‘True fan = watch match’? In search of the ‘Authentic’ soccer fan

Abstract

Academics have created typologies to divide association football (soccer) fans into categories based upon the ‘authenticity’ of their fandom practices. One of the main requirements of ‘authentic’ fandom has been assumed to be match attendance. The goal of this paper was to critically assess this assumption by considering how fans themselves talk about the significance of match attendance as evidence of ‘authentic’ fandom. In the light of the fact that the voices of English non-league fans on the ‘authenticity’ debate have so far been overshadowed by the overbearing focus of much previous research on the upper echelons of English soccer, an e-survey was conducted with 151 members of an online community of fans of English Northern League (NL) clubs (a semi-professional / amateur league based in North East England). Findings revealed that opinion was divided on the constituents of ‘authentic’ fandom and match attendance was not deemed to be the core evidence of support for a club by 42% of the sample. Elias (1978) suggested that dichotomous thinking hinders sociological understanding and it is concluded that fan typologies are not sufficient for assessing the ‘authenticity’ of fan activities.

Notes

1. Redhead, The Passion and the Fashion; Redhead, Post-Fandom; Giulianotti, ‘Supporters, Followers, Fans and Flâneurs’.

2. Dixon, ‘A Third Way’.

3. King, End of Terraces.

4. King, End of Terraces; Weed, ‘Exploring the Sport Spectator Experience’; Brown, ‘Not For Sale’.

5. Gibbons and Dixon, ‘Surf’s Up!’; Crawford, Consuming Sport.

6. Crawford, Consuming Sport, 33.

7. Robson, No One Likes Us; Clark, ‘I’m Scunthorpe ‘til I Die’; Mainwaring & Clark, ‘We’re Shit and We Know We Are’.

8. Giulianotti, Football: A Sociology; Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Football; Hamil et al., Football in the Digital Age; King, The End of the Terraces; King, The European Ritual; Lanfranchi and Taylor, Moving with the Ball; Millward, The Global Football League; Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves.

9. Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization and Football.

10. Gibbons and Lusted, ‘Is St George Enough?’

11. King, ‘Football Fandom and Post-national Identity’; King, The European Ritual.

12. Russell, Looking North, 273.

13. See Gibbons, English National Identity and Football Fan Culture.

14. Ruddock, Hutchins, and Rowe, ‘Contradictions in Media Sport Culture’, 329.

15. Ibid., 330.

16. Hunt, Northern Goalfields Revisited.

17. Mercea, ‘Digital Prefigurative Participation’.

18. Palmer and Thompson, ‘The Paradoxes of Football Spectatorship’.

19. Wilson, ‘New Media’.

20. Gibbons and Dixon, ‘Surf’s Up!’.

21. Cleland, ‘From Passive to Active’; Dart, ‘Blogging the 2006 World Cup’.

22. Cashmore and Cleland, ‘Fans, Homophobia and Masculinities’; Cleland, ‘Discussing Homosexuality’; Gibbons and Nuttall, ‘Using E-surveys’.

23. Gibbons and Nuttall, ‘Using E-surveys’.

24. Miles and Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis.

25. Giulianotti, ‘Supporters, Followers, Fans and Flâneurs’.

26. Ibid.

27. Crawford, Consuming Sport, 33.

28. ‘ANL’ is an abbreviation for ‘Arngrove Northern League’. Arngrove were the sponsors of the league at the time the research was conducted in the summer of 2008, however at the time of writing, the Northern League is officially known as the ‘Ebac Northern League’.

29. Redhead’s (1993, 1997) and Giulianotti’s (2002).

30. Elias, What is Sociology?

31. Ibid.

32. Murphy, Sheard, and Waddington, ‘Figurational Sociology’.

33. Rowe, Ruddock, and Hutchins, ‘Cultures of Complaint’, 312.

34. Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’; Weed, ‘The Pub as a Virtual Football Fandom Venue’; Weed, ‘Exploring the Sport Spectator Experience’.