‘Supporters, not consumers.’ Grassroots supporters’ culture and sports entertainment in the US

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research with supporters’ groups in the US, this article explores how Ultra and other global models of fandom are being appropriated by soccer fans in the US and Canada. I argue that these fans enact more than stylistic expressions of fandom but instead contest the boundaries of locally accepted models fandom. Most notably, organized soccer supporters in the US reject the notion of being simply consumers of sports entertainment and see themselves instead as stakeholders in the teams they follow and as de facto constituents that the clubs need to be accountable to. At the same time, the global and local organizational structures and histories of professional soccer confront these fans with specific restrictions in how they are able to articulate their interest as fans.

Notes

1. This article is based on ethnographic research with three rival clubs in the New York City area. More specifically, I have conducted participant observation, informal and formal qualitative interviews with fans of the New York Cosmos of the division 2 North American Soccer League (NASL), as well as with supporters of both the MLS (division 1) teams New York Red Bulls and New York City FC (for a discussion of how research with rival supporters is possible see: Spaaij and Geilenkirchen 2011. These data are supplemented by analyses of online media (twitter, public message boards, blogs, websites, etc.) of the wider US and Canadian soccer supporters’ subculture, since online interactions are increasingly important in order to understand soccer fan identities, especially in a country with few rivalries based on geographic proximity (an argument for the importance of online research in the study of fan cultures see: Gibbons and Dixon 2012.

2. While the Ultra subculture is often traced to 1970s Italy, from which it spread to other European countries and beyond, it is important to note that South American Barra Brava (Argentina and other Spanish speaking countries), Torcida (Brazil) and Porra (Mexico) groups share many similarities with Ultra culture.

3. This count is based on the official listing of supporters’ groups on MLS’s website, supplemented by groups personally know to be currently in existence to the author.

4. ‘Barra’ and ‘Banda’ are also popular, reflecting South American influences on fan culture.

5. Jeff himself, in contrast, is highly knowledgeable about the histories of various supporters’ cultures around the world, as he demonstrates during multiple conversations with me. A white, college-educated professional in his early 20s, he has no deep first-hand experience with Ultra subculture in Europe himself. Yet, through media and research – he admits to religiously watching videos of supporters’ groups on the internet, with a preference for smaller and more obscure groups – as well as through the networks he has formed through his fandom, he has become an autodidact of soccer culture. It is this specialized knowledge that enables him to call out other supporters’ groups on their names.

6. Unless otherwise noted, quotations in section headings are quotes from interviews with my informants.

7. The MLS league champion is decided by a playoff tournament following the regular season. Meanwhile, the team with the most points during the regular season is awarded the Supporters Shield, a trophy originally lobbied for and funded by a network of MLS fans advocating for a recognition of the regular season champion.

8. German league rules prevent clubs being named after their sponsors. For this reason, the club officially bears the name RasenBallsport in order to leave the abbreviation of ‘RB’ intact. The neologism ‘RasenBallsport’ loosely translates to ‘Lawn Ballsports’.

9. Red Bull bought a lower league club from the suburbs of Leipzig in 2009. The team has been promoted to Germany’s second division as of 2015 and is likely to win promotion to the German Bundesliga in the 2015/2016 season. In the case of Leipzig, criticism towards Red Bulls’ involvement in soccer centers on a number of factors. First, there exists a more general dissatisfaction with a newly formed club achieving success and replacing traditionally established clubs by virtue of their financial resources, especially in light of formerly well-known Leipzig-based clubs having been unable to make their way up from the lower leagues. On a more substantive level, RB Leipzig’s approach has also challenged Germany’s model of clubs being membership organizations, as the franchise has been able to circumvent league requirements.

10. This effort was in part inspired by similar initiatives of supporter ownership in England, where fans have established supporter-owned clubs in response to the corporate takeover or relocation of the club they cheered for.

11. Opposing fans call the Red Bulls dismissively ‘the beverage’, ‘fizzy drink’, ‘dead bulls’, ‘pink cows’ and other monikers based on their name being that of an energy drink company.