Ready player two: women gamers and designed identity

of and hopefulness about the increased visibility of female sports fans with due scrutiny of how these images are mobilized by professional sports organizations such as FIFA or the International Cricket Council to open new markets. Finally, Toffoletti is attentive to the real, significant pleasures that sports fandom provides to women even as she critiques the limits placed on that pleasure by profoundly masculinized sports cultures and institutions. Women Sport Fans succeeds most notably as a rich survey of existing literature relevant to the study of female sports fans and as a provocation for further research. It points to the need for more in-depth consideration of sports and “globally mobile populations of women (such as diasporic, migrant and refugee women),” female fans of female sports (including “offshoot” organizations like the WNBA as well as female-gendered sports like professional netball), and the potential for “moments of collaboration and critical alliances” among women fans to serve as activism (150–1). I would add to Toffoletti’s list a few directions she gestures toward throughout the book but is ultimately unable to fully explore in such a focused volume. In particular, further study is warranted on the experience of transgender and non-binary sports fans, women’s participation in sports gaming (including fantasy sports and video games), and women’s sports fandom as it is performed in languages other than English. By identifying these critically understudied areas, Toffoletti offers a dynamic roadmap for future sports feminist scholarship and makes a compelling case for the importance of a transnational feminist perspective to the field.