author of Code Wars: the Battle for Fans, Dollars and Survival and a leading authority on Australia's sport landscape, draws on years of original research to tell the story of how we got here, what makes Australian sport globally unique, and what the future of Australian sport holds. Your Speaker: Dr Hunter Fujak Dr Hunter Fujak is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Management at Deakin University and a thought leader in sport fandom, consumer behaviour and media. He is also the author of Code Wars: the Battle for Fans, Dollars and Survival, and is a leading authority on Australia’s sport landscape. Dr Fujak has written for The Guardian and The Conversation, and has been featured in The New York Times, BBC World News, and Forbes. Dr Fujak's research has appeared in leading academic journals including the Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, European Sport Management Quarterly, and Media, Culture and Society. He has worked in sports and general consultancy for Australasia's largest sporting leagues and events, including the Australian Open (tennis), the Rugby World Cup, and Cricket Australia, as well as for some of Australia's most prominent brands, including Telstra, Sportsbet, Foxtel, and Woolworths.