The Pub as a Virtual Football Fandom Venue: An Alternative to ‘Being there’?

Abstract

The sport spectator experience is one that is widely held to involve “live” presence at a sporting event, and that the raison detre of sports spectating is to witness events live and in person. This paper builds on a previous ethnography of football spectating in the pub to develop a theoretical basis for the suggestion that sports spectating is as much about shared experience as it is about live presence. In doing so, it utilises perspectives from tourism literature relating to the nature of proximity and to the importance of being able to re‐live and re‐tell experiences. The paper concludes that whilst the pub as a spectator venue can provide a proximity to the sport spectating experience, the longevity of the experience in terms of its value as an experience to be re‐told is significantly shorter than being able to say that one has “been there” at a live event.

Notes

[1] Brimson, The Geezers Guide to Football, 166.

[2] Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’.

[3] Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Themed Pubs and Bars.

[4] Emery and Weed, ‘Fighting for Survival?’.

[5] Freeman, Own Goal!, 86.

[6] Keynote, Market Review: The UK Sports Market, 17.

[7] Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Themed Pubs and Bars, 23.

[8] Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Spectator Sports, 5.

[9] Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Satellite and Cable TV; Keynote, Market Report: Cable and Satellite TV.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Spectator Sports; Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Satellite and Cable TV; Keynote, Market Report: Cable and Satellite TV.

[12] Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’.

[13] Boyle and Haynes, Power Play, 97.

[14] Quoted in The Observer, 25 February 2001.

[15] Former Minister of Sport, Kate Hoey, quoted in the Guardian, 25 February 2002.

[16] Quoted in the London Evening Standard, 3 March 2002.

[17] Armstrong and Young, ‘Fanatical Football Chants’.

[18] Ibid., 176.

[19] Williams, ‘The Changing Face of Football’, 99.

[20] Brimson, The Geezers Guide to Football, 166.

[21] Keynote, Market Report Plus: Public Houses.

[22] See Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’, for the detail of this work.

[23] Weed, ‘Ing‐ger‐land at Euro 2000’.

[24] Reported by Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’, 89.

[25] Baines, ‘Sports Tourism’.

[26] MacCannell, Tourist or Traveller?, 4.

[27] Urry, The Tourist Gaze.

[28] Boden and Molotch, ‘The Compulsion of Proximity’.

[29] Urry, ‘Mobility and Proximity’, 258.

[30] Mintel, Leisure Intelligence: Spectator Sports.

[31] For example, Williams, ‘The Changing Face of Football’.

[32] Ibid., 99.

[33] Bale, ‘Virtual Fandoms’.

[34] Ibid., 275.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Williams, ‘The Changing Face of Football’.

[37] Boyle and Haynes, Power Play.

[38] Lloyd and Jones, ‘Where Everybody Knows your Name?’

[39] Bale, ‘Virtual Fandoms’.

[40] Ibid., 272.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’, 80.

[43] Gammon, ‘Fantasy, Nostalgia and the Pursuit of What Never Was’, 65.

[44] Boden and Molotch, ‘The Compulsion of Proximity’, 272.

[45] Urry, ‘Mobility and Proximity’, 262.

[46] Ibid., 261.

[47] Szerszynski, ‘The Varieties of Ecological Piety’.

[48] Urry, ‘Mobility and Proximity’, 261.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Boden and Molotch, ‘The Compulsion of Proximity’; Urry, ‘Mobility and Proximity’.

[51] Armstrong and Young, ‘Fanatical Football Chants’, 180.

[52] Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’, 90.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Armstrong and Young, ‘Fanatical Football Chants’, 180.

[55] Weed, ‘The Story of an Ethnography’.

[56] Ibid.

[57] BBC News, 25 June 2004.

[58] Bale, ‘Virtual fandoms’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Weed

Mike Weed, Department of Sport Science, Tourism & Leisure, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent, UK.