Motives for Following Sports Events among Physical Education Students from Bosnia and Hercegovina and Slovenia

Abstract

A sports result takes on its meaning only when the public reacts to it after attending a sporting event. In order to determine and compare attitudes toward attending such events, students from two different cultural backgrounds were invited to participate in the study: 156 students from the Faculty of Sport in Ljubljana and 82 students from the Pedagogical faculty, Department of Physical Education and Sports in Bihać. They were asked to complete a questionnaire containing 25 variables on the motives for attending sporting events. The respondents rated the importance of the motives with scores from 1 to 5 (1—not the reason at all; 2—not the reason; 3—occasionally true for me; 4—true for me; 5—absolutely true). The obtained results were ranked and compared between the students of different faculties and between genders. The results showed that Bosnian and Slovenian students differed in 11 out of 25 motives. Statistically significant gender differences were found for only two out of 25 motives. Differences between Bosnian and Slovenian students were also found in the ranking of the importance of the motives as well as in their evaluation. The results show that cultural, national, and mentality differences between the two groups are reflected in the motives for following sporting events.

1. Introduction

Sport is an integral part of human culture, and with the awareness of its importance, it becomes a value. Today’s modern lifestyle has made us move less and less [1,2,3], with more diseases caused by a stationary lifestyle, and sports have become a value as a result. People engage in sports as athletes, coaches, recreational athletes, and spectators. Spectators of sports events, who either gather at sporting venues or follow sporting events in the media, are an important part of sports and to some extent, influence the overall organization and purpose of sporting competitions [4]. A good knowledge of the values and interests of the spectators is important for the organizational aspect of sporting events, which is also focused on commercial success, currently one of the main reasons for organizing sporting events. Spectators are of immense importance for sports and represent one of the main sources of income for the organizers. Sufficient financial resources enable the further development of sports [5]. In the development of appropriate sports marketing strategies, the consumers’ motives play an important role and have been frequently studied in the last decade [6,7].

According to Sloan [8], there are five categories of theories on the motives of sports spectators: health-promoting effects, stress and stimulation striving, catharsis and aggression, entertainment, and performance striving. Wann [9] described the following main groups of motives: eustress, self-esteem, escape from everyday life, entertainment, economic factors, esthetics, group affiliation, and family needs. Some of them were classified as intrinsic and others as extrinsic motives [10]. The recent literature on sports consumption and motivation shows a wide range of sports spectators’ motives such as performance [11], drama and uncertainty of outcome [12], or entertainment [13]. Pori et al. [2] found that the most important motives for Slovenian sports spectators were liking the particular sport, the success of Slovenian athletes, and fun. In a similar study with Slovenian students, active participation in sports was also an important motive for attending an event as a spectator, or following an event through the media [14].

Nowadays, the media contributes to creating a modern image of sport and influences the way we perceive it. Slovenian researchers have found that men follow sporting events with greater interest than women [15]. For women, Apollonian values are most important such as leisure, esthetic impression, truth, and privacy, while for men, hedonistic values such as pleasure, creation, improvement, physical impression, and money are more important [16]. Studies show that male viewers are more motivated by eustress, self-esteem [10], economic aspects, and esthetics [13,17,18], while female fans are more motivated by family needs [10] and health-promoting effects [19].

What we do in our leisure time depends not only on our values and motives, but also on our needs, competence, age, gender, and financial and social status. Researchers have studied various aspects of how we spend our free time—what it looks like for young people, what most influences our decisions, and the percentage of people who spend their free time actively. They found that due to the high level of modernization, most people spend their leisure time passively [20,21], which is not in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) [22]. In today’s age of technology, stadiums find their way to passive audiences through television, which is still the most efficient way to transmit the atmosphere of stadiums to our living rooms, but also through radio, print media, and the Internet. Some studies on young people’s leisure have factorized their results and found that watching sports is among the eight most important dimensions of leisure [23]. They found that this occurred most often in front of the television, a finding similar to that of Podmenik and Pori [14]. For young people who choose to attend a sporting event rather than just watch it on TV or read about it in the newspaper, the sporting event is primarily a social event [24], but it often has a negative undertone. Bjarnadóttir [25] notes that watching sporting events is often associated with increased alcohol abuse and crime, and this problem was later addressed by the European Council [26].

The media also often contributes to the formulation and reinforcement of national identity through sporting events and emphasizing the importance of national identity [15]. Major sporting events such as the Olympic Games and World Championships have become a playground for the development of national identity and nationalist sentiments, especially as the media portrays sport as a competition between nations rather than a battle between teams or individuals. On one hand, sporting events can be used to build trust between opponents. On the other hand, hostilities between nations can be reflected on the playing field [27].

To date, little attention has been paid to the motivations for following sports events in different nationalities and ethnic minorities, with the exception of African-Americans [10,28]. Bilyeu and Wann found that African-Americans had overall higher scores in sports fan motivation than European-Americans. Specifically, the former exhibited significantly higher scores on eustress, self-esteem, esthetics, entertainment, similarity, representation, and sameness than the latter. In addition, Armstrong [18] found a unique motive for African-American sports fans, “cultural affiliation”. In their study, cultural affiliation was an effective motif for predicting African-American sports consumption behavior. Kwon and Trail [13] examined the importance of cultural uniqueness for college athletic departments and compared the sports consumption motives of American students with those of international students. The results of their study showed that international students had higher overall motivation than American students, with the exception of the economic motive (betting). More recently, Kim et al. [12] attempted to investigate how the motives of American Mixed Martial Art (MMA) fans differ from those of Korean MMA fans. The results showed that Korean fans rated the motives of national pride and vicarious success higher than the American fans, while American fans rated the motives of sports interest, esthetic quality, and violence higher than their Korean counterparts.

Slovenia was the first former Yugoslav republic to secede. Compared to other former republics, Slovenia’s transition to the European way of life was the easiest and smoothest. The war that took place in Slovenia in 1991 was short and caused few casualties and little financial damage. Slovenia was the most developed republic in the former Yugoslavia in terms of technology and know-how. It was always the most “Western” of the Yugoslav republics, and acceptance of a more European lifestyle came quickly. Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004 and adopted the euro as its currency in 2007. Other former republics were far less fortunate with the transition, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) suffered the most and paid the highest price for its independence. Numerous deaths, social devastation, financial damage, and destroyed towns and villages are still part of everyday life in this young country, still causing friction and affecting the role of sports. As a multinational country, it is still in search of its unity, and athletes are an important part of it. People see sports as a means of unification, a step away from the horrors of everyday life, and a distraction that provides a sense of joy, pride, and happiness [14]. A comparison of motives for following sports between students from BiH and Slovenia has not been conducted yet.

The authors state that an event that becomes a spectacle is a cultural phenomenon, and we wanted to find out what motivated spectators in two nations with different cultural backgrounds to attend sporting events. Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify the motives and factorized motives that influence the spectators’ motivation to follow sporting events and to examine how these depend on the spectators’ nationality. To determine the ways and mechanisms by which a sporting event becomes a spectacle and thus has spectators, we sought to identify the motives that guide spectators in different cultural settings. An individual’s participation in an activity, in our example, attending a sporting event, as a spectator depends on their values and needs, which trigger their motivation [29].

We hypothesized that the motives for following sporting events would differ between Bosnian and Slovenian students because they come from different cultural backgrounds and religions. Since they are all sports students, we expected them to have some common motives. We also expected differences in the motives between genders.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Participants

A total of 85 students from the Sports Department of the Pedagogical faculty from Bihać in BiH participated in the research, 12 of them female and 73 male, with an average age of 22.11 years (SD = 2.93 years). Additionally, 156 Slovenian students from the Faculty of Sport from Ljubljana, Slovenia participated, 98 of them female and 58 male, with the mean age of 22.10 years (SD = 1.97 years). The age difference between the two groups was not significant (p = 0.98).

2.2. Instruments

The participants filled out a questionnaire regarding the motives with paper and pencil. The Bosnian students completed the questionnaire during the study seminars and returned it to the supervisor immediately after completion. The survey in Slovenia took place during the summer outdoor activities for 3rd grade students and was returned to the professor immediately. All participants were told how to proceed. They gave their consent before answering the questionnaire. The questionnaire contained 25 motives for involvement as a sports spectator. The construct validity of the questionnaire was determined using factor analysis [30]. The three most important factors were: hedonistic motives (explaining 16.1% of the total variance); potential motives (14.8% of the total variance); and Apollonian motives (12.8% of the total variance). Other less important factors were: compensation of not being active; spending one’s leisure time; the fact that most people follow sporting events; the athletes’ successes help us overcome personal problems; and nothing else to do. They had to rate on a 5-point Likert scale why they followed sporting events (1—not the reason at all; 2—not the reason; 3—occasionally true for me; 4—true for me; 5—absolutely true).

2.3. Statistical Analysis

The statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows (version 27.0. Armonk, NY, USA). Descriptive statistics and t-tests for independent samples were used to ascertain our results. Statistical significance was determined using a 5% alpha level. Bonferroni correction was used in the tests.

3. Results

The results are shown in

Table 1. A comparison of the motives of Slovenian and Bosnian students.

	Slovene Students		Bosnian Students
Motive	M	SD	M	SD	Sig.
Pleasure	4.28	0.758	4.53	0.796	0.015
Fight for victory	3.49	1.127	4.39	0.952	0.000
Cheering for a club or an athlete	3.72	1.206	4.18	1.226	0.005
Dynamics of the sport	3.72	0.997	4.14	0.966	0.002
Watching rather than participating	2	1.128	3.96	1.074	0.000
Unpredictability of the result	3.32	0.984	4.02	1.253	0.000
Success boosts self-assurance	3.48	1.224	4.08	1.104	0.000
Success helps overcome problems	3.17	1.314	3.64	1.413	0.011
General culture	3.03	1.05	3.56	1.340	0.002
Esthetic motives	2.95	1.157	3.42	1.349	0.007
Too much free time	2.49	1.104	2.85	1.384	0.041
M-Sum	35.65		42.77

M—points average on the Likert scale. SD—standard deviation. Significance at p < 0.05, significance at p < 0.005, significance at p < 0.001. M-Sum—the sum of M-points average on the Likert scale.

,

Table 2. The motives of students from more to less important.

Slovene students	M	SD	Bosnian Students	M	SD
Sport’s popularity	4.35	0.841	Pleasure	4.53	0.796
Pleasure	4.28	0.758	Sport’s popularity	4.48	0.895
Fun	4.21	0.894	Fun	4.44	0.906
Attraction of the sport	4.15	0.881	Fight for victory	4.39	0.952
Success of our nation in this sport	3.89	0.937	Attraction of the sport	4.27	1.04
Active participation in this sport	3.88	1.049	Cheering for a club or an athlete	4.18	1.226
Dynamics of the sport	3.72	0.997	Dynamics of the sport	4.14	0.966
Cheering for a club or an athlete	3.72	1.206	Success boosts self-assurance	4.08	1.104
Interest for success	3.68	0.916	Active participation in this event	4.02	1.205
Active participation in this event	3.67	1.094	Unpredictability of the result	4.02	1.253
M-Sum of top 10 motives	39.55			42.55
Useful spending of leisure time	3.58	1.196	Watching rather than participating	3.96	1.074
The national importance of sports	3.56	1.159	Active participation in this event	3.93	1.153
Fight of victory	3.49	1.127	Success of our nation in this sport	3.87	1.203
National importance of sport	3.48	1.223	The national importance of sports	3.86	1.347
Unpredictability of the result	3.32	0.983	National importance of sport	3.81	1.268
Successes help us overcome problems	3.17	1.314	Useful spending of leisure time	3.68	1.365
Element of general culture	3.03	1.049	Successes help us overcome problems	3.64	1.413
Wide media coverage	3.02	1.037	Element of general culture	3.56	1.34
Esthetic impression	2.95	1.157	Esthetic impression	3.42	1.349
Familiarity with athletes private life	2.90	1.164	Wide media coverage	3.05	1.344
Ignorance of sports discipline	2.62	0.925	Familiarity with athletes private life	2.94	1.375
Plenty of leisure time	2.49	1.104	Ignorance of sports discipline	2.88	1.467
The fact that most people follow sport	2.24	1.096	Plenty of leisure time	2.85	1.384
Watching rather than participating	2.00	1.128	The fact that most people follow sport	2.59	1.506
Nothing else to do	1.74	0.893	nothing else to do	1.65	1.141
M-Sum of last 3 motives	5.98			7.69

Top 10 and last 3 motives are in bold. M—points average on the Likert scale. SD—standard deviation. M-Sum—the sum of M-points average on the Likert scale.

and

Table 3. The statistically significant differences in the ranking of motives between genders.

	Male		Female
Motive	M	SD	M	SD	Sig.
Fight for victory	3.57	1.14	3.91	1.14	0.04
Watching rather than participating	2.91	1.50	2.31	1.41	0.005

M—points average on the Likert scale. SD—standard deviation. Significance at p < 0.05, significance at p < 0.005, significance at p < 0.001.

.

3.1. Comparison of the Motives of Bosnian and Slovenian Students

Statistically significant differences were found between the Bosnian and Slovenian students in their motives for following sporting events (Table 1). Out of the 25 motives included in the study, 11 were found to be significantly different. Bosnian students assigned higher Likert scale scores to motives on average. Statistically significant motives received a value sum of 42.77 from the Bosnian students, but only 35.65 from the Slovenian students (Table 1). Of the eleven motives where the Bosnian and Slovenian students overlapped, the Bosnian students scored six motifs higher than 4, while the Slovenian students scored only one motive higher than 4.

3.2. Ranking the Importance of Motives for Bosnian and Slovenian Students

Table 2 shows that the Bosnian and Slovenian students ranked the importance of the motives differently. Of the 25 motives for following sporting events included in the study, the top 10 and the last three motives were analyzed. Of the top 10 motives, seven motives were chosen equally by both groups, and three motives were chosen differently (for Bosnian students “fight for victory”, “success boosts self-assurance”, and “unpredictability of the result”; for Slovenian students “success of our nation in this sport”, “active participation in this sport”, and “interest for success”; Table 2). Bosnian students assigned a value of four or more to all motives that made it into the top 10, while Slovenian students assigned them only four (Table 2). The sum of the top 10 motives was higher for the Bosnian students (42.55) than for the Slovenian students (39.55) (Table 2). Of the three least important motives, the same two were chosen by both groups, and one was chosen differently. The Bosnians chose the motive “plenty of leisure time”, while the Slovenians chose “watching rather than participating”. The Bosnian students assigned higher values of sum (7.69) for the last three motives than the Slovenian students (5.98).

3.3. Comparison of Motives by Gender

A comparison of the ranking of the importance of motives between men and women showed that they differed statistically only in two motives (Table 3). Women assigned a higher value (3.91) to the motive “fight for the victory” than men (3.57), while men assigned a higher value (2.91) to the motive “watching rather than participating” than women (2.31; Table 3).

4. Discussion

A sports fan is an avid follower of sports and can be classified into five categories depending on their motivation and fan-like behavior: temporary, local, devoted, fanatic, and dysfunctional [31]. Sports fans are motivated to attend sporting events not only by various social and psychological factors, but also by eustress, self-esteem, escapism, entertainment, economic benefits, esthetics, group affiliation, and family.

The results of our study, as presented in Table 1, show that Bosnian and Slovenian students differed statistically in 11 out of 25 motives for attending sporting events. These differences could be influenced by cross-cultural differences and the environment of these students.

The culture of BiH was mainly influenced by the Turks, especially in terms of religious affiliation: 43% of the inhabitants identified themselves as Muslims [32], in contrast to Slovenia, where the Muslim religion is less prevalent. One of the biggest differences between the two countries is individualism, which has increased in Slovenia after independence, while BiH is still considered as a rather collectivist country.

There are very few studies dealing with cross-cultural differences in the motives for following sporting events. Some of these were presented in the introduction in this article, and all of them related to marketing in sports. This was not the subject of our study. We were interested only in the motives for attending sporting events in two groups of students from two republics of the former Yugoslavia—groups with a common history, but with a different cultural background.

The total value of all motives where statistically significant differences appeared was 16.6% higher in the Bosnian students (42.77) than in the Slovenian ones (35.65) (Table 1). Bilyeu and Wann [28] found that African-Americans performed better than Americans and Europeans in motivating sports fans. Therefore, it could be concluded that less developed countries (in our case, Bosnia) and in the mentioned study, African-Americans developed a stronger bond with their clubs and fans and felt more like citizens. Eleven motives listed in Table 1 support this thesis. For example, “fighting to win”, “cheering for a club or competitor”, “unpredictability of outcome”, “success boosts confidence”, and “success helps overcome problems.” The Bosnian people had to fight for their freedom for five years. At the end of the war, the Bosnian students who filled out this questionnaire were still children. They experienced the atrocities of war as children and entered their teenage years with a difficult past. They saw that their parents had to gain their dignity with competitiveness, fighting spirit, and will to win, which must also be reflected in these students. The struggle to win would also ensure that they became independent and self-reliant.

The motive of “cheering on a club or competitor” could be related to the fact that they had to cheer each other on during the war if they wanted to defeat the aggressor and overcome the atrocities they had experienced. Not knowing if they would succeed could be related to the “unpredictability of outcome” motive. Additionally, the motives “success strengthens confidence” and “success helps overcome problems” could be related to the end of the war and the prediction of a better future—the European Council is likely to grant BiH the status of a candidate for accession to the European Union in 2022 [33]. On the other hand, the Slovenian War of Independence lasted only 10 days, and the students who participated in our research were not even born yet. Moreover, Slovenia’s admission to the EU was not an active part of their lives, as Slovenia became a full member of the EU already in 2004 [34]—therefore, the differences between the motives, which could be related to national motives, could be due to the students’ close past.

Bosnian students gave 42.55 points to the first 10 motives (Table 2), while Slovenian students gave them only 39.55 points. There were no significant differences between these motives. This is understandable because these motives are related to current sports experiences. The first three motives were “sports popularity”, “pleasure”, and “fun watching a sports event”. Thompson [35] examined the social and psychological aspects of being a sports fan and conducted a case study of fan motivation at the University of Northern Carolina (UNC). Statistical analysis of the data showed that the most important motivation of these students was “fun”, followed by “eustress”, “escapism”, and “group identification.” The least important motivation of the students was the economic aspect. The results of the study showed that sports watching is more of a fun activity that allows students to escape their daily routine and stressors together with friends and classmates. Other researchers have also found that fun is one of the most important motives for following sporting events [36,37], especially for male team sports such as football. Graham et al. [38] found that fun is the main motive for watching sporting events for home spectators, while competitiveness is a strong motive for the fans of visiting teams.

In addition to these three motives, four other motives were also similar in both groups of students—these were “attraction of the sport”, “dynamics of the sport”, “cheering for a club or an athlete”, and “active participation in this event” (Table 2). We believe that these motives were also unrelated to the intercultural or international aspects of this group. Among the top ten motives—and thus the strongest motives—there were also three that were specific to a particular group of students. Slovenian students chose “success of our nation in this sport”, “active participation in this sport”, and “interest for success.” Bosnian students selected “fight for victory”, “success boosts self-assurance”, and “unpredictability of the result.” The latter motives show the cultural characteristics of each nation—in the case of the Bosnian students, toward survival in difficult times, as described earlier. In the case of the Slovenian students, these motives showed a strong commitment to sports. Sporting engagement can be defined as a “state of motivation, activation, or interest toward a leisure activity or a product associated with the leisure activity” [39].

Laverie and Arnett [40] identified two types of involvement in sport—situational and permanent. Situational involvement means that a person’s interest in an activity has increased due to short-term events. For example, a person attends a baseball game with friends in the evening. If a person enjoys the game (i.e., experiences, eustress), this indicates high situational engagement for that evening. However eustress is not the only predictor of such situational engagement. Motivational aspects can also explain why a person develops high situational engagement—escapism, fun, esthetic pleasure, culture—can also increase situational engagement [9]. Pleasure can lead to sustained engagement (i.e., the person shows sustained interest in the activity) [40]. In Slovenian students, this can be seen in the motives “active participation in sports” and “interest in success”. One of the main motivators for a constant interest in sports is the “success of our nation in this sport”, which was mentioned by Slovenian students in fifth place among the top ten motives with 3.89 points. Both identification with the team and with the nation can influence a person’s self-image, which is an important component of social identity [41]. The motive “successes of our nation in this sport” was not among the top ten motives of Bosnian students, although they gave almost as many points as the Slovenian students (3.87), which showed that this motive is also important for them. According to Fan et al. [41], this motive can influence a person’s self-image and thus play an important role in their social identity.

As the least important motives in the group of Bosnian students, we found motives such as ”plenty of leisure time”, “the fact that most people follow sport”, and “nothing else to do”. Among the Slovenian students, we also found the motive “watching rather than participating” (Table 2). Similar results were found in a study of the general Slovenian population [4]. This research showed that the motives “too much free time” and “nothing else to do” were related to the fact that 42% of Slovenians rarely participated in sports due to a lack of time, which was also confirmed by the research Special Eurobarometer 213 [42]. Doupona [43] found that 32% of parents of primary school children in Slovenia were not active in their free time. Recent data showed that inactivity among Slovenians has decreased to 24% according to Special Eurobarometer 472 [44]. In terms of the number of physically active days per week (at least 5 days per week), Slovenians ranked fifth in Europe with 15% of the population being physically active, only ahead of Finns with 17% of people being physically active five times per week.

There are no such data for BiH, as the country is not part of the European Union, but statistical data from the National Health Agency of the Federation of BiH from 2002 showed that only 15% of the population was physically active in their free time, but within 10 years, this percentage has increased to 24.6% [45], while in Slovenia, only 20% of the population was not physically active [38]. However, the situation is also expected to improve in BiH. Data from Tuzla Canton [46] showed that 215 women participated in a survey, which revealed that 35% of them were not active in leisure time—this was even lower than the average of women who were not active in leisure time in the EU, which was 52% [44]. The World Health Organization [47] also considers everyday tasks as physical activity—walking, cycling to work. According to this, 39.2% of women in Bosnia were not active. These results were similar to the European results, according to which 40% of women never rode a bicycle, never danced or worked in the garden [44]. From the above results, it can be concluded that the situation in Bosnia is worse compared to the more developed countries of the European Union, especially the Scandinavian countries. The reason for this poor state of sporting activities in Bosnia can be seen from several aspects.

Historically, the Bosnian people lived under Turkish rule for 500 years, and the Turks prevented the development of this nation. This also reflects the mentality of the people and their low awareness of healthy living. The war for the independence of BiH has had serious economic and psychological consequences, so the people of Bosnia struggle to survive in their free time and have no time for sports or recreational activities. The mentioned war has also left serious psychological consequences in the form of psychological problems—instead of engaging in sports in their free time, they devote themselves to various addictions such as food, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, etc. Caperchione et al. [48] found that depression and stress were symptoms of post-war trauma that reduced the motivation for physical activity. The same study showed that Bosnian women also considered religious rituals as physical activity, as they involve raising and lowering the arms. We can assume that this is the cause of the World Health Organization’s results mentioned earlier, because they also consider physical activity as daily housework, religious rituals, going to work, shopping, and so on.

In our opinion, it should be clarified as to what is physical activity and what is recreational sport. The concept of physical activity is much broader than that of recreational sports and refers to any activity in which the muscles are active (even unplanned) and in which more energy is expended than in staying still [49,50,51]. Recreational sports activities are planned, structured, and designed to improve the physical health characteristics [52]. Recreational sport activities influence stress management. Planinšek et al. [53] found that most participants in their study experienced significantly less stress (less than once per week or never). We can also assume that the Bosnian students were less active than the Slovenians, as they stated that “watching rather than participating”—they gave this motive 3.96 points, while the Slovenian students gave this motive only two points. This shows that they were aware of the importance of sport and leisure activities, even if they are sports students and not the general population. We believe that there was a significant difference in the awareness of what a healthy lifestyle means between the two groups of students, and we believe that this was true for both nations.

We also looked at the differences between the male and female participants and found differences in the two motives (as seen in Table 3)—the first difference was found in the motive “fighting for victory” where male students scored higher, which can be attributed to upbringing as boys are more often encouraged to approach their goal intensely and fight for it, while girls are more often encouraged to negotiate and share. The other motive where we found statistically significant differences was “watching rather than participating”—men scored better on this motive. We expected different results, but Dietz-Uhler et al. [54] found that male students were more likely to see themselves as fans because they played more sports and wanted to be informed by watching sporting events. Thus, it is also possible that male students were more likely to identify as fans than the female students, although equal numbers of male and female students considered themselves sports enthusiasts. This was also confirmed by our study, as we found only two differences between the male and female students.

5. Conclusions

The students of the Faculty of Education in Bihać (BiH), Department of Physical Education, and Sports, rated the motives for participation in sport events significantly higher on average (10 motives were rated above four points) than the students of the Faculty of Sport in Ljubljana (only four motives were rated above four points). Considering the fact that the differences between the results of the Bosnian and Slovenian students were statistically significant in 11 out of 25 motives as well as the differences in the evaluation of the importance of motives, it can be concluded that Bosnian and Slovenian students that study sports have different views on attending sporting events. This can be seen in the importance of the motives that stand for competitiveness, fighting spirit, and self-image, and in the importance of the motives that stand for sports activity. The former were more important for BiH students, while the latter were more important for Slovenian students. This suggests that the evaluation of motives for attending sporting events strongly depends on the environment in which the students lived. Bosnian students grew up in difficult times, in a country that recently experienced the atrocities of the War of Independence. BiH is a young country that is only now making its way into the European region. Sport is also helping them to establish themselves in the social space. For Slovenian sports students, it is more important to be physically and socially active in sports themselves, as is typical for developed countries. When evaluating the motives for attending sporting events, male and female students differed statistically only in two motives. It is reasonable to assume that students who have similar attitudes toward sports will choose to study at a sports education institution. There has also been a significant recent change in the views of attending sporting events for both males and females. When it comes to motives for consuming sports, there are few differences between fans of a men’s team and a women’s team [55].