ABSTRACT
This is the first book to explore the full significance of sport fans and fandom from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, across different sports, communities and levels of engagement. It gives a comprehensive overview of the undeniable economic and cultural influence of sport industries for which fans are the driving force.
The book examines different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of fans, including typologies of fandom, and presents cutting-edge discussion across broad thematic areas such as performance and identity, the business of fandom, and fandom and media. It considers the experiences of diverse and marginalised fan groups, with an emphasis on intersectional analysis, and shines new light on key contemporary themes such as fan activism, violence and deviance, mobility and migration, and the transformative effects of digital and social media. This volume includes chapters by many of the leading scholars responsible for having laid the foundation for sport fan research as well as early-career scholars who examine the newest developments in media technologies, legalized betting, gaming, and fantasy sports.
Including perspectives from disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, management, economics, and media studies, this book is essential reading for anybody interested in the study of sport and wider society or fans and subcultures more broadly.
1. Editors’ Introduction, Part I: What Is a Fan and How Do We Know?, 2. Imagining the Citizen-Fan: Sport Metaphor in American Politics and Implications for Democratic Culture, 3. Using Sport Fandom to Fulfill Personal and Societal Needs, 4. Experiences of Female Fans in a Female-Defined Sport: Central, Valued and Visible, 5. Understanding Demand for Women’s Sports Begins with Understanding Men’s Sports History, 6. Comparing the Cost of Fandom in European Football, 7. Building Civic Identity around a Suburban Ballpark District, 8. Studying Sports Fans through Ethnographic Method: Walk a Mile in their Shoes, 9. Media Coverage of Sports Fans: A Framing Analysis, 10. Rebounding as Praxis: Interrogating Positionality and Proximity in Sporting Fieldwork, 11. Should We Admire Athletes?, 12. Centering Race in Sport Fan Research: A Call to Action, Part II: Who Fans Are, 13. Sport Fandom: The Complexity of Performative Role Identities, 14. Women Sports Fans, 15. The Sports Fanship Lifecycle, 16. The Olympics Sports Fan: A Distinctive Demographic, 17. Para Sport Fandom: Fans and Followers of Paralympians, 18. English Football, Sexuality, and Homophobia: Gay Fans’ Perspectives on Governance and Visibility, 19. Photography, Autoethnography & Mapping Sporting Transformations: A Discussion of Stuart Roy Clarke’s Work on British Football, 20. The Ecosystem of Football Supporter Groups in Brazil: Traditions, Innovation, and Hybridity, 21. Disabled Athletes’ Use of Social Media to Cultivate Fandom, 22. Engaging the Non-Local Sport Fan, Part III: What Fans Do, 23. Digital Sport Fandom, 24. Online Performances of Fandom: Selective Self-Presentation, Perceived Affordances, and Parasocial Interactions on Social Media, 25. The Construction of Sports Fandom by Sports Betting Companies, 26. Fandom in the Realm of Fantasy Sport, 27. Understanding Sport Videogames: The Extensions of Fan, 28. Sports Fans Hunt for Women’s Games: Beyond News Media Coverage, 29. Twitter Discourse in the Southeaster Conference: The Nick Saban Effect, 30. Football Fan Reactions to Video Assistant Referee: No More Hand of God, 31. Reconfiguring Transnational Fan Experience through Digital Media: European Football in China, 32. The Commodification and Mediatization of Fandom: Creating Executive Fandom, 33. Football Fans and Food: Feeding the Desire, 34. Fan Reactions to Athlete Activism: “Stick to Sports”
