The Passion That Unites Us All

2018 ◽  
pp. 331-349
Author(s):  
Brandon Mastromartino ◽  
Wen-Hao Winston Chou ◽  
James J. Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Developmental Trends ◽  
Sport Team ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Or Team

Sports fans are individuals who are interested in and follow a sport, team, and/or athlete. These fans reinforce their identity as a fan by engaging in supportive and repetitive consumption behaviors that relate to the sport or team they are so passionate about. This chapter will provide an overview of the history and cultural heritage of sports fandom, discuss the significance and functions of fandom, underline what motivates individuals to consume sports, examine the consequences and results of fandom, and highlight contemporary research and developmental trends. This chapter will allow for a good understanding of where research on sports fandom is headed and the important issues affecting sports fans.

The Passion That Unites Us All

2018 ◽  
pp. 52-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon Mastromartino ◽  
Wen-Hao Winston Chou ◽  
James J. Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Developmental Trends ◽  
Sport Team ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Or Team

Sports fans are individuals who are interested in and follow a sport, team, and/or athlete. These fans reinforce their identity as a fan by engaging in supportive and repetitive consumption behaviors that relate to the sport or team they are so passionate about. This chapter will provide an overview of the history and cultural heritage of sports fandom, discuss the significance and functions of fandom, underline what motivates individuals to consume sports, examine the consequences and results of fandom, and highlight contemporary research and developmental trends. This chapter will allow for a good understanding of where research on sports fandom is headed and the important issues affecting sports fans.

Sport Fan Consumption

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Michele Johnson ◽  
Wen-Hao Winston Chou ◽  
Brandon Mastromartino ◽  
James Jianhui Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Developmental Trends ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Sport Fan ◽  
Or Team

Sports fans are individuals who are interested in and follow one or more sports, teams, and/or athletes. These fans reinforce their identity as a fan by engaging in supportive and repetitive consumption behaviors that relate to the sport or team they are so passionate about. This chapter will provide an overview of the history and cultural heritage of sports fandom, discuss the significance and functions of fandom, underline what motivates individuals to consume sports, examine the consequences and results of fandom, and highlight contemporary research and developmental trends. This chapter would allow for a good understanding of where research on sports fandom is headed and the important issues affecting sports fans.

Sport Fan Consumption

2021 ◽  
pp. 232-253
Author(s):  
Lauren Michele Johnson ◽  
Wen-Hao Winston Chou ◽  
Brandon Mastromartino ◽  
James Jianhui Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Developmental Trends ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Sport Fan ◽  
Or Team

Sports fans are individuals who are interested in and follow one or more sports, teams, and/or athletes. These fans reinforce their identity as a fan by engaging in supportive and repetitive consumption behaviors that relate to the sport or team they are so passionate about. This chapter will provide an overview of the history and cultural heritage of sports fandom, discuss the significance and functions of fandom, underline what motivates individuals to consume sports, examine the consequences and results of fandom, and highlight contemporary research and developmental trends. This chapter would allow for a good understanding of where research on sports fandom is headed and the important issues affecting sports fans.

Playing with Lynching: Fandom Violence and the Black Athletic Body

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Poe Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Fan Studies ◽  
Black Athletes ◽  
Common Occurrence ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Parallel Development ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Shared History ◽  
Jack Johnson ◽  
The Relationship

This article traces the parallel development of lynching culture and the fandom surrounding the black athletic body. While only recently have fan studies scholars started to theorize the relationship between racism, sports, and fandom activity, their shared history goes back to at least Jack Johnson, the first black boxer to win the heavyweight championship. From this first encounter with the black athletic body, sports fans with white supremacist leanings have employed lynching iconography and rhetoric to discipline athletes who challenged the general perception of how a public black figure out to behave. I argue that not only is racialized fan violence directed toward black athletes a common occurrence, but that the logics of lynching culture are deeply and perhaps irrevocably intertwined with those of sports fandom writ large.

Social Identity Theory in Sports Fandom Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 172-191
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hirshon
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Football Team ◽  
The University ◽  
Group Memberships

Sports fans are known to engage in BIRGing, or basking in reflected glory after their team wins, and CORFing, cutting off reflected failure following a team loss. These phenomena are related to social identity theory, which examines how group memberships shape a person's self-image. This chapter explores how media-attentive sports fans internalize victory and externalize defeat by charting the simultaneous developments in the 1970s of social identity theory, advanced by European social psychologists, and BIRGing and CORFing, which are rooted in a landmark study on college students wearing school-identifying apparel after the university football team won. The chapter also examines how social identity has served and can continue to be utilized as the theoretical backbone for research on mass-mediated sports fandom.

Gender, Sexual, and Sports Fan Identities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Rachel Allison ◽  
Chris Knoester
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Negatively Associated ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Sports Fan

Using data from the National Sports and Society Survey (N = 3,988), this study analyzes associations between gender, sexual, and sports fan identities. The authors find that only 11% of U.S. adults do not identify as sports fans at all; also, nearly half of U.S. adults identify as quite passionate sports fans. Women and nonbinary adults are less likely to identify as strong sports fans compared with men. Compared with identifying as heterosexual, identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or another sexual identity is negatively associated with self-identified sports fandom. Yet, gender and sexuality interact such that identifying as gay (or lesbian) is negatively associated with men’s self-identified sports fandom but not women’s fandom. These findings persist even after consideration of adults’ retrospective accounts of their sports-related identities while growing up and their recognition of sports-related mistreatment.

Growth in Sport Media and the Rise of New Sport Fandom

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kim ◽  
Tyreal Yizhou Qian ◽  
Hyun-Woo Lee ◽  
Brandon Mastromartino ◽  
James J. Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Modern Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Developmental Trends ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
The Media ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Most aspects of life in contemporary societies permeate and are reciprocally influenced by the media. Sports are no exception. Each has influenced and depended on the other for its popularity and commercial success. Sports fans are individuals interested in and following sports through their psychological connections with teams or athletes. Nowadays, sports fans can watch different kinds of sport games or follow their favorite teams and athletes via various media platforms. Modern technology has substantially transformed the ways sports are consumed and has even created new platforms, such as esports. This chapter highlights modern sport fandom by starting from an overview of its growth with mainstream media and disentangling the currently intertwined dynamics of emerging trends. In particular, the authors discuss modern sport fandom by shedding light on the similarities and differences, underlining what causes, channels, and sustains individuals to consume sports, examining the consequences and results of fandom and highlighting contemporary research and developmental trends.

scholarly journals Beers and blurred boundaries: The spatial and gendered organisation of pre-match venues for English football fans

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 647-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Richards ◽  
Keith D. Parry
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Football Club ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Family Friendly ◽  
Football Fans ◽  
New Space ◽  
The Creation

Academic research into sports fans has grown in recent years with studies examining a variety of aspects associated with fandom. However, recent changes in the professionalisation and commercialisation of sport have resulted in the creation of new spaces for fan experiences. In this article, we examine one of these created spaces, the fan zone. Through a case study on matchgoing fans from Everton Football Club we explore how this new space sits alongside traditional pre-match gathering places such as the ‘pub’ and examine the gendered organisation of these spaces. Drawing on Bale’s concept of boundaries within sports fan communities we show that traditional venues for pre-match activities enhance, maintain and legitimise masculine boundaries within sports fandom. We argue that fan zones provide an alternative match day atmosphere and experience that is centred on a family-friendly or at least family-inclusive culture.

Destabilization, adaptation and the long-term fan object: The search for continuity in later-life sports fandom

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Andrew Smith
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Process ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sports Fandom

Whilst there is a growing literature in fan studies on the ageing fan, there is a distinct lack of engagement with the body of work already established within the ‘ageing sciences’, such as gerontology. This article begins to address such issues by applying the gerontological notion of continuity theory to the study of later-life, long-term sports fandom. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 35 retired or semi-retired sports fans, all of whom are in the third and fourth ‘life ages’, this article argues for a theory of fan continuity whereby the fan adapts their relationship to the fan object in response to various challenges to their fandom. These challenges to the fannish status quo are destabilizations, which, upon an adaptation on behalf of the fan and ultimate re-stabilization of the fandom, result in an outcome which can be assessed on a positive‐negative experiential continuum. This is a continuous process as the later-life adult looks for consistency of self, and continuity in fandom.

Connecting sponsor brands through sports competitions: an identity approach to brand trust and brand loyalty

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Po-Lin Pan ◽  
Joe Phua
Keyword(s):  
Team Performance ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Brand Trust ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Joint Effects ◽  
Sport Fans ◽  
Sports Fandom ◽  
Sports Sponsorship ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to examine the interplay between sports fanship and brand-related perceptions in the context of sports sponsorship. The effects of sport fans' self-enhancement strategies: Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) and cutting off reflected failure (CORFing) were investigated in response to how sports fans connected themselves to a sponsor brand as well as whether their sponsor brand trust and loyalty were activated.Design/methodology/approachAn experiment was designed in the first study to examine immediate effects of team performance and sports fandom on sports fans' connection to the sponsor brand, while an online survey was conducted in the second study to investigate the joint effects of team performance and game venue on sports fans' sponsor brand trust and loyalty.FindingsThe first study found that both team performance and sports fandom yielded significant effects on sports fans' connection to the sponsor brand. Specifically, sports fans with higher fandom reported the highest connection to the sponsor brand after the success of their favorite team, while others with lower fandom exhibited the lowest connection after the failure of their favorite team. The second study suggested that team performance and game venue yielded both main and joint effects on sponsor brand trust and loyalty. Moreover, fan identification mediated the joint effects of team performance and game venue on both sponsor brand trust and loyalty.Originality/valueReplicating the concepts of BIRGing and CORFing into the context of sports sponsorship, this paper verified the vigorous roles of BIRGing and CORFing in influencing sports fans' perceptions of the sponsor brand. Moreover, both theoretical and practical insights into BIRGing and CORFing concepts applicable to examine the impact of the fan–team relationships on sport fans' perceptions of the sponsor brand through sports sponsorship would be generated for the advancement of sports business research.

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