Lectures on Tap - "Sport, Ritual, and the Psychology of Collective Belief"

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "The Stadium Is a Church (And the Badge Is a God): Sport, Ritual, and the Psychology of Collective Belief"

🎤 Speaker: Professor Gina Antoniello

Join us for a fascinating evening exploring why sport so often feels sacred—and why fandom can function like a modern religion. From scarves raised like ritual offerings to chants that echo like collective prayer, Professor Gina Antoniello will unpack how stadiums create “collective effervescence”: powerful emotional surges that bind strangers into a single body.

This lecture examines how matchday rituals, shared suffering, and collective triumph forge belonging, identity, and transcendence in an increasingly secular world. Why does defeat feel personal? What psychological mechanisms make a team’s success feel like our own—and what happens when commercialization disrupts something fans experience as sacred?

Blending psychology, sociology, and global sport culture, Professor Antoniello reframes sport not as mere entertainment, but as one of the last great ritual spaces of modern life.

Professor Gina Antoniello is Academic Director & Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport and a leading voice on sport culture, social impact, and athlete advocacy.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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