Pipe dream or closed shop? Experiencing the Champions League from the sidelines

ABSTRACT

The article explores how Austrian football fans, in a country outside the “Big-five” leagues and (semi-)peripheral to European top football, relate to the European elite competition. Our research builds on interviews with fans of Sturm Graz and Wacker Innsbruck. These clubs represent two different fan milieus at the sidelines of the Champions League: one for which European-level competition has been accessible at qualification stages, and one club with a remarkable European history, for which these competitions are currently far out of reach. Our analysis reveals that the positioning of the Austrian league detaches fans from the Champions League. The main division, however, is not along clubs, nor is there an overarching “Austrian” perspective of marginalization. Rather, we find a dividing line between those who affirmatively consider the Champions League a pipe dream and those who criticize its closed shop-structure and reject it as over-commercialized reality of “modern football”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Niemann and Brand, “The UEFA Champions League”, 329.

2. Millward, “The global football league”, 76–93.

3. Armstrong and Mitchell, “Global and Local Football”.

4. Ibid., 6.

5. Throughout the text, we consistently use the term “(semi-)peripheral”. This label, however, can attain two slightly different meanings in the context of our research. First, Austria could be said to be, in a more common-sensical understanding, “peripheral” to European football. This includes its detachment from the Big-five-leagues, its relative lack of sporting success and opportunity in comparison to the bigger leagues and football markets, and also the attention paid by spectators and audiences to Austrian league football, again if compared to other European leagues. Second, some authors have tried to apply the categories of World Systems Analysis (WSA) to football, see e.g. Bond, Widdop and Chadwick, “Football’s emerging market trade network”. In the terminology of WSA, entities can be classified as either belonging to a “core” (the prosperous haves), to a “periphery” (the poor have-nots), or to a “semi-periphery”, which is sandwiched between the two, functions as a buffer and allows for some upward and downward mobility. If mapped onto European football, Austria would need to be classified as belonging to the semi-periphery.

6. Smith, “When Champions League Cash”.

7. Fiala, “Irrwege”, 26.

8. Cf. Ladrech, “Europeanization of domestic politics”; and Schmidt, “Europeanization and the mechanics”.

9. Cf. Börzel, “Member state responses”.

10. Cf. Brand and Niemann, “Europeanization”; García, “UEFA and the European Union”; Kassimeris, “Football in Europe”; Niemann et al., “The Transformation”; and Mittag and Legrand, “Towards a Europeanization”.

11. Cf. Hognestad, “Transglobal Scandinavian?”; Millward, “We’ve all Got the Bug”; Millward, “The global football league”, especially 76–93; and Numerato, “Football Fans”, esp. chap. 3.

12. Niemann et al., “Football and European Integration(s)”.

13. Liegl and Spitaler, “Legionäre am Ball”, 36–73.

14. Duke, “The flood from the East?”, 159.

15. Liegl and Spitaler, “Legionäre am Ball”, 36–73.

16. Liegl and Spitaler, “Zwischen Transnationalität”, 247.

17. Liegl and Spitaler, “Legionäre am Ball”, 142–3; and Brand et al., “The Europeanization of Austrian football”, 764–6).

18. Skocek and Weisgram, “Das Spiel”, 323.

19. OEFBL.at, “Zuschauer”.

20. Cf. Horak, “Austrification”; and Horak and Maderthaner, “A culture”.

21. Cf. Marschik, “MITROPA”; and Marschik and Sottopietra, “Erbfeinde”.

22. Mittag and Legrand, “Towards a Europeanization”.

23. Adrian and Schächtele, “Immer wieder”, 165–7.

24. Ablinger, “Die große Illusion”, 25.

25. Ablinger and Brasch, “Wo die fernen”, 47.

26. Ablinger and Rosenberg, “Unser Ziel”, 27.

27. Even historically, participation in the CL group stage was like hitting the jackpot; the €13 million generated by SK Sturm Graz in 2000–1 alone was larger than the total annual budgets of most Austrian professional clubs at that time.

28. Cf. Ablinger and Graswald, “Die offene Gesellschaft”, 24; and Ablinger and Rosenberg, “Mattersburg”, 30.

29. Kirschneck, “Gschissn”, 82.

30. https://www.sksturm.at/de/klub/geschichte/chronik/, accessed December 3, 2020.

31. https://www.fc-wacker-innsbruck.at/verein-2/geschichte.html#fc-wacker-innsbruck, accessed December 3, 2020.

32. Dimbath et al., “Praxis und Theorie”.

33. Kuckartz, “Qualitative Text Analysis”; and Kuckartz and Rädiker, “Analysing Qualitative Data”.

34. All excerpts have been translated into English for the purpose of better comprehension. In brackets: interview ID and paragraph, club, gender, age.

35. Cf. “Liga-Chef Ebenbauer”.

36. Cf. Puls24, “ÖFB-Präsident Windtner”.

37. “Can” here refers to the main product of the company Red Bull: canned sweetened soda. ‘Can copy’is the English translation to the original, deprecatoryword“Dosenkopie”).

38. Ablinger, “Wir sind die einzige”.

39. Niemann and Brand, “The UEFA Champions League”.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been supported through a grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG), grant no. 386268084.