30/07/2021

MDA20011Session 2:
Sports Fans: Identities and Communities

Traditionally, much of the research on football fans

(and in particular, English soccer fans) has focused on
two areas:
 hooliganism
 marketing opportunities.

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A bit of History…

Australian Rules Football –

established as a code in the
1850s.
1896 – 8 teams leave the
Victorian Football Association
(VFA) and form the Victorian
Football League (VFL)
(Carlton, Collingwood,
Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong,
Melbourne, St Kilda and South
Melbourne).
The oldest known footage of an Australian
Rules game (circa 1909)

Why so popular?

 Played on a Saturday
afternoon (half day holiday);
 New, larger stands built at the
MCG facilitated larger crowds;
 Most importantly, attracted
large numbers of women and
children.

Footage of the 1938 VFL Grand Final

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The original merchandise albeit not worth a lot of

money for clubs (left) – cigarette cards. It can be
argued that footballers were the first celebrity
athletes. These quickly became a must have for
fans and to this day, ‘footy cards’ remain very
popular and highly collectible.

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Sponsorship arrives at some clubs in the 1960s

The mid 1970s - North

Melbourne – one of the
first clubs to wear
sponsor logo on jumper
(Courage – a brand of
beer). The sponsor
name became North
Melbourne’s motto
“North have Courage”.

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Things begin to change.

Successful clubs with large
average attendances are able to
attract greater sponsorship – this
leads to better facilities and,
more importantly, the ability to
pay players more money.

(Ergo, some teams can ‘buy’

talent from outside the area of
traditional recruiting and
strengthen the team and, in so
doing, make their team more
attractive to sponsors).
Only four clubs win a premiership
from 1967 – 1983.

Different Football, Same story

NRL went through a similar process, with increasing
commercialisation alienating existing fans.
 Came to a head in 1995 all hell breaks loose
between Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch
 Murdoch was planning an international rugby
competition that would be shown on a number of Pay
TV platforms )
 Kerry Packer wanted his Channel Nine Network and
(his financial interests) Optus Pay TV to be the main
broadcasters
 1997 – two leagues up and running – the Australian
Rugby League (Packer) and the Australian Super
league (Murdoch)
 Eventually compromised and created the NRL.

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RECAP: The Evolution of Football

 History tells us some important things
about the way sports tend to evolve:
 Sports begin in a community, but often
the community can’t support them
economically over time.
 Sponsorship dollars can keep sports
viable, but can also change the nature
of the sports themselves.
 Media plays a key role here – it is the link
between the sports, the sponsors and the
audience.
 Expanding a sport can bring in new fans,
but risks alienating existing fanbases.

Understanding
the Sports Fan
Giulianotti (2002)claims that

“football’s burgeoning popularity,

its increasing serpentine ties with
corporations and other business
institutions, the reduction of
stadium capacities to create high
priced seating, and the advent of
pay-per-view television are four
key ingredients identified in the
process of the commodification of
football”

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Fan
Supporter

Follower Flâneur

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Constructing the Fan:

Self-Categorization
Theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher
and Wetherall (1987).

 SCT focuses on the cognitive processes

that individuals employ in which to
ascertain that they are indeed part of an
‘in-group’.
 In the case of sports fans this could be
through identifying features (e.g.
purchasing and wearing a particular
sport’s club’s merchandise) or
interpersonal relationships (e.g. an
individual practising rituals with other like-
minded individuals).

SIA in Action: BIRGing

and CORFing
Cialdini et al. (1976, p. 374):
“through their simple
connections with sports teams,
the personal images of fans are
at stake when their teams take
the field. The team's victories
and defeats are reacted to as
personal successes and
failures”.

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Political BIRGing

 Centrality of sport to Australian life means

that it tends to be politicised heavily and
often.
 Sporting stars often leverage their
popularity to go into politics.
 Politicians like to be associated with
successful sporting identities.
 Aim is to connect them with their
constituents more effectively.

Understanding Fans Through

Content Analysis
 Content analysis is a qualitative research method that is useful for
identifying trends and patterns in human communication.
 Five main steps:
1. Identify your research question or questions
2. Identify the sample content you want to analyse (often a set time
frame)
3. Categorise the content you will be looking for and create rules for
coding.
4. Code the sample (usually by counting the instances of particular
categories of content.
5. Analyse and report on your findings

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Example: Ferrari F1 Instagram, 1-7

July 2021
 Research Questions:
a) What kind of content draws the
best fan engagement?
b) Do the fans have a preferred
driver?
c) How does team performance
affect fan sentiment?
 Coding: Need to set
parameters around what is
counted, especially
positive/negative

Sample Tables:
Post Content Freq. Likes Comments
Race Review 9 1,771,416 14,130
Team Updates 11 714,000 2,706

Driver-related 18 1,170,000 1,980

Ferrari History 6 453,942 690
General F1 1 74,797 115
News
Total 45 4,184,155 19,621

Driver + Comments - Comments Neutral

Charles
Leclerc 656 289 81
Carlos
Sainz 437 302 56

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Key findings

 The most popular type of content was race

reviews, indicating that the fans are most
interested in on-track performance.
 More than 60% of the positive comments
regarding drivers were about Charles Leclerc,
suggesting he is the fan favourite.
 Overall level of engagement rose significantly in
line with the team’s performance in races.
Multiple examples of BIRGing and CORFing.
 The majority of fans seemed to be Supports or
Fans according to Giulianotti’s typology.
 Fans often use deep knowledge of the team to
demonstrate their social identity.

Reminder: The
many paths to
fandom

 Mewett and Toffoletti

(2008) argue that
female football fans
take a different path
to fandom:
 In-The-Bloods
 Learners
 Converts
 Sexually Transmitted
Fandom

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Conclusions: Fan
identities in SAM
Key points to take from this session:
 Fandom in sport develops over long
periods of time and can be affected by
many factors.
 There are at least 4 different types of fans
 Fan identity can be described through SIA
 BIRGing and CORFing are two mechanisms
by which fans navigate their relationship
with sporting teams
 Content analysis of social media is a good
way of understanding how fans interact
with the sports they love.

Thank You

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Useful research

Birell, S 1981, Sport as ritual: Interpretations from Durkheim to Goffman in Social Forces vol 60:2,
pp 354-376.
Branscombe, NR & Wann, DL 1991, The positive social and self-Concept consequences of
sports team identification. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 15, pp.115-127.
Bromberger, C 1995 ‘Football as world view and as ritual’, French Cultural Studies vol 4, no 8
pp 293 - 311
Cash, J & Damousi, J 2009, Footy passions, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney.
Ciandini R, Borden RJ, Thorne A, Walker MR, Freeman, S & Slone LR 1976 ‘Basking in reflected
glory: Three (football) field studies’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 366-375
Farrell, C 2016 ‘Footy Sheilas: A Memoir’, PhD, Swinburne University of Technology
Giulianotti, R 2002, ‘Supporters, followers, fans and flaneurs’ Journal of Sport and Social issues
Giulianotti, R 2005, Durkheim elements : Religion, integration and social order in sport in Sport:
a critical sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge
Hess, R, Nicholson, M, Stewart, B & de Moore, G 2008 A national game: The history of
Australian football, Viking, Melbourne
Hess, R 2000, 'Ladies are specially invited’: women in the culture of Australian football’ in The
International Journal of the History of Sport Volume 17, Issue 2-3, 2000 Special Issue: Sport
in Australasian society Past and Present, Taylor and Francis Online. pp. 111-141.
Hogg, M., Terry, D. & White, K. (1995). A Tale of Two Theories: A Critical Comparison of Identity
Theory with Social Identity Theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 255-269.

Hornsey, MJ 2008 ‘Social identity theory and self categorization teory: A historical review, Social
and Personality Psychology Compass, 2/1 pp 204-222
Jacobsen, B 2003 ‘The social psychology of the creation of a sports fan identity: A theoretical
review of the literature’, Athletic Insight viewed 20 May 2013
http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol5Iss2/FanDevelopment.htm
Klugman, M 2012 Gendered Pleasures, Power, Limits, and Suspicions: Exploring the Subjectivities
of Female Supporters of Australian football, Journal of Sport History
Klugman, M 2009, Love hope and heartbreak at the footy: passion play, Hunter Publishers,
Melbourne.
Klugman, M 2009a, ‘Loves, Suffering and Identification: the Passions of Australian Football
League Fans’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 26:1, pp. 21-44.
Lesser, A 1999 ‘How to skin a Rabbitoh’, The Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald
Mewett, P & Toffoletti, K 2010, ‘Voices from the margins?: Women at the footy’ in Intergraph :
Journal Dialogic Anthropology, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 1, University of Hull, Hull, England
Stewart, B 1983 The Australian football business : a spectator's guide to the VFL Kenthurst, [New
South Wales] : Kangaroo Press, 1983
Tajfel, H 1981 Human groups and social categories, Cambridge University Press, London
Wann, DL & Dolan, TJ 2001, ‘Attributions of highly identified sports spectators’. The Journal of
Social Psychology, 134(6), pp. 783-792.
Wann, DL 2006 ‘Understanding the positive social psychological benefits of sport team
identification: The team identification-social psychological health model’, Group Dynamics,
Theory, Research and Practice, vol 10, no 4 pp272-296

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