Journalistic Role Performance in Global Sports News: Comparing the Stability and Scope of the “Toy Department” Thesis in 36 Countries

Sports journalism has long been derided as the newsroom’s “toy department”, characterized by emotionalized storytelling, boosterism, and limited critical scrutiny. Although recent research challenges this stereotype, comprehensive cross-national evidence has been scarce. This study provides the first large-scale internationally comparative test of these claims using the Journalistic Role Performance framework to analyze four roles—Interventionist, Watchdog, Loyal-Facilitator, and Infotainment—in comparison to non-sports news. Drawing on a content analysis of 14,676 sports stories from 341 outlets across 36 countries, we find a clear dominance of interventionist and infotainment roles, shaped by frequent use of opinion, adjectives, emotion, sensationalism, and personalization. Watchdog performance is notably low and displays minimal variation across political and media systems, despite a slightly higher presence in established democracies. While these findings may confirm certain stereotypes of sports journalists, there is limited evidence that they are merely cheerleaders for the sporting elites (the loyal-facilitator role). Multilevel analyses reveal that these role patterns are strikingly stable across socio-political, organizational, and story-level contexts. Taken together, the findings show that sports journalism constitutes a unique, resilient and globally distinctive news beat whose role performance remains shaped by entertainment-oriented and interventionist tendencies.