Personal Growth vs. Competition: UAB Faculty Analyzes the Ethical Values of Sports Cinema

Audiences perceive that personal and ethical growth values are the most relevant message, surpassing the idea of victory at any cost.

The research, presented by Ludovico Longhi, Iliana Ferrer, and Daniel Arrébola, examines the impact of sports films from the 1930s to the present on the transmission of values such as ethics, cooperation, and personal effort.

Faculty members from the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising and researchers from the Olympic Studies Centre (CEO-UAB) shared the results of their new study on the representation of Olympic and human values in sports cinema at the ECREA Sports and Communication Working Group conference held in Cologne, Germany (November 13–15, 2025).

The paper, titled “Personal Growth Vs. Agonizing Victory: Representing Human and Olympic Values in Sports Films”, was presented by Ludovico Longhi, Iliana Ferrer, and Daniel Arrébola. The research focuses on the dichotomy between the idea of personal growth (or developmental values) and victory at any cost (or competitive values) in cinematic narratives.

The study applied the EVA Protocol (Audiovisual Valorization Strategy), a methodology implemented by the Scientific Association for the Evaluation and Assessment of Audiovisual (AEVA). The protocol, created by Ángel Rodríguez and Norminanda Montoya, measures the intensity with which audiences perceive different values on a scale (called Value Power). Data collection was carried out through a collective survey via QR code after screenings of sports films.

The results show that values such as cooperation, effort, and reliability are far more appreciated and considered more relevant by audiences than the mere achievement of victory. This underscores the key role of cinema as a vehicle for communicating social and ethical values.