Fandom in Sport
Sports fandom is an extremely interesting topic and one that resonates with me, as someone who has an interest in most sports. I have tried to keep this piece as neutral as possible in regards to referencing all sport rather than one particular one. However, fandom has grown massively out of football and is the one worldwide sport in which a lot of research has been conducted in the area. Coupled with the personal experiences of fandom I have witnessed and felt following Liverpool football club over the years.
If you were to describe fandom using words, such ones as culture, language, journey and emotion would all spring to mind. Fandom refers to going beyond the traditional case of supporting a particular sports team when they play, the experience can exert deep emotion, be it anger, happiness, frustration. Perhaps the particular sports team comes first in their lives, they are aware very quickly of what goes on in the organisation, there is a case of identification, forging roots and belonging involved in following the team. The often-used phrase “it’s only a game” when a team loses, leads to a very negative response from those fans potentially considered as hardcore. Fandom can be considered a passion, and when discussed whether it is healthy or not, both sides of the argument have valid points. The positives undoubtedly are the sense of escapism, something to look forward to, the happiness it brings that can last until the next game and the relationships it potentially forges. However, the negatives of anger and frustration after a loss, affecting relationships, finances and career, where it becomes an addiction are all ways it can get out of control and therefore controlling it is essential.
The process of fandom begins upon getting involved with a particular sports team, through the region in which you live in, a personal connection to them, or through the influences of others. Often there's no choice in the matter, grandparents, parents and siblings have chosen your allegiance. It can be a very expensive hobby or life choice costing thousands a year depending on various factors as the fan’s proximity to the team’s stadium, the number of games they attend, the cost of tickets.
“You can change your job, you can change your wife, but you can’t change your football team”- Rick Parry (Current EFL CEO)
Covid-19 has had a massive impact on fandom, it has removed an essential part of the experience which is going to the match. Many of the fans in this bracket have never watched their team on TV or in any other place other than the location in which the team was playing in. Within minutes back in March 2020, this was taken away, and a new way of watching their favourite team had to be found. This has undoubtedly had an effect on such fans mentally, the inability to have the match at the end of the week to look forward to, not being able to meet mates in the pub, the experience of matchday, the chants and songs, the atmosphere and buzz. No sport and no fans for a long period are unheard of before 2020, the different sporting calendars intertwined, ensuring there was always sport to watch, with no one sport normally having more than a couple of months off at the end of their seasons. Having sport with no fans is an even weirder experience and one that has become the norm for the past 10 months until the recent allowance of a small number of fans at matches in certain regions.
There are various different cohorts of fans, broken down by aspects such as geographic region, commitment to the club, social media interaction, money spent following the club to name a few.
The first cohort is the Chinese serial fan, these fans are known to support a number of teams of the same sport and often direct rivals, switching is common and the majority have no loyalty to one specific team. Sport+Markt research found that since the 1990’s hordes of new fans around the world have come to football without long-standing loyalties and often just support a number of successful teams at that time. It is one reason why football teams can never accurately guess the number of fans in which they have worldwide.
Manchester United’s estimates found that in 2003 they had roughly 75million fans, this had grown to 333 million by 2008 and 659 million by 2012. Recent estimates believe the figure has grown to 1.2 billion worldwide. The main reason for the mass increase in number in a 17-year time frame is based on how the Premier League has grown internationally, the ability for fans to watch their team(s) on the TV thanks to the worldwide broadcast deals and undoubtedly the evolution of social media and the ability to bring every aspect of the sports club right to the fan via their phone. The top sports clubs have recognised this and built their brand through engaging with each fan through local language websites and social media accounts, this has led to improved commercial success for the clubs. International sponsorship agreements, pre-season tours and merchandise sales being the main income streams. With the population of these regions, such sports fans attending their favourite teams match once, be it football, basketball, rugby etc, will lead to massive spends on merchandise as can be seen each weekend in the Premier League when the international fanbase visits their favourite team often coming thousands of miles for a once in a lifetime opportunity. Research has shown that these types of fans show no less loyalty than the regular match-going fan, and often show more loyalty in certain areas including the purchase of merchandise, interactions with the team’s players via social media fan pages and pre-season tours. However, on the other hand, when it comes to the matchday experience this cohort of fans have been found to be quite distant due to cultural differences and has led to displeasure among other cohorts.
The next cohort of fans are the hardcore bracket or alternatively known as Hornby's, they tend to travel home, away domestically and abroad to see their team play. It can be considered that teams in the Premier League have a higher percentage of these fans due to the size of the club and its success in comparison to the clubs further down the football pyramid. The Premier League as a product is a far more lucrative spectacle for the football fan, even for those supporting clubs further down the pyramid and is the main reason for the TV blackout of football in England from 2:55 to 5:15 every Saturday to encourage fans of lower teams to go to their team's matches, thereby increasing attendances and also the much-needed revenue the lower clubs receive. The hardcore bracket of the fan can be a difficult one to get into and then stay in. Undoubtedly the number of hardcore fans grow each year, however, the mortality rate of those in the cohort is slowing down as healthcare improves. The website European football statistics tries each year to calculate the number of fans who attended their team’s games the previous season and try to correlate it with the number of those that didn’t return the next season. The book Soccernomics constructed a simple model in relation to fans attending matches. It was split into two groups, and then two subgroups.
Total Fans = Loyal Fans from the previous season
+ New Fans (Two groups)
· BIRGers, those who came to the match due to the team’s success
· Random, those who came for reasons unexplained (To see that team play once, in the area etc)
The difference between the number of fans last season and this season is the lost fans, that are again in the groups of BIRGers or Random that fell away due to team’s performance decline or other factors.
When it comes to tickets for matches, opinions and discourse from all sides start to meet. The lower tiers of the sport have no issues, as supply tends to outweigh the demand in the vast majority of cases, apart from when big teams come to town in the cup etc. However, in the upper echelons of the sport, demand far outweighs supply every time. Again, we have 3 stakeholder groups, the loyal fans, the BIRGers/Randoms and the sports organisation itself.
Ticketing is most cases are split into 4 categories, season ticket holders, members, hospitality, general admission. Depending on the capacity of the sports venue, season tickets tend to fall just shy of 50% of the capacity. Depending on hospitality facilities a percentage is allocated to that and the rest are members/general admission. Earlier we discussed mortality, in many cases season ticket holders will die with their season ticket and it is passed down a generation or two, meaning it is essentially a barrier to new entrant through direct means. Loyal fans who are members and not potentially guaranteed a ticket believe that previous match going history should be considerably higher to ensure that they are guaranteed tickets on the basis of their loyalty. Some loyal fans being left outside and only able to attend their team’s games from time-to-time due to difficulties in obtaining tickets. From personal experience, the process of obtaining match tickets at face value can be longevous and a large amount of time can be spent on it. For this reason, these group of fans don’t agree with those with less loyalty of going to the match having the same opportunities to get tickets.
Although the clubs take another perspective and one that is commercially driven, understandably the club is trying to maximise revenues when supply greatly outweighs demand, they can be assured the stadium or arena will be sold out and therefore their pricing strategy and diversification of fans attending will try to mirror this. The loyal fans who attend games regularly in most cases give the club a limited amount of their money directly each week, normally a match ticket and food & beverage during the match. They are inclined to frequent local pubs and bars right up to a few minutes before the start and again post-event. Even though these group of fans bring a lot of energy, dedication and emotion to the match, they are not the best group from a business case scenario. On the other hand, the fan who finds it hard to attend games regularly, the BIRGers or Randoms are more inclined to make a day out of the event, they visit the team's official store, buy merchandise, enter the stadium early, spend considerable amounts on food & beverage, more inclined to purchase hospitality, bringing a far greater revenue stream to the club per person than those in the loyal cohort. Another stream of revenue the club tries to increase revenue on is membership, by the club removing barriers to entry in relation to tickets, by reducing the criteria of games necessary to attend matches, economic laws of elasticity of demand and supply will state that demand for memberships will increase while the supply of tickets will remain the same. Revenue would therefore increase exponentially. The fan itself that falls outside the loyal fan’s cohort are inclined to pay a greater sum of money for a ticket as it may be a once in a lifetime and here and now experience.
The Ultra fan culture is very prevalent worldwide in football and also in sports such as Basketball and ice hockey in Middle and Eastern Europe. The book 1312: Among the Ultras by James Montague (Suitably named based on Ultras attitudes towards law enforcement) discusses in detail the Ultra culture from many countries around the world from a first-hand perspective. This group of sports “fans” can be described as a different breed. Many having witnessed and experienced the Ultra culture in English football of the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s taking what they saw back to their countries to set up firms and organisations. England, however, got a handle on this by the early to mid-1990s and banning orders and other criminal convictions were handed out for this culture, while other countries began to grow.
Mass fighting with opponents’ fans and different fractions of their own support base were common, tifos (Visual banners) and chanting of sporting and political nature were normal also. The ultra-groups in many countries would be involved in the illegal business on a day-to-day basis and their weekly trip to the match would be for political purposes rather than sporting, in some cases the ultra-group would have tight control of what the club does, what players they buy and sell and it would be frowned upon for the ownership or board to go against their wishes. Often many members of Ultra groups won’t go for the sport on offer and will stand with their backs to matches for 90mins and couldn’t name a player that is playing. They come only for the experience, cheap terrace tickets in comparison to countries such as England, make going fairly easy and the ultras relationship with clubs guarantees tickets.
However, it can be considered a spectacle the banners, chanting, flares, pyro all make it a quite intimidating experience, although one that is renowned with football in places such as Argentina, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Turkey to name a few. The players often have a very personal connection with the fans in these countries, players are adored, they are the Ultra groups voice at times.
The Ultra culture having started in the UK, the European ultra-groups trips to play English teams in the European competition can be interesting affairs. In most cases, especially at big English clubs most of the fanbase is not directly exposed to this type of culture and therefore it becomes the actions of one set of fans against innocent groups of supporters. Liverpool’s recent ties against Napoli and Roma in the Champions League have been marred by trouble both home and away, and have led to extra security measures being put in place to try to counter the Italian fans approaches, with little effect at times. The enigma behind it comes back to the behaviour of the England national teams’ fans while travelling abroad, many of these fans support clubs whose club team don’t get many if any opportunities to play in Europe. Such clubs include those who have or had previous relationships with an ultra/hooligan culture like Millwall and Birmingham.
Within the UK and Ireland other team sports including Rugby Union & League, GAA and Cricket have a fanbase that would be considered geographically decided. Rugby Union in the UK is split into franchised clubs that are supported by those local to those clubs, this would be similar to the league format in which the teams are in areas such as Leeds, St Helens, Warrington and Newcastle and the fans come from these areas. Rugby Union in Ireland is split into provinces and it would normally be the case that you would support the province in which you come from be it Leinster, Munster, Connacht or Ulster. Cricket in the UK is split into the various counties. While GAA in Ireland is very parochial, the community and county in which you are from is normally the county you would support at an elite level. Players only being able to play for their own county and no transfers between counties occurring means that the fan culture is very territorial. A major difference between these sports and football is that the fans of all sides are mixed in the stands and there is no segregation. Alcoholic beverages are common in stands, unlike football in which they are banned from being brought off the concourses. Many people would consider them more relaxed affairs, continuous banter between the different sets of supporters is common throughout the match with the chance of violence non-existent or reduced.
Books of Reference
Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
1312: Among The Ultras by James Montague
