Homes of sports: a study of cultural heritage tourism and football

ABSTRACT

Many places in the world claim to be the ‘home of’ a particular sport, for example, Cooperstown and baseball; Springfield College and basketball; Lord’s and cricket; St Andrews and golf; Newmarket and horseracing; Twickenham and rugby; and Hawaii and surfing. This appellation is a desired title because it suggests distinctiveness and authenticity, and so provides the potential for tourism, inward investment and a sense of place. However, some of these claims to be the ‘home of’ a particular sport may not be well-founded or are sometimes only a myth, and therefore may be contested by other locations. To help determine the veracity of claims to be the ‘home of’, this paper uses objective authenticity indicators of original artefacts and authoritative confirmation. Indicators of football cultural heritage are then identified and combined with authoritative sources to assess the claims of Sheffield to be the home of football. It is argued that the adoption of objective authenticity indicators might assist in disputes about where a particular ‘home’ might be located.

KEYWORDS:

• Objective authenticity
• home of
• spiritual home
• birthplace
• football/soccer
• contested place
• Sheffield

Introduction

Many places in the world claim to be the home of a particular sport: Cooperstown is known as the ‘home of baseball’ (Higgins, 2008, p. 314); Springfield College, Massachusetts the ‘home of basketball’ (Springfield College, 2021); Lord’s ‘the home of cricket’ (Cardwell & Ali, 2014, p. 52); St Andrews the ‘home of golf’ (Robertson & Jarrett, 1984, p. 1; Whigham, Bowes, Kitching, & Bairner, 2021, p. 1); Newmarket the ‘home of horse racing’ (Slater & Osborn, 1968, p. 1); Twickenham the ‘home of rugby’ (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2010, p. 94).; Hawaii the ‘spiritual home of surfing’ (Ormrod, 2005, p. 47); Wimbledon the ‘home of tennis’ (Horwood, 2004, p. 100); and Holyoke, Massachusetts the ‘home of volleyball’ (volley-pedia, 2021), etc.

Given the widespread nature of these phenomena, this paper investigates why ‘home of’ is considered to be of such significance (Licciardi & Amirtahmasebi, 2012) and why claims to be the ‘home of’ is a contested term (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2005). In particular, it focuses on the use of objective authenticity indicators (Jamal & Hill, 2004; Wang, 1999) and specifically two of Bruner’s (1994) authenticity categories, namely, original artefacts, and who has the authority to determine authenticity. The paper then identifies objective authenticity indicators for football cultural heritage and applies them to Sheffield.

Investigating the terms: ‘home of’, ‘spiritual home’, and ‘birthplace’

The term ‘home’ may be interpreted from numerous perspectives and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Soanes, Stevenson, & Hawker, 2009) provides a range of definitions including the following: home (noun):

the place where one lives permanently; a place where something flourishes or from which it originated; (adjective): relating to one’s country; (of a team or player) belonging to the place in which a sporting event occurs – played on a team’s own ground.

Traditionally, the term ‘home’ is associated with a physical location, such as dwelling place, community, city and country of origin (Altman, 1975; Cuba & Hummon, 1993; Hildago & Hernandez, 2001; Moore, 2000) and this sense of home or place is often accompanied with psychological associations of community, ownership, safety and security (Deprés, 1991; Moore, 2000).

In addition to the physical home of a sport, there is also the appellation ‘spiritual home of’ which tends to be associated with more abstract concepts. A ‘spiritual home’ has a powerful resonance and Ramshaw and Gammon (2010, p. 88) maintained that: ‘These locations are not the actual birthplaces of the sport but are the “keepers of the flame”; the protectors and interpreters of the traditions and values of particular sports’. To illustrate this perspective, they described Lord’s Cricket Ground and Marylebone Cricket Club not as the inventors of the game but as places where the laws and ‘spirit’ of the game are governed and upheld.

A further term associated with the concept of ‘home’ is ‘birthplace’. ‘Birthplace’ implies that there is one origin and for many sports, this is problematic for a variety of reasons including the fact that there are: often few historical records; the records which do exist do not always corroborate one another; there are conflicting interpretations of the available information; ‘folk history’ is sometimes contrary to the ‘facts’; etc. (Collins, 2011; Westby & Wilson, 2022). Moore (2021, p. 687) politically finessed this contestation by suggesting to the Chinese President Xi Jinping, on a visit to the National Football Museum in Manchester, that ‘China was the birthplace of the first game of football, Cuju, and the UK was the birthplace of the modern game of football’.

Why is ‘home of’ a sought-after designation?

There are estimated to be 4037 cities in the world that have a population of 100,000+ inhabitants (Brilliant Maps, 2015) and each of these seeks to make itself distinctive in order to encourage inward investment, tourism, and a sense of place. As a result, destinations have put increasing emphasis on place branding as ‘a major part of their competitive armoury’ (Morgan, Pritchard and Pride, 2011, 5). And, it is this branding that enables destinations to make themselves identifiable and differentiate themselves from other places (Qu, Kim and Im, 2011). The economic imperative of possessing a distinctive destination brand was stressed by U.S. economist Robert Merton Solow who stated:

Over the long term, places with strong, distinctive identities are more likely to prosper than places without them. Every place must identify its strongest, most distinctive features and develop them or run the risk of being all things to all persons and nothing special to any. (Licciardi & Amirtahmasebi, 2012, p. 2)

This theme was also illustrated in Visit England’s (2011, 10) Strategic Framework for Tourism in England which has four interdependent objectives including: ‘To offer visitors compelling destinations of distinction’. This distinctiveness is achieved by having points of difference that consumers recognize and heritage brands that possess a unique selling proposition that cannot be easily copied or substituted (Keller, 2008). One approach to developing a distinctive identity is through the use of sport heritage which is: ‘one of the foundations for creating and re-articulating a distinctive sense of place’ (Ramshaw, 2011, p. 15). Moreover, adopting the designation ‘home of’ enhances legitimacy, as Ramshaw and Gammon (2010, p. 87) stated:

The heritage of home is particularly powerful from both personal and collective perspectives, as the sites, artefacts, rituals and traditions associated with home construct notions of continuity and identity. For heritage tourism, notions of home are important in legitimising particular heritage narratives, as well as in acquiring a competitive advantage over rival sites.

Not only does the home of a particular sport confer a distinctive identity and differentiation it can also tap into the economic impact of sport tourism, for instance, visitor spending for US sports events was calculated to be $10.47 billion in 2016 (National Association of Sports Commissions, 2017). Sport tourism has been defined as ‘leisure-based travel that takes individuals temporarily outside of their home communities to participate in physical activities, to watch physical activities, or to venerate attractions associated with physical activities’ (Gibson, 1998, 47). Much academic writing about sport tourism concentrates on the first two defined areas i.e. travelling to watch or participate; however, there is much less consideration given to cultural engagement (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2017, p. 127).

It is the third area of sport tourism, cultural heritage, which this paper will focus upon and in particular the role in which ‘home of’ is applied. There is little discussion in the academic literature about the concept ‘home of’ and this paper explores the area in the context of the ‘home of football/soccer’ and where this might be located. Academic considerations of football tourism are still in their ‘infancy stage’ (De Oliveira, Tobar, & Capraro, 2021, p. 331) and it is hoped that this paper will contribute further to this discussion (Tobar & Ramshaw, 2022). The paper continues with an exploration of the economic motivation to be ‘home of’; the contesting of where home might be; authenticity, culture and sport; and where the home of football/soccer might be located.

Economic motivation to be the ‘home of’

Before the impact of COVID-19, tourism represented 10.4% of global GDP and employed 334 million people (10.6% of jobs) (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2021); and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (2018) has calculated that 40% of worldwide tourism is culture-based. It is unsurprising, therefore, that destinations seek to capitalize on their cultural heritage assets and Robins (1991, p. 58) noted that this can provide a ‘competitive advantage in the race between places’.

Baseball provides an illustrative example of how the heritage of a sport has been used to enhance its economic sustainability. Higgins (2008, p. 314) explained how: ‘The marketing of Cooperstown as the home of baseball was a necessity for a small town hit hard by the Depression’. It was initially thought that the building of a museum would attract hundreds of visitors to the shopping area (Vlasich, 1989) but these are now measured in the hundreds of thousands (Fyfe, 2008).

A sport with even more economic and global impact than baseball is football/soccer. The 2018 FIFA World Cup attracted a combined 3.572 billion viewers (FIFA, 2018) and the international appeal of the Premier League (2019) has resulted in 900 million homes in 190 countries viewing games. In 2016–2017, total match attendance in the top 4 tiers in England was 32,003,339 (Premier League – 13,618,440; Championship – 11,224,664; League One – 4,444,860; and League Two – 2,715,375) (European Professional Football Leagues: 2017). Furthermore, there are ticket-buying spectators at other non-league clubs and, in England, 8.2 million people are actively involved in football (The FA, 2015).

These large numbers of people engaged with and consuming football produce a substantial economic impact. In 2020, the five largest European leagues: (Premier League – England; Bundesliga – Germany; la Liga – Spain; Serie A – Italy; and Ligue 1 – France), although affected by COVID-19, generated revenue of €15.1 billion (Deloitte, 2021). The Premier League, alone, supported approximately 100,000 FTE jobs as a result of direct, indirect and induced impacts (Ernst and Young, 2015). And, these revenue streams also impacted on local communities, for example, when Swansea City was promoted to the Premiership the increased number of fans contributed £58.6 million GVA and an additional 420 jobs in Wales (Roberts, Roche, Jones, & Munday, 2016). Similarly, in Glasgow, the spending by Celtic and Rangers increased GDP by £45.68 million creating 2423 jobs (Allan, Dunlop, & Swales, 2007). Likewise, the economic impact of Everton and Liverpool football clubs on Merseyside identified approximately 3000 jobs related to the football industry and a further 1400 on match days (Johnstone, Southern, & Taylor, 2000). In addition to tickets and viewing costs, supporters also consume travel, food, accommodation, etc. spending a total of £5 billion annually (Post Office Money, 2016).

Football also attracts a wide demographic with 26% female; 17% black, Asian or minority ethnic groups; 40% aged 18–34; and 12% of season ticket holders were under 16 years (Ernst and Young, 2015). In addition to national supporters, there were more than 800,000 overseas visitors to football matches who spent £684 million during their visit and their average spend was £855 which was higher than the average tourist expenditure of £628. Moreover, in the North-West football is the largest source of tourism (VisitBritain, 2015). The international attraction of football was supported by a marketing campaign ‘Football is GREAT’ by Visit Britain, the national tourism authority. The tourism minister, Tracey Crouch, acknowledged: ‘The positive role football is playing in showcasing key destinations in many different regions … It’s great for local economies, great for football and great for the UK’s tourism industry’ (The Guardian, 2015).

A contested home

Sporting history has numerous instances of inaccurate information and myth. Collins (2011) described the history of sport as a palimpsest, a historical document that has been largely erased and overwritten with more recent information. Factual history, if there is such a thing (Carr, 1961), is interpreted to provide meaning and significance to people and: ‘Details and fragments are reassembled and rearranged to create a story that meets the desires and demands of different generations, social groups and ideologies’ (Collins, 2011, p. 8).

Debates about the origins/birthplace/spiritual/home of a number of sports are often contested because of the economic, social and cultural benefits which may accrue from these designations. There are also disagreements about the historiography of some sporting firsts and the purported originators of particular sports such as Duke Kahanamoku and surfing (Booth, 2016); Abner Doubleday and baseball (Ogden, 2007); and Tom Wills and Australian Rules football (Hocking and Reidy, 2016). Origins are often complex and, therefore, story lines are sometimes presented to fans in succinct forms which may obscure more accurate representations (Wagg, 2011; Westby & Wilson, 2022).

The origins of golf have also been debated (Hudson, 2009, p. 6) and: ‘Cricket history is particularly murky and vague as to the exact origins of the game’ (Cricketlab, 2022). Yet this does not discourage St Andrews Links (2019) and Lords (2019), respectively, claiming to be the home of these sports. Football is not exempt from these attempts at appropriation and this can be seen at national levels in Brazil, Scotland, England and others. A more cautious and measured claim is engraved on a plaque at Parker’s Piece in Cambridge which is titled: ‘The Birthplace of Football?’ and the question mark indicates a degree of uncertainty about this claim. It continues:

Here on Parker’s Piece, in the 1800s, students established a common set of simple football rules emphasising skill above force, which forbade catching the ball and ‘hacking’. These ‘Cambridge Rules’ became the defining influence on the 1863 Football Association rules.

Claim and counterclaim can often muddy the water for those attempting to identify the ‘truth’. Vincent and Hill (2011, p. 187) indicated this uncertainty when they referred to England: ‘In the nation that claims to be the “home of football”’. In a similar manner, Boyle (2000, p. 23) commented on the: ‘self-styled “home of football” Wembley’ signalling that self-praise is, perhaps, less valued than that accorded by an external source. This self-congratulatory perspective has also been challenged by Rowe, Ruddock, and Hutchins (2010, p. 301) who stated: ‘at the iconic Wembley Stadium, the so-called “home of football”’ perhaps signifying that it has no real claim to the title. Yet, in spite of this approbation, Ramshaw and Gammon (2010, p. 88) suggested that: ‘Self-proclaimed “spiritual homes” are powerful representations of sport and home’.

In the North-West of England, Moore (2008, p. 459) lamented the National Football Museum’s:

… lack of a marketing budget and more especially the relative failure of Preston City Council to utilize the great opportunity of the Museum to improve the image of the city, as the ‘birthplace of modern football’, or the ‘home of football’, has militated against the Museum’s impact in terms of image and profile.

Twickenham uses ‘home’ from three different perspectives: home of England Rugby (2019), spiritual home, and home of English identity to illustrate its cultural and economic importance. Moreover, these perspectives demonstrate a form of ‘cultural propriety’ (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2010, p. 87). It is evident that the designation ‘home’ tends to legitimise claims of heritage topophilia and encourage visits from tourists to their sporting Mecca.

In spite of these claims, Twickenham is challenged from a number of geographic and mythical perspectives (Baker, 1979). Firstly, Twickenham has to tread carefully to avoid controversy especially when other countries such as Wales and New Zealand have such strong cultural affinities to the game. Secondly, illustrating the power of myth – it is difficult for Twickenham to claim to be the physical home of rugby because e of the claims of Rugby School to be the location where William Webb Ellis mythically picked up the ball and ran with it. Not only is there a statue commemorating this ‘event’ in front of the school, but the Rugby World Cup trophy is named the ‘Webb Ellis Cup’.

Sport heritage tourism ‘reinforces the significance of place’ and ‘many places can be designated as the “home” of a sport, team, tradition, or sporting legend, and as a result be considered worthy of visitation’ (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2017, p. 127). This ‘tangible immovable sport heritage’ (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2005, p. 233) has also been described as ‘special sites and/or sights of sporting significance’ (Gammon, 2004, p. 34). And ‘there is fierce competition between cities to be called the “home” of a particular sport (especially if the sport is considered culturally significant in that region/country)’ (Ramshaw and Gammon, 2005, p. 233).

We have discussed how the designation ‘home’ is important for multiple reasons including economic, tourism, social and political. Given that football is considered to be the most popular spectator sport in the world with an estimated global following of 4 billion (World Atlas, 2019) any claim of the ‘home of football’ needs to be carefully examined using objective authenticity indicators.

Methodology

The research for this paper began with a review of the literature around ‘home of football/home of soccer’ which was conducted using Scopus and Google Scholar, only articles written in English were investigated (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003). In Scopus, ‘home of football’ received 4 hits with none relevant to our discussion. Further, no articles were identified which had ‘home of football/home of soccer’ in their titles.

Google Scholar identified more hits although some of these were from less authoritative sources; therefore, only refereed articles and books were considered. Only four articles were identified which had ‘home of football’ in their titles (Beecham & Esfahani, 2017; Curry, 2011; Dennison, 2015; Gartner, 2005) and none for ‘home of soccer’. Curry’s contribution (2011) was a review of Clarebrough and Kirkham’s (2009) book: Sheffield: The Home of Football; two others discussed England obliquely as the ‘home of football’ (Beecham & Esfahani, 2017; Gartner, 2005) and, Dennison (2015) described New South Wales’ Valentine Sports Park. Other hits concerned non-relevant sports such as American Football or were false positives with Kornblum (2017) describing Marseilles as the home of football star Zinedine Zidane. Numerous academic papers were identified that combined ‘home’ and ‘football’ but the focus of these was predominantly on the effects of playing at home (for example, Pollard, 2006). In summary, no identified articles explored the notion of ‘home of football’ or ‘home of soccer’, etc.

There were no identified citations in Scopus for ‘spiritual home of football’ and only six when the term was searched using Google Scholar. Of these only one was obliquely relevant describing England as the ‘spiritual home of football’, in a discussion of the song ‘Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home)’ within the context of music in sport and exercise (Karageorghis, 2015). A broad search on Google for ‘spiritual home of football’ identified 140,000 hits with Brazil often described as the ‘spiritual home’ possibly to differentiate it from the general acknowledgement that Britain is the traditional home of the modern game of football. Stadiums may also claim to be the spiritual home of football for a specific country. For example, the Home Depot Center stadium in Carson, California was called: ‘the spiritual home of soccer in the United States’ by MLS Commissioner Don Garber’ (Strutner, Parrish, & Nauright, 2014, p. 29), possibly because it was the home of LA Galaxy and a training centre for the US Soccer Federation.

The research incorporates Wang’s (1999) objective authenticity and two of Bruner’s (1994) authenticity categories i.e. original artefacts, and corroboration by scholars, historians or legal authorities. Jamal and Hill (2004, p. 357) describe this approach as: ‘scientific and positivist paradigms’. A further search of the literature was conducted to identify and list indicators of football cultural heritage which could then be used to assess where the home of football might be located. A final literature search was conducted into the history of football in Sheffield to identify objective facts which could be tabulated against the football cultural heritage indicators. The authors are not aware of any paper which has systematically addressed objective authenticity indicators which address sport cultural heritage.

Where is ‘home’?

It’s coming home … football’s coming home. (Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home) Baddiel, Skinner and Lightning Seeds)

The term ‘home of football’ has been ascribed to countries, regions, cities, and specific locations such as football stadiums. Working from a macro to a micro perspective, we will begin at the national level by considering where the ‘home of football’ might be located.

The beautiful game or ‘o jogo bonito’ is often attributed to Brazil due to its World Cup successes and wide admiration of the quality of play which has resulted in some considering it to be the ‘home of football’ (Bohland, 2016). However, the first recorded football match was played in Brazil in 1894 (Bellos, 2003) some 31 years after the founding of the Football Association and:

… any claim to exclusivity of Brazil being regarded as the home of soccer becomes fallacious if one takes into account the importance and tradition of soccer in countries like Great Britain, Italy, and Argentina, or the recent spread of the game to African and Asian countries. (Buarque de Holanda, 2014, p. 8)

Scotland, too, can stake a claim to the title. Although Queen’s Park F.C. was founded in 1867 some four years after the establishment of the Football Association in 1863, a form of football was played in Scotland before either of these dates with John Hope’s founding of The Foot-ball Club in Edinburgh in 1824 (Hutchinson & Mitchell, 2018; Tranter, 1993). In a history of Queen’s Park, Robinson (1920, p. 3) discussed the intertwining strands of the club and Scottish football and stated:

In writing the story of the club, the more the subject is studied, the more the impression must prevail, that were it not for the fostering care given to Association Football in Scotland by this club, the game would never have taken the place it has in the world of sport, nor would Scotland stand where it does, as the nursery and home of football as at present played in all parts of the world.

A similar perspective is also expressed about England with the National Football Museum’s (2020) mission and vision stating:

The National Football Museum explains how and why football has become ‘the people’s game’, a key part of England’s heritage and way of life. It also aims to explain why England is the home of football, the birthplace of the world’s most popular sport.

Football is such a popular game that it is perhaps no surprise that various countries wish to be its progenitor, but as Wilson (2008, p. 9) argued:

Various cultures can point to games that involved kicking a ball, but, for all the claims of Rome, Greece, Egypt, the Caribbean, Mexico, China or Japan to be the home of soccer, the modern sport has its roots in the mob game of medieval Britain.

So is it Scotland or England which is home of football? FIFA (2018) side-stepped this argument and stated: ‘For all the evidence of early ball sports played elsewhere in the world, the evolution of football as we know it today took place in Britain’.

At a more local level, towns and cities also claim ownership of football, sometimes from a more parochial dimension. Curran and Toms (2017, p. 604) described: ‘Clones, said to be “the home of soccer” in County Monaghan by 1935 … ’; and a scrapbook belonging to C. B. Mills (cited in Logan, 2007) contained a 1907 article titled: ‘Coal Field was Home of Soccer’ referring to Coal City, near Chicago, Illinois. Manchester was also described, temporarily before being removed, in a web post as the ‘home of football’ by the national tourism body, Visit England (2018).

At a more focused level, the stadium associated with a particular football team often inspires deep affections of identity for football fans and stadiums have long been described as their home (Charleston, 2009; Giulianotti, 2004) or ‘symbolic home’ (Bale, 1993, p. 71). The use of descriptors such as the ‘home’ side and the ‘away’ side also serve to enhance this perspective. For example, in Adelaide, ‘Hindmarsh Stadium (capacity: 15,500) … is locally recognized as the “home of soccer”’ (Rosso, 2010, p. 193). The acknowledgement that it is ‘locally recognized’ indicates that there is little intention to have wider claims around the importance of their ‘home’.

National stadiums sometimes accrue the ‘home of football’ description as a result of their national significance rather than their original contribution to the game. The original Wembley Stadium, which opened in 1923, built its reputation as a venue for the FA Cup finals, international games, and 1966 World Cup final; and has been described as the ‘home of football’ (Cronin, 2002, p. 111). Its successor, which opened in 2007 has also received similar credits: for example, the ‘(remodelled) “home of football”, Wembley Stadium’ (Ruddock, Hutchins, & Rowe, 2010, p. 324). In like manner, Auckland’s QBE Stadium has been described as: ‘the home of football in New Zealand’ (Nisbet, 2017, p. 16).

But it is rare for a club stadium to be specifically described as ‘the home of football’. One exception, however, is Arsenal’s Highbury which Wikipedia states: ‘was given the affectionate nickname of the “Home of Football” by the club’. Donnelly (2018) in a description of the first game Woolwich Arsenal played at Highbury against Leicester Fosse on 6 September 1913 wrote: ‘Arsenal began life in Division Two with a new ground: Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, and “The Home of Football” – three names for the same place’. This moniker has more recently been transferred to the Emirates Stadium (established 2006) where ‘Home of Football’ is written above a number of entry points into the stadium. It is doubtful that few people other than Arsenal supporters truly consider Emirates Stadium as the ‘true’ home of football.

Cultural authenticity

There is a rivalry between destinations and a ‘race between places’ (Robins, 1991, p. 58) and ‘competition between cities to be called the “home” of a particular sport’ (Ramshaw & Gammon, 2005, p. 233). This competition is evident around where the home of football/soccer might be located, so what criteria might be used to identify and verify ‘home’? One strategy is to consider cultural authenticity. Authenticity provides a significant contribution to cultural heritage tourism by enhancing the perception of quality and increasing levels of tourist satisfaction (Chhabra, Healy, & Sills, 2003; Taylor, 2001; Waitt, 2000). To be attractive to tourists, sport heritage destinations need to communicate a sense of authenticity and this perspective was endorsed by Gammon (2015: 116) who described how visitors to stadiums and stadium visits: ‘desire to encounter an authentic sense of place’ and ‘through place, a closer and more intimate connection with a given community’.

Authenticity is a key element in creating a visitor experience and was defined as: ‘an original, universal value and a crucial driving force motivating tourists to travel to distant places and experience different time periods’ (Park, Choi, & Lee, 2019: 99). This definition is helpful in describing the motivational forces driving tourism but does not fully communicate the various dimensions of authenticity as described by, for instance, MacCannell (1973); Bruner (1994); Wang (1999); Jamal and Hill (2004). Authenticity is a complex subject that has limitations, is ambiguous, and has little application to many aspects of tourism including nature tourism, shopping and, sports (Wang, 1999), but, notably, not cultural sport heritage which is the focus of this paper.

Interrogating the nature of touristic authenticity is complex and to provide more clarity MacCannell (1973) applied Goffman’s (1959) front stage and backstage to present more distinct insights. The front stage represents a meeting place where the host might meet a guest; whereas the back stage embodies the more genuine areas where the local people relax in their own company. MacCannell subcategorised these two areas into a continuum of six stages with the backmost stage being the most authentic and most motivating for tourists.

The early work of MacCannell (1973) was built upon by Wang (1999, p. 352) who proposed three types of authenticity:

• ‘Objective authenticity refers to the authenticity of originals’, for instance, the Ashes urn displayed in the MCC Museum, Lords Cricket ground.

• ‘Constructive authenticity refers to the authenticity projected onto toured objects by tourists or tourism producers’, for example, ‘honouring’ the contributions of footballers when viewing football statues (Stride, Wilson, & Thomas, 2013).

• ‘Existential authenticity refers to a potential existential state of Being that is activated by tourist activities’, for example, amateur tourists playing a round of golf on the Old Course, St. Andrew’s.

These three areas: objective (real), constructed (socio-political) and personal (phenomenological) were adopted by Jamal and Hill (2004, p. 353). In essence, authenticity is either related to an object/artefact, or to a subjective visitor experience involving constructivism or existentialism. Objective authenticity is, therefore, external to guests, visitors and tourists and is to be found in culture, event, place, product, and relic (Cook, 2010; Park et al., 2019); and it is this objective dimension that this paper will focus upon.

In a consideration of authenticity, Bruner (1994) identified four interpretations with the first being authentic reproduction or verisimilitude in which the object is a credible representation of the original. The second meaning involves not just a resemblance but ‘a complete and immaculate simulation, one that is historically accurate and true’ (1994, p. 399). The third sense of authenticity simply means the ‘original’ and not a copy. Finally, there may be ‘conflicting interests and the struggle over meaning’ and then it becomes a matter of ‘who has the authority and the power to authenticate’ (1994, p. 400). This paper is concerned with the second and fourth categories –originals not copies of artefacts; and who has the authority to decide on the authenticity of the home of football. This latter one may be debated among scholars and historians or it may be determined from a legal perspective.

Jamal and Hill (2004) emphasized that the concept of authenticity was both fluid and flexible and that this perspective might be more beneficial than breaking it into separate categories. Despite this position, they (2004: 359) also argued that: ‘developing indicators for identifying and understanding authenticity as related to heritage and culture may be helpful to the challenging task of destination management and historic preservation’. In this way, indicators might be scientifically categorized within objective authenticity and thereby support scholars and managers to organize destinations, objects and sites (Jamal & Hill, 2004).

Included within these indicators were spatial and temporal dimensions which were considered ‘integral to the study of authenticity’ (2004, p. 368). Crouch’s (2000) dimensions of place and space were considered to be applicable to the three areas and Jamal and Hill (2004, p. 353) also maintained that place was a key element of authenticity providing ‘uniqueness’ heritage and history. This is particularly relevant in our consideration of where the home of football might be located. Furthermore, the temporal dimension is significant in identifying significant firsts in football heritage culture through which pioneering locations might demonstrate their authenticity (Westby & Wilson, 2022). Examples of these objective firsts are included in Table 1.

Table 1. Dimensions of football heritage culture.

Dimensions	Sheffield	Sources
Games and competitions	Mob football; Youdan Cup 1867; Cromwell Cup 1868 – the two oldest cup competitions	Bird (1854); Harvey (2018); Neill et al. (2018)
Rules and codes of conduct	Codified rules – Sheffield Rules 1858	Sheffield FC, 1858
The people involved with the game: Teams	Sheffield FC and Hallam FC, the two oldest existing clubs; 82 Sheffield clubs in 1882	Steele (2010); Westby (2018)
Organization, administration and governance	Sheffield and Hallamshire County Football Association 1867 (second oldest association after the FA); Sheffield Schools FA 1889 (joint oldest schools’ association with Birmingham)	Sheffield and Hallamshire County Football Association (1986); Mangan and Hickey (2018)
Locations – grounds/stadiums	Bramall Lane – oldest professional football ground; Sandygate – oldest club football ground; Sheffield FC’s – the ‘home of football stadium’	Armstrong and Garrett (2006); Steele (2010)
Interaction with broader society: Education	Clegg Shield 1889 – oldest continuing schools competition	Liversidge and Eyre (2016)
‘High’ culture	Jasper Redfern film of football Sheffield United v Derby FA Cup Final at Crystal Palace in 1899	Walsh (2012)
Health and wellbeing	Sheffield FC’s athletic events	Westby (2018)
Media	1860 derby between Sheffield FC and Hallam FC; Home of football app	Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 28 December 1860
Heritage	Youdan Cup, Cromwell Cup	Liversidge and Eyre (2016)
Artefacts and ephemera	Nathaniel Creswick’s 1857 diary describing his establishment of a ‘foot ball club’	Wilson et al. (2020)

The next section examines football cultural heritage and attempts to identify indicators that might demonstrate the objective authenticity described by Wang (1999) and Jamal and Hill (2004).

Objective authenticity and football cultural heritage

We described above how cultural authenticity might be used to help locate where the ‘home of’ might be, and to do this we need to examine what ‘culture’; ‘sport culture’ and ‘football culture’ mean. ‘Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’, explained Williams (1983, p. 87), which is perhaps why it has been so problematic to define in sport and in football. These difficulties were illustrated by Jarvie (2006, p. 67) who expressed concern around the use of ‘culture’ in sport, stating: ‘one of the worries is the overuse of the term in the sense that it can be so all-embracing that it means everything’.

It is clear, therefore, that there is a need for an ‘organising framework’ and Jarvie (2006, p. 5) defined culture and sport as: ‘the values, ceremonies and way of life characteristic of a given group and the place of sport within that way of life’. This categorization might be considered too broad and, therefore, some writers have attempted to identify more detailed components of sport culture to provide clarity. Girginov (2010) explored sport management and proposed seven aspects of culture: organized; innovative and evolving; created nomos i.e. order; both abstract, and beliefs and practices; a dialectic of system and practice; defined according to the system of production; and political significance. Also, 12 cultural dimensions (and 68 sub-dimensions) in Australian sporting organizations were mapped by Smith and Shilbury (2004): change, competitors, customers, decisions, goals, heroes, history and tradition, risk, rituals, symbols, values, and size. However, both these categorizations have limited application in looking at historical football culture.

In a systematic review of organizational culture in sport, Maitland, Hills, and Rhind (2015, p. 508) concluded that: ‘there is little consensus in how organizational culture is defined and operationalized in sport’, and suggested that it should be defined so that the: ‘meaning of culture is not assumed or used in a common sense way to mean normative practices’ (2015, p. 512).

So, what do we mean by ‘football culture’? Given the discussion above, it is unsurprising to find that the term is often elusive and incorporates multiple dimensions, for instance, working-class culture (Baker, 1979); lifestyles of UK football fans (Turner, 1990); local and global cultures (Finn & Giulianotti, 2013). Collins (2015) briefly discussed ‘football culture’ in the 1890s and maintained that it included supporters, media, administrators and players but did not explore it further.

The material culture of sport was classified by Hardy, Loy, and Booth (2009) who identified: ephemera and memorabilia; performance measurement technology; playing equipment, venues, prizes; sportswear; symbolic artefacts; training equipment and sport medicine technology. Further to these elements, Moore (2016, p. 95), the former director of the National Football Museum, identified: artwork; audio; community singing; films and video; music; photography; publications; and toys and games.

No detailed definition of football culture has been identified; therefore, drawing from the categories above we provide the following: football culture includes one or more of games and competitions; the rules and codes of conduct; the people involved with the game (players, teams, competitors, administrators, supporters, ground staff, owners, sponsors, etc.); the organization, administration and governance of the game; locations, grounds/stadiums; the interaction with broader society (communities, businesses, education, religion); ‘high’ culture (art, film, literature, music, theatre); health and wellbeing; media (newspapers, TV, etc. magazines); heritage; and, artefacts, memorabilia and ephemera. In Wang (1999) and Jamal and Hill’s (2004), terms these categories might be included within objective authenticity.

One location which is beginning to style itself ‘home of football’ is Sheffield (Clarebrough & Kirkham, 2009), but to what extent does the objective authenticity evidence corroborate this claim? Using the cultural heritage dimensions described above these were applied to Sheffield.

Before the founding of Sheffield FC in 1857, there was already a vibrant footballing culture in the southern part of Yorkshire and north Derbyshire. For example, a game of mob football between Norton and Sheffield was played at Bents Green in Sheffield in 1793 (Bird, 1854); and, Harvey (2018, p. 52) wrote how: ‘On occasion quite large stakes were used, for instance £20 in a match at Sheffield’s Hyde Park in 1852’. Moreover, Neill, Curry, and Dunning (2018, p. 127) described an 1845 challenge by Thurlstone for: ‘a game of foot-ball and not hand-ball’. They (2018, p. 132) asked: ‘why did modern club football begin in Sheffield?’ and concluded that it was strongly influenced by local villages such as Penistone and Thurlstone.

Confirmation about Sheffield being the first to establish a football culture comes from a number of historians although they do not define precisely what is meant by football culture. Harvey (2005, p. 92) describes: ‘Britain’s first football culture – Sheffield 1857–1867’; Neill et al. (2018, p. 124) wrote: ‘The first major footballing subculture began in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, in the latter years of the 1850s’; and further corroboration is provided by Collins (2018, p. 28) who stated: ‘Sheffield was the first city to develop something resembling a modern football culture’. In a similar vein, FIFA (2019) also acknowledged: ‘Sheffield – football’s first city’. These authoritative academics and governing bodies provide further confirmation of Bruner’s (1994) fourth dimension of authenticity.

It is not suggested that all of these cultural heritage dimensions are required to demonstrate the authenticity of a specific sporting home but they do provide a more satisfactory framework which might be applied when there are disputes and contestations between locations.

Home of football in practice

Custom and practice are also influential in establishing a title. During the 1996 UEFA European Football Championship Sheffield hosted an exhibition called Football Expo ‘96. The exhibition was promoted by A5 leaflets and vinyl banners outside the museum venue which stated ‘Sheffield, Home of Football’ (Wilson, Armstrong, & Kamble, 2020).

In 2013, a Heritage Lottery Foundation grant supported a football competition for school children playing by modified 1858 Sheffield Rules at Hallam FC’s Sandygate ground (Marwood et al., 2019). The project, titled: ‘Home of Football’, also developed a website: (www.homeoffootball.net) and historian and broadcaster, Michael Wood (2013) stated in reference to Sheffield: ‘This is where the modern game began’. Moreover, Sheffield FC has styled its ground ‘the home of football’.

The ‘home of football’ title was also used by the media, including BBC and Sky Sport’s television coverage of Sheffield United’s first Premier League home fixture in 2019. Moreover, a similar message was conveyed in an advertising campaign for HSBC which stated: ‘You’re the birthplace of the beautiful game’.

There is also a company limited by guarantee called ‘Sheffield Home of Football’ which represents the interests of football stakeholders in the city who wish to use football to enhance the development of art, community, culture, economy, education, health, heritage, and wellbeing (Wilson et al., 2020). This is also supported by a trademark for ‘Sheffield the Home of Football’ (Intellectual Property Office, 2018). These examples of the practical and legal use of the term ‘home of football’ are little found in other cities (Bruner, 1994).

Conclusion

The 30 January 1867 edition of Sporting Life stated that: ‘It may not be generally known that Sheffield holds, or ought to hold, a very prominent position in the football world’. This lack of visibility is still valid in that it does not attract the attention that Cooperstown, St Andrew’s and Twickenham, etc. hold for their various sports in the public consciousness. However, this paper has presented evidence for its authenticity and acknowledgement as the original cultural epicentre and home of football using a range of cultural heritage dimensions. In addition, a number of authors have affirmed that it was the first football culture and FIFA (2019) have described it as ‘football’s first city’. No one place or institution invented football and, numerous countries had their own proto-football games. Moreover, the centre of gravity of football has changed over time from Sheffield to Lancashire to Glasgow and is now, arguably, Zürich. However, its home based on the cultural indicators would appear to be Sheffield.

We have explored how homes of sports face challenges to their claims and that they might verify their claims through objective authentication using original artefacts, and gathering academic and legal confirmation (Bruner, 1994; Jamal & Hill, 2004; Wang, 1999). Authenticity is also determined through spatial and temporal dimensions such as ‘firsts’ (Westby & Wilson, 2022) and common practice and agreement. Further research might be conducted into the use of objective authenticity indicators to verify which ‘homes of sport’ might satisfy and build upon the dimensions we have identified in this paper, for instance, Cooperstown and baseball. In addition, research might be undertaken to identify indicators within Wang’s dimensions of constructive authenticity and existential authenticity for homes of sports, such as those we discussed in the opening paragraph: basketball, cricket, golf, horse racing, rugby, surfing, tennis, volleyball.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported by the authors.