The rise of mediated (televised) sport experiences is a consequence of glob- alization and professionalization, which has been widely critiqued (Coakley, 2007). Many criticize the supremacy of media interests in professional sport.
Indeed sport is replete with examples of gross commercial interests over- riding the interests of athletes and live spectator audiences. The running of the 1984 (Los Angeles) Olympic marathon, the first to involve a women’s marathon competition at the Olympic Games, is early evidence of such intrusion. The interests of athletes, both in terms of levels of performance and physical well-being, suggested an early morning start to avoid high levels of daily pollution and temperature. However, the men’s and women’s races started later in the morning to suit television viewing times on the US Atlantic east coast.
Similar consequences have unfolded with the professionalization of Rugby Union in the southern hemisphere. The creation of South Africa, New Zealand Australia Rugby (SANZAR) in 1995 was the result of an agreement of mutual interests between the national unions of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand (professionalization and player retention) and News Corporation (exclusive broadcasting rights) (Smith, 2000). This has affected the scheduling of matches in Australia and New Zealand to suit the convenience of European television audiences, which are a major source of television revenue for News Corp Ltd. This has become a bone of contention as night sport in winter, it is widely agreed, compromises player perfor- mance, game strategy and spectator comfort. The 2007 Wimbledon grand slam tennis championship provides an example of the tradeoffs that exist between television and commercial interests and the spectator experience.
The championship was thrown into disarray by adverse weather and the playing schedule was compressed to ensure a Sunday men’s final (rather than extend the tournament into a new week). This decision, which was influenced by television revenue interests, resulted in two substandard semi- finals (Nadal v Djokovic and Federer v Gasquet) that were impacted by
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player exhaustion and injury. The spectator experiences of those in attendance were compromised by the commercial interests of televised sport. These manifestations of commodification, it can be argued, may compromise the authenticity of sports competitions as well as spectator experiences.
The melting pot of home and away spectators
Historically it could be assumed that the majority of spectators support the home team (due to proximity) while a small body of travelling supporters may invest the time and effort required to attend games and support their team away from home. Globalization and high personal mobility have acted to add complexity to this formula. Firstly, high personal mobility allows for large and increasingly diverse bodies of travelling spectators to arise (Hinch &
Higham, 2004). Furthermore, large populations of expatriates living at or near the destinations where their ‘home’ teams compete may mobilize to support the team representing their place of origin. Australians permanently or temporarily resident in London or elsewhere in the United Kingdom will mobilize in large numbers to support the Australian national cricket team playing at Lords (London). The Tri-nations rugby series experiences high levels of support for the All Blacks in Sydney and the Springboks in Perth (Western Australia) where large expatriate New Zealand and South African populations (respectively) live. It is intriguing to contemplate the authentic experiences these spectators experience when they attend sporting compe- titions that allow them to support a team representing their place of origin or country of birth as well as to associate with their fellow countrymen in a ‘foreign’ setting.
While little scholarly work has specifically addressed this manifestation of sport spectatorship, it is probable that these sports experiences allow for the reaffirmation of national and personal identity in a foreign context, albeit one that has become the place of residence for these mobile people. It is likely that for large sporting events expatriates serve as providers of temporary accommodation for friends and family who travel to support their travelling team. Within this context, and within the study of tourism, it is also inter- esting to contemplate the roles that expatriates play in this respect, whether they function as hosts for their temporary visitors or temporarily act as
‘visitors’ to their own local community alongside those who are genuinely visiting for the purpose of sport spectatorship. In both cases, the experiences of locally resident expatriates and visitors will be quite different depending on the roles they assume. Like stadium sports, themed pubs and sports bars may serve a similar purpose for expatriate residents. The Walkabout Inn in
Islington and Covent Garden (and now in other parts of London and the United Kingdom) is a popular gathering place for Australians as well as New Zealanders and South Africans in London, serving Antipodean beverages and providing a unique environment for sport spectatorship, one that is also likely to serve interests in reaffirming a sense of personal identity among those in attendance.
In a highly mobile world, the spatial travel ranges and supporter profiles of spectators may have become increasingly complex and confused. The participation of the Brazilian football team (and other teams) in the Ger- many 2006 FIFA World Cup generated various manifestations of football fanship, the most obvious of which is the domestic Brazilian population, which comes to a standstill to watch their legendary team play on the television. However, this team is associated with other distinct manifesta- tions of team support. One is the collection of individuals who have the wherewithal and are sufficiently passionate in their support to travel from Brazil to the World Cup to support their team. A second may be drawn from the sizable expatriate Brazilian populations resident in European cities such as London, Paris and Rome. These supporters travel considerably less distance but are no less able to reaffirm their Brazilian identity in supporting their team in competition. However, a Brazilian national living in London and travelling extensively on holidays in Europe to destinations in Portugal, Spain or Italy may have multiple layered allegiances during such a compe- tition. When any of the national teams of these countries compete in the World Cup, the allegiances of these spectator groups may prove to be multiple and flexible.
Furthermore, the body of spectators openly demonstrating their support for Brazil during the football World Cup may include football watchers from any country around the world who may be attracted to supporting the team by its historical record of success at the World Cup, its aura or brilliance, its skilful style of play, or the colour, exuberance and intensity of Brazilian football fans. Similarly, as teams are eliminated from competition, ‘displaced’
fans are likely to adopt their ‘next favourite’ team as the focus of their support, if only to restore their active spectator interest in the event. When the well-performing Australian team was eliminated from the 2006 FIFA World Cup by Italy, many Australians adopted the Brazilian team as the new focus of their support in the latter stages of the competition. Thus, as a sport competition reaches its climax the bodies of spectators supporting competing teams are likely to become heterogeneous and multinational in collective character as mobile fans engage flexible fandoms to experience high levels of sporting competition (see Case study 6.1).
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C a s e S t u d y 6 . 1
The changing nature of sports fandom Ian Jones (Bournemouth University, United Kingdom) For many sporting events, the crowd – both ‘home’ fans and those who have often travelled very large distances to watch and support – is an integral aspect of the occasion. This case study explores some of the issues that arise from the nature of fandom and spectatorship within a globalized society and outlines how globalization has led to a change in the nature of the sports crowd, examining the concept of fan identification and the consequences that the changing nature of fan iden- tification may have for fan behaviours. It is based on an extended and ongoing period of ethnographic research exploring the relationships between the fans of Luton Town, a lower-level professional football club in the United Kingdom, and the wider context of European football.
The nature of sports fandom
Sports fandom is generally differentiated from spectatorship in terms of the extent of identification an individual has with a team. Spectators are attracted to the spectacle of the sport itself, whereas the fan will have an emotional involvement with a team or individual. Branscombe and Wann (1992:1017) define sports fan identification as ‘the extent to which individuals perceive themselves as fans of the team, are involved with the team, are concerned with the team’s performance, and view the team as a representation of themselves’. Essentially, fans identify with the team. This identification has, it seems, until recently, been focused on ascribed factors, for example fans have traditionally identi- fied with a team on the basis of their hometown, or, alterna- tively, the team followed by their fathers (Jones, 1997). One key informant over ten years ago suggested:
. I think you have an allegiance to your local team, and I was brought up locally.so basically I’ve been brought up with supporting my home team, you have an allegiance to your local team and it goes beyond just football, it’s something to do with the locality of the team, it’s your own team as it were.
Yet contemporary interviews with younger football fans have almost invariably highlighted the lack of credibility in terms of supporting lower-level teams such as Luton Town, with the following representing a typical statement:
I think now if you say you support your local team it’s seen as a bit strange – you have to support Man United or Chelsea now as that’s what everyone else does – the kids here who follow Luton Town are laughed at basically as it’s not seen as proper football.
Thus, the question of whether, as a consequence of such processes, there is a shift from crowds consisting mainly of followers, or what we can define as ‘fans’, who actually iden- tify with the team on the basis of factors such as the team representing their hometown or place of birth for example, to ‘spectators’, with much less of an emotional bond to the team? A visit to Luton Airport in 2007 found a group of local residents waiting to check in to a flight to Madrid for a Cham- pions League game. One fan suggested:
Its quality football, miles better than you’d get at a Luton game, and probably cheaper than going a Premiership match – it’s costing us forty pounds for the flight, and only thirty Euros to get in. There’s accommodation on top of that, but you don’t mind paying that if it’s somewhere nice.
When asked about the importance of the game, the fan responded:
To be honest, as long as it’s a good game, I don’t really mind what the result is. I just want to see a quality match and you won’t get that at the level Luton are.
Whilst there are, clearly, large numbers of fans who still possess allegiance to a team on the basis of a shared common characteristic (such as following your local team), it seems apparent that there is a growth in spectators willing to follow
Virtual spectatorship
Where spectator demand heavily outweighs ticket supply some interesting variations on spectatorship and experiencing live sport in real time have evolved. Historically, live sports have been contested in stadiums of varied teams on the basis of factors such as success, basking in the
reflected (and high profile) glory of those higher-profile teams, with arguably less commitment. As one Premiership fan,
‘Aesthetic Relic’ noted on a fan message board:
There are plenty of fans out there who jump ship regularly. The same fans who slag off a player’s loyalty saying it’s all about the money, yet they do exactly the same thing when the next big investor comes along or a different team starts to win things (Football Forums.net, accessed 24 August 2008).
It could be argued that there is a move in the nature of sport crowds, particularly at the higher echelons of football.
It seems possible to subsequently identify two general types of attendee:
1. The highly identified fan, with allegiance to a particular team. Such fans are likely to be relatively faithful and maintain a sense of identification with the team, often overcoming issues such as poor performance, defeat and lack of entertainment to carry on following the team (Jones, 2000) and being motivated by feelings of group affiliation, eustress and self-esteem factors (Wann et al., 2001.)
2. The spectator, who will be more attracted by factors such as entertainment and being able to bask in the reflected glory of supporting a high-profile, successful team. Such spectators are likely to be much more fluid in their support and are likely to demonstrate less commitment (although, as Snelgrove et al. [2008] identify, such spectators may be able to develop and strengthen identities through attendance and thus become committed fans).
Although the categories outlined above are simplistic, they are useful to demonstrate that sports crowds are unlikely to consist of a homogenous group and that differing motivations will exist, and different experiences will result for each type.
Ongoing processes of globalization suggest that there may be an ever increasing tendency towards spectatorship, based not on identification with teams or competitors as such, but on the spectacle itself. Alternatively, fans will continue to identify with those taking part, but the basis of such iden- tification will not be the traditionally ascribed ones of locality and family but with greater fluidity of choice and change, perhaps influenced by the high-profile media coverage. As one Luton fan suggested: ‘If you live in Luton, it’s far easier to watch or read about Real Madrid than it is to get any infor- mation about Luton Town’.
Although it is unlikely that sports such as football will ever become spectator-based, rather than fan-based, the growing shift towards high-profile clubs raises the question of the long-term implications for smaller clubs, such as Luton Town, and how they will be able to exist within such a compet- itive global context.
Selected references
Jones, I. (1997). The origin and maintenance of sports fan identification: A response to Wann, et al. (1996).Percep- tual and Motor Skills. 85, 257–258.
Jones, I. (2001). A model of serious leisure identification: The case of football fandom.Leisure Studies. 19, 283–298.
Snelgrove, R., Taks, M., Chalip, L., and Green, C. (2008).
How visitors and locals at a sport event differ in motives and identity.Journal of Sport & Tourism, 13 (3), 165–180.
Wann, D., Melnick, M., Russell, G., and Pease, D. (2001).
Sports Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Specta- tors, New York: Routledge.
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capacities, catering for the live spectatorship interests of an exclusive group of ticket holders. Since the 1950s the experience of live sport has been diver- sified by radio, television broadcasts, satellite television and the Internet.
The overt motivation for sports fans is to watch live sport. The sharing of experiences and social interactions that are associated with intense sport competition are central to the sport experience (Morgan, 2007). Weed (2007), however, highlights that watching sport in the pub can offer many of the same qualities of the sport spectator experience, including experiencing sport in shared company and reliving key moments in the contest after the event (Morgan, 2007).
An interesting variation of both stadium and pub sport experiences is the live televising of sports events in local spaces in immediate or close proximity to the stadium where the event is actually taking place. St. James’ Park, the recently redeveloped home of Newcastle United FC, included in its stadium design various corporate facilities as well as public bars where non-ticket holders can experience the game live on television. This is a strategy to serve demand when it exceeds the seating capacity of the stadium, allowing fans to feel the atmosphere of the game at the stadium as it is actually taking place.
Some non-ticket-holding fans, the most passionate partisans (Stewart, 2001), will actually travel to the place of competition to experience the atmosphere of the game and join in post-match celebrations. The 2007 European Championship final between Liverpool and AC Milan was con- tested at the Olympic Stadium in Athens in June 2007. Many non-ticket- holding Liverpool fans travelled to Athens in the hope of getting a ticket to the historic game. Their contingency plan, in the likely event of not watching the game live at the Olympic Stadium, was to watch the game close to the stadium in Athens together with thousands of fellow Liverpool FC supporters and to join in post-match celebrations in the event of a victory. This phenomenon, no doubt a consequence of high contemporary mobility (budget carriers such as EasyJet and RyanAir offer flights to Athens from the United Kingdom for as little as £1.00 excluding taxes), has opened new opportunities for spectators to experience live sports.