Sports Fandom
Big Idea
•
The
fact that (certain) people are willing/compelled to watch sports, pay money,
take time and develop loyalties is something that can be theorized with nearly
every major branch of social theory.
History of Fandom
•
Horse
Racing and Boxing are the first great mass spectator sports, by the middle of
the 19th century
–
What
they both have in common is gambling
–
Almost
from the start, seating (like theater before them) is divided into upper class
and working class sections
•
By
the late 19th century/early , it is baseball in the US and football
in the UK which become the huge draws across classes
–
Institution
of 5 ½ day work weeks give the opportunity for time off
–
But
technology also helps
• Telegraph is able to
transmit scores and reports across country
• Mass transit allows
spectators from a wider area to get the stadium
• Steel/Concrete
construction allows ever bigger stadiums to be built
–
In
the UK, with thousands of soccer clubs, rooting interest becomes intensely
local
• London, for example,
has around 10 major clubs; Manchester has two
History of Fandom (cont.)
•
But
each country also has its more upper-class spectator sports
–
Cricket
in particular is frequented by people who have the ability to sit all day in
the stands and watch
–
In
the US (especially before the GI Bill, which allowed all WWII veterans to go to
college) college football was the equivalent sport
• Post GI-Bill, it
becomes the center of fandom for places without professional teams (e.g.
Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska) and thus very territorialized at statewide
(or city wide) levels
–
Tennis,
golf, polo, yachting and all of the other sports elites participated in as well
as watched,
History of Fandom (cont.)
•
The
second Madison Square Garden in New York City (built by a syndicate including
JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, PT Barnum, and William Astor) was the first of the
mega covered arenas in 1890
–
Used
first for boxing and circus, before basketball and ice hockey moved in.
• The fourth MSG is the
current building
•
Although
the British in particular left cricket stadium and race tracks behind in their
colonies, one of the first priorities for many newly independent regimes was a
national stadium (particularly for football, built on the model of London’s
Wembley Stadium)
–
Many
of Latin America’s great stadiums – Brazil’s Maracanã, Mexico’s Estadio
Azteca, Argentina’s El Monumental date from the late 1930’s to the
1960’s.
•
In
the 1990s, thanks to the Baltimore Orioles Camden yards, new downtown stadiums
were seen as a key to redevelopment
–
Its
been a mixed bag (more on that later)
History of Fandom (cont.)
•
One
of the big ways fandom is shown is by wearing/displaying team colors
–
This
originally is most prominent in elite schools initially, in both the UK and US
(Harvard Crimson, Yale blue, Eton blue, etc…)
–
However,
most people would dress up in nice clothes to attend games until after WWII, so
the most common way to show support in the UK was with the team scarf
• Originally, fans knit
them in team colors; eventually factories would add team crest and team name;
by 1960’s teams began selling them on their own, making “special editions” to
mark big matches.
–
With
the switch to more casual clothes in the 1960s, more people wore sports
t-shirts and children would wear replica jerseys (which eventually adults felt
they could wear too).
History of Fandom (cont.)
•
The
sports team flag/poster /pennant became a staple of home decoration; first in
children’s rooms, but then later in prominent areas of the home.
•
In
the US, fandom also centered on baseball card collecting.
• The phenomenon emerged
in the late 1800s, when companies would use pictures of famous ball players on
their business cards
– Eventually tobacco
companies started using the card to advertise cigarettes/protect the cigarettes
in their pack
» Candy companies moved
in too, and eventually the printing of cards became more lucrative than the
candy (by the mid-1980s, the gum façade went away entirely)
Hooliganism
•
A
small subset of soccer fans (usually working class, pre middle age males)
engage in organized violence against fans of other teams
–
They
are variously called “ultras”, “casuals”; their groups in England are called
“firms”
•
As
Hughson and Poulton note, their influence on popular imagination far outpaces
their admittedly annoying, bad (but small) impact
–
Countless
films and TV shows, like Green Street, Football Factory, the Firm,
sort of villify/romanticizes the street toughs.
• They are also linked
with skinhead culture/the far-right National Party; but that is rarely the case
anymore (even if many are xenophobic).
–
In
general, they only target others like themselves, who are also looking to fight
(use mobile phones to do it)
•
Hooliganism
is just the most exotic form of fan on fan violence, which in many parts of the
world is fueled by alcohol
–
Some
countries like Brazil instituted a ban; in the US, most stop beer sales once ¾
of the game is completed
Media
•
More
in a later lecture, but obviously media and sports fandom go together
–
Baseball
was helped by being an exceptionally good radio game (players start from fixed
position, so easy to describe)
–
Television
made all the difference for fandom (especially American football); seeing the
game live either at home or at a bar made for a much more engaging experience
• As screen resolution
improved, sports viewing numbers went up.
–
Local
sports talk radio (and then national equivalents through ESPN) gave fans a
chance to feel like they had a voice in the team
–
Satellite
TV allowed all the games (not just local ones) to be viewable; extended by
internet streaming like MLB.TV which can make every game from the season
viewable.
Fantasy Sports
•
While
you can always get the thrill of playing sports by playing them, it took people
to invent mathematical simulations in order to get the thrill of “managing” a
team.
–
The
incredibly profitable niche of sports video games, dominated by Electronic Arts
(the makers of FIFA and John Madden Football) recreates the immersive
competition, without the physicality
• There are now
international championships for all sports video games
•
The
Original Fantasy sport is probable a Strat-o-Matic Baseball (a board game where
you set lineups, decide how to swing/pitch, throw dice and reference a
probability table on baseball cards)
•
Contemporary
fantasy sports starts with Daniel Okrent’s Rotisserie Baseball (so named for
the restaurant the first league met). Now call it “Roto”
–
Each
team drafts a full roster of players, scores points in 5 offensive and 5
pitching categories based on actual player results
• So it is played right along
with the real season
–
Before
the internet (and really, Yahoo), it was incredibly time consuming (having to
use paper and pencil, and then later Excel spreadsheets) to tabulate everything
• Thus the appeal was
very limited
Fantasy Sports (cont.)
•
Although
fantasy baseball came first, it is fantasy football which is by far the most
popular
–
It
is far, far easier to play and understand than roto baseball:
• Involves points, not
categories (some of which are ratios)
• Roto baseball tended to
score entire seasons; football was weekly head to head (so more immediate
reward and excitement)
• Only 16 football games
(at most) each week, not 90; only 16 weeks in fantasy season, not 25
• Fewer positions (QB,
RB, WR, TE, K, DEF)
• Thus there is a high
luck factor (due both to scoring system and the dynamic nature of the NFL and
its players’ short careers), means even weak fantasy players will perform well
some years
Fantasy Sports (cont.)
•
While
most fantasy leagues among friends involve money, the big innovation is Daily
Fantasy
–
Instead
of each player appearing in only one team per league; participants are given X
number of dollars and can “buy” whatever players you want
• For football, your
“team” was together for one week; in baseball and basket ball, one night –
after which you could choose a new team
–
People
who do this professionally enter hundreds of contests a week for football;
dozens a day for baseball and basketball
–
Clearly
this is much closer to gambling than season-long fantasy (since small sample
size is less predictable), but it is legal in most states
• Many former online
poker players moved in, since online poker is illegal.
•
Fantasy
and video games, by providing a more interactive experience, have vastly
increased interest in the NFL
–
Players
can also be more interactive with fans through Twitter (although sometimes fans
interact in negative ways).
–
It
has also changed fandom: if you go to a bar to watch games, people are often
rooting for individual players as much as entire teams.
Positivism and Fandom
•
Billings
and Ruihely’s article is textbook positivism – a 1200 person survey, using
categories of analysis that emerged from their survey or others surveys
–
The
survey compared the motivations of traditional sports fans and fantasy players
•
They
cited existing literature, which showed:
–
Fantasy
players tended to consume much more sports media than traditional fans; also
tend to be better educated, more male and more upscale
• Although this is less
so every year, possibly due to well-educated being early adopters
–
Traditional
sports fans are into the “escalated emotion” with the dramatic narrative arc
• They talk more before
and after than any other type of fan
•
They
asked questions about motivation in areas drawn from other studies, including:
(a) entertainment (b) eustress (c) self-esteem, (d) escape (e) appreciation of
learning (f) appreciation of aesthetics (g) companionship (h) group affiliation
(i) family (j) economic motivation and (k) surveillance/control
•
Their
study showed (using measure of statistically significant correlation)
–
That
for traditional sports fans escape was more important than for fantasy players
–
That
fantasy players enjoyed control of a team, self esteemed gained through
bragging rights and achievement in front of friends, and had more fun.
•
And
although they would eschew the representational categories; non-representational
theory would like us to notice that none of this fake; and much of it benign or
even good.
Political Economy
•
Fandom
can be seen as both “ideology” in the Marxist sense (that love of sports blinds
people to its exploitative capitalist nature) and the Zizek sense (we know very
well owners/leagues are slimy rich guys, but yet…)
•
Either
way, it is very lucrative for the owners, who extract rent (for their exclusive
control over the product) collectively from taxpayers and cable/satellite
subscribers, plus those who willingly give them money for tickets and
merchandise.
–
Post-modern
political economists (like Baudrillard) would argue that the key is that sports
fandom becomes the center of a constellation of objects – that includes sports
media, dining, drinking, game attendance, and merchandise. All of which can
become profit centers
–
It
certainly crowds out other possible uses for tax payer money.
Political Economy (cont.)
•
Although
major sports live spectatorship was once pursuable by the working class, (even
if it was for ideological reasons) it has now been largely taken away
–
Stadiums
are filled with luxury box seating; ticket, parking and refreshment prices are
out of reach for many
• The Superbowl in
particular extracts huge outlays from the local government, all to throw a
party for richest people in America
–
This
was the point of Hughson and Powell: in trying to get rid of a few genuine
criminals and racists that organized themselves along sports, the English FA
is attempting a class shift
• Much of the charm of
English football is the singing in the stands and the mass of supporters –
moving towards a luxury box model cheapens that
– Ideally, the way
forward is to be more inclusive on many divisions (and not exclude class)
•
However,
some would note that thanks to sports talk radio, internet and fantasy, fans
have never had so much ability to challenge official scripts and make their own
meaning around the games
Feminist Perspectives
•
While
we will cover sports participation later, various feminist perspectives have
had a lot to say about sports fandom
–
For
along time women were either by social custom or law from attending live sports
performed by men
• In Iran, this is still
the case.
–
This
mattered because “small talk” among men, particularly in the world of work,
tends to be dominated by sports
• Being part of small
talk is a good way to advance in a social situation; being excluded from small
talk means missed opportunity
Feminist Perspectives
•
Even
today, the “average” sports viewer is considered (at least by advertisers) to
be male
–
Thus
the odd presence of female only dance team/cheerleaders at football/basketball
teams
• As it turns out, this
intersects with political economy, because teams have been economically
exploiting these squads for years.
–
Teams
make really lame attempts to court female fans, where there is pink merchandise
and men come “mansplain” to women about sports
•
Many
men view sports as their “refuge” from women -- thus the whole “man cave”
thing
–
Some
feminist theory identifies sports spectatorship/fantasy sports as a last
bastion of “acceptable” misogyny and male aggressiveness that is used to purposefully
exclude the women in their lives and provide a hiding place from increasingly
shared household duties.
• It is also a favorite
activity for men to engage with sons with, and thus reinforces gender
stereotypes
– Although inclusion and
engagement of daughters does go up every year
Feminist Perspectives (cont.)
–
Women
sports fans are much more likely than men to list “family time” or
“strengthening relationship” as their reason for interest in sports
–
Men
are also far less likely to watch women’s sports than women are to watch men’s
sports.
• A certain percentage of
male sports fans are extremely dismissive of the bodies and athletic
capabilities of female athletes, particular those who are GLBTQ.
• There a vicious cycle
with the sports media, which do not cover women’s sports, which keeps many men
uninterested, which keeps the media from covering women’s sports…
•
To
be clear: it is fine that different people (even people in a relationship) have
different interests. It is when those interests aggressively exclude (and
sometimes belittle) other groups of people that they become pernicious
–
For
example, woodworking is hobby pursued disproportionately by men, alone in
workshops or tool sheds. It somehow manages to be much less exclusionary than
sports fandom.
•
Also,
to be clear: there are many, many female sports fans; that doesn’t change the
large scale gendering that goes on.
Queer Perspectives
•
While
there will be more on participation later, it obvious that sports fandom is
generally not only gendered for the male viewer, it is unabashedly heterosexual
–
This
is despite the fact – as some queer theorists have pointed out – that sports
fandom involves a lot of men hugging/touching men, showing emotion in front of
other men, trying to impress other men with what they are wearing or cooking
•
And
obviously, acceptance of GLBTQ athletes by certain segments of fans is
extraordinarily low
–
Fewer
fans want to openly discriminate, but many want a “don’t ask; don’t tell”
policy – which still renders different sexualities invisible
Post-Colonial/Minor Theories
•
Race
and sports talk media is a topic to be covered at a later date, but the grand
narratives that tend to envelop sports matter a great deal in relations between
groups (especially when they involve a reversal of power relations)
–
In
other countries, which team is rooted for can be as much a political decision
as a territorial one
• In Glasgow, Scotland,
there are two teams: Rangers and Celtic.
– Rangers is historically
the protestant team; Celtic the Catholic team
» Rangers did not get its
first Catholic player until the 1990’s
• Many countries have a
team of the ruling elite (Real Madrid, Zamalek) and the people or the minority
(Barcelona, Al Ahly)
–
In
the US, a team can still coalesce an us vs. them regional dynamic, becoming a
focal point to defy large scale change
• The Cleveland Browns sell out every game,
year after, despite never winning; people are intensely loyal
• Its not a great city;
but many feel a need to defend it
Conclusions
•
There
weren’t always spectator sports and they weren’t everywhere
–
Thus
this thing we call fandom is probably created through institutions
•
On
the one hand…
–
Sports
owners (and even university alumni associations, like Ohio State, which charges
$200 every year for the chance to purchase $80 football tickets) exploit and
manipulate the desire for intense feeling into big financial gain
•
On
the other hand…
–
Without
fans, professional sports as we know it wouldn’t exist. There are lots of
sports without fans, and these sports have no money.
• New sports emerge with
fans – the X-games sports are good examples
• Vocal fan bases can
often get owners to make changes
–
The
feelings people feel are genuine and people are not just passive consumers
•
On
the other hand…
–
Sports
fandom, being a human activity, tends to fall prey to many of the same
prejudices that befall other aspects of society
• The intensity of
feeling around sports fandom perhaps heightens this all the more.