Spectators longing for live action: a study of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on (football) supporters in Sweden

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate how sports audiences have been affected by being unable to attend competitions physically on site during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study shows how Swedish supporters, mainly football fans, have experienced the 2020 season, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis highlights the importance of physical place for the audience and discusses the relationship between physical sports arenas and digital platforms during the pandemic. Finally, the effects of the suspension of live experiences are discussed. According to the persons studied, something essential—fellowship, solidarity, pulse, excitement—is lost when sporting events are held without an audience. The theoretical framework is derived from cultural sociology and draws inspiration from key concepts such as topophilia, space and place, and emotional attachments.

Keywords:

• Covid 19
• fandom
• space and place
• digital platforms
• social media

Introduction

Coincident with the emergence of the global Covid-19 pandemic, major sporting events were suspended around the world. From canceled events in 2020, such as the Olympic Games in Japan and the European Football Championship for men, to events performed without an audience, such as Swedish elite football; the sports industry has been profoundly affected by the pandemic (Evans et al. 2020). During Sweden’s football gala on November 23, 2020, Zlatan Ibrahimović was awarded his twelfth gold ball as Sweden’s best male football player for the 2019–2020 season. In his acceptance speech, he dedicated his award to the ‘twelfth player’, that is, the audience. Zlatan stated that he had missed the fans incredibly, and that playing football without an audience is not the same; it is boring and unsatisfying. This feeling that something essential is lost when sporting events are held without an audience is shared by many supporters. In this article, we will take a closer look at Swedish audiences’ experience of their sport in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sweden’s pandemic strategy has centered on the individual citizen’s responsibility for following the recommendations of the Public Health Agency: washing one’s hands with soap and water, working from home, and avoiding public transport, social events, and other places where congestion may occur. During the first wave of the pandemic, however, sports activities that could be performed in a safe manner were still allowed (HSLF-FS 2020:12; Norberg et al. 2021). In late March 2020, the Swedish government suspended all public events with more than 50 participants (SFS 2020:162). This directly affected the sports sector and especially spectators, who were no longer allowed to be present at sporting events. From March 2020 until June 14, 2020, elite sports events and elite competitions were not allowed, after which competitions were allowed but without an audience (Public Health Agency of Sweden 2020). It was decided that sporting activities should take place outdoors and abide by the guidelines of the Public Health Agency, which placed the burden of following restrictions on sport organizations and individuals (Norberg et al. 2021).

The sports movement is one of the largest popular movements in Sweden. The Swedish Sports Confederation, which presides over organized sports, has over 3.1 million members around the country (Swedish Sports Confederation 2020). Some sports, mainly football and ice hockey, also attract large audiences (Bränholm 2019). The highest series for men’s football and ice hockey attracted a total audience of over two million in 2019 in Sweden, which has a total population of around 10 million (Swedish Elite Football 2019; Bergh 2020). The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze how sports audiences, mainly football supporters, have managed their supportership while unable to attend competitions physically on site.

The following research questions are posed:

• How did the supporters follow their team during the pandemic?

• What role do the supporters assign to the physical location/arena?

• How have supporters used media during the pandemic?

Previous research: audiences and the covid-19 pandemic

As the pandemic is fairly recent (and has been ongoing for about a year, at the time of writing, August 2021) there is a dearth of studies based on empirical material, involving experiences from the audiences themselves. However, several studies discuss the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on sport and leisure (Svensson and Radmann 2021; Andersson et al. 2021; Armbrecht et al. 2021).

Wymer, Thompson, and Martin (2020) have investigated how different sports organizations in Australia used social media to stay in touch with sports fans and keep them interested. They conclude that the suspension of competitions provided an opportunity to experiment with digital solutions. The researchers observed two categories in the material: nostalgic/authentic material, and encouragement of innovation. The first category comprised, for example, re-run broadcasts of memorable competitions and references to historical sports events. The second category consisted of content related to innovation and adaptability during the pandemic. Similar results have been seen in Germany; Schallhorn and Kunert (2020) discuss how football clubs, mainly from the Bundesliga (the highest football league in Germany), continue to engage their audiences through digitization by showing historical matches and clips, but also by broadcasting e-sports on their websites and social media. Furthermore, the authors contend that football players need to be creative in order to continually entertain and inspire audiences’ sense of belonging, and that this will likely remain important even after the pandemic. Majumdar and Naha (2020) describe how fans in different parts of the world have been able to participate digitally in sporting events via video links. They believe that digitization can lead to an adaptation of the experience, resulting in greater inclusivity as more people can participate. The authors thus suggest that digital interaction may increase interest in watching competitions both during and after the pandemic.

Other researchers, such as Mastromartino et al. (2020), assert the environmental benefits of digital participation. During the pandemic, audiences did not transport themselves to the arenas, nor purchase goods encased in disposable packaging from the kiosks, decreasing the environmental impact of sporting events. The authors therefore argue that digital audience engagement in some form may remain desirable even after the pandemic. Triantafyllidis (2020) also emphasizes that the pandemic has coincided with reduced fossil fuel emissions (in the form of transport emissions to and from events) as well as consumption of water and electricity on site during sporting events. According to Triantafyllidis, this forced hiatus provides an opportunity to reflect on how environmental aspects can be improved in the future. Triantafyllidis thus advocates collaboration between sports organizations and global organizations such as WHO and UNEP in order to facilitate environmental innovation.

In Sweden, the Mistra Sport & Outdoors project has conducted several multidisciplinary studies on the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for sports, outdoor life, and the event industry (Andersson et al. 2021; Armbrecht et al. 2021). Some conclusions from the reports:

• The supply of organized activities has decreased drastically during the pandemic.

• Many events have been canceled, while others have been re-shaped, often involving an element of digitization. This applies to sports as well as training, physical activity, and outdoor life.

• Participating in sports and outdoor life together with others has become increasingly important for social life during the pandemic. For those who have not been able to participate, the lack of the social context has been challenging. (Andersson et al. 2021, v).

Theoretical background

/…/football matches involve two teams that represent specific geographical and cultural identities. These matches therefore give rise to the most potent dramatizations of binary opposition in sport (Giulianotti 1999, 10).

In Football—A Sociology of the Global Game, Richard Giulianotti (1999) analyzes the historical and social dimensions of football from various perspectives. Giulianotti is convinced that football forms an important part of all societies, stating: ‘Football is one of the great cultural institutions, like education and the mass media, which shapes and cements national identities throughout the world’ (1999, 23). Giulianotti emphasizes the importance of football clubs for integrating supporters into society, arguing that the experience of meeting and interacting with people from other clubs and nations is important for creating shared identities and solidarity at different levels (1999, 15).

The fact that football is one of the world’s largest sports—in terms of both the number of executive players and spectators—means that it is an important arena for integration, the creation of shared values, and cultural understanding. Football is also the most popular sport in Sweden measured both by the number of players and spectators. The arena is the heart of football culture, and the cultural significance of the football arena is essential in order to understand and explain how the audience has handled their supportership during the Covid-19 pandemic. John Bale (Bale 1993, 1994) is the most distinguished researcher when it comes to explaining the diversified landscape of sporting places. Bale’s starting point is Tuan’s (1974) term ‘topophilia’, describing the deep connection between people and specific places, and the affective connections with the material environment. Likewise, Bale discusses ‘topophobia’—fear and anxiety produced by certain places. Many people feel a strong sense of ‘topophobia’ towards football stadiums, their surroundings, and the areas fans occupy during match days (Bale 1993). The Swedish sociologist Johan Asplund (1983) use the term ‘placelessness’ to describe the lack of emotional connections to a place. Asplund states that humans do not live in a purely material environment; in fact, the material environment is continually mediated and shaped on several different social and cultural levels. The place can be shaped in different ways, such as a physical, concrete place or as a feeling of coming home. The concept ‘topophilia’ in its meaning makes no difference between the place and the person, but rather how they interact in a symbiosis (Asplund 1983, 169–183). Previous research shows that supporters, both male and female, express ‘topophilic’ attachments when they talk about their home stadiums (Bale 1994; Pope 2017). While Bale focused on traditional male supporters, Pope’s findings highlighted that female fans showed the same strong emotional connections to their club’s home arenas as their male counterparts.

Asplund, inspired by Relph’s (1976) book Place and Placelessness, reasons that place means more than a physical location, claiming, ‘every place is a physical habitat, but not every physical habitat is a place’ (Asplund 1983, 181). Places, Asplund writes, must have a certain permanence; a place should be possible to return to and it may be available for several generations. Asplund continues:

In addition to the mere physical orientation, one must be able to get to know a place. A place is a structured physical space of a certain permanence, to which you can ask questions—and get answers. A place is "alive" in the sense that it responds. (Asplund 1983, 181)

That the place takes notice of you would be a sign that the place responds and that the place sees and hears you, Asplund writes. A clear example is the football stadium, where the audience is both seen and heard and there is a response, positive or negative, which means that those who are in the stands inhabit that place. Spacelessness means the opposite of this—you cannot get to know your environment, you find surrogates where the most boring thing is a TV set, according to Asplund,—a real place you cherish and feel great desire to be there, lack of space means unease (Asplund 1983, 183).

Supporters’ love for their own stadium and the local community does not seem to have changed despite increased globalization, at least when it comes to football. Local patriotism is still one of the most important driving forces in supporter culture (Pope 2017, 154). Bale (1993) claims that cities in England are hardly characterized as real cities or real places if they do not have a professional football club. According to Bale (1993, 57), ‘collective identification, especially when coupled with success makes peoples feel better and engenders a sense of place pride’ (cited in Pope 2017, 157). Previous research concludes that the physical location in combination with cultural attributes such as clothes in the club’s colors are key to explaining and understanding the importance of football arenas (Bale 1993; Giulianotti 1999; Pope 2017).

The increased digitalization of sports, work-life, and everyday life is one of the most significant results of the Covid-19 pandemic. Giulianotti (1999) realized over 20 years ago that the digitalization of the media landscape would bring about major changes in supporter culture, allowing supporters to choose different ways of following their sport. Inspired by Giddens’ concept of ‘the privatization of passion’ (Giddens 1991, 162–164) and Baudrillard’s concept of the ‘hyper real’—were football matches take place within the ‘vacuums’ of empty stadiums (Baudrillard 1993, 79–80). As Giulianotti (1999) points out:

/…/Fans will not need to travel to the tournament to enjoy the sensory pleasures of ‘being there’. A combined headset and television decoder will enable the viewer to partake in an interactive experience, ‘as if’ they are there in the stadium/…/The ‘paradoxical logic’ of this new technology has a disorientating effect on the senses/…/With a post-modern circularity, football does indeed “come home” (Giulianotti 1999, 84–85).

Giulianotti argues that there is a pornographic aspect of football in the endless possibilities for different camera angles and reruns that are played repeatedly. 20 years later, VAR technology has taken this development several steps further through the physical millimeter justice that VAR cameras capture, revealing offsides that judges cannot perceive and where technology decides.

So, does technology replace the importance of the physical stadium for the supporter experience? A growing trend, due to cheaper and better equipment and more digitalized sport, in recent years is the so-called ‘man cave’—common among middle-class supporters around the world. It´s a place where domestic masculinity is created in a socially integrative way (Moisio and Beruchashvili 2016). In the prototypical man cave, a room or garage is converted into a digital playhouse where the huge TV with its high-class surround system forms the ‘altar’. The room also has a bar, a fridge in which to keep beer, and multiple club attributes such as t-shirts, flags, and a picture of the home arena of one’s favorite club. Here one is able to control the match and who is allowed to enter—one is able to create one’s own private community where football is what matters most (one of the authors of this article has visited several such caves). The act of watching football is transformed from being something public and open to everyone to something that is private and exclusive. In Giddens’ words, there is a transformation from public to private, resulting in ‘the privatization of passion’ (Giddens 1991, 162–64). Football is literally coming home.

Current research on the Covid-19 pandemic impact on sport, however, shows that digital solutions cannot replace the physical experience for everyone. A Swedish study from 2021 shows that digital events are not considered a fully-fledged alternative to physical events. More than half (55%) of the respondents claim that digital alternatives are equivalent to on-site events to a ‘very low degree’ or to a ‘fairly low degree’. Additionally, just under 20% feel that digital events are a good alternative (Armbrecht et al. 2021).

Method

The study is part of the ongoing research project ‘Voices from a Closed Sports World’ which is carried out at Malmö University in collaboration with Mistra Sports and Outdoor (Andersson et al. 2021). This study focuses on 17 interviews with sport spectators, nine men and eight women, aged 25–67. The interviewees reside in different parts of Sweden, most of them close to, or in, urban areas. Most of the interviewees were football fans, but some also supported athletics, ice hockey, floorball, handball, bandy, speedway, and orienteering. The interviews were conducted in the summer of 2020. Since the football season in Sweden runs spring-autumn, the football supporters had missed half a season at the time of the interviews.

Prior to the interviews, an interview guide was produced and a test interview was conducted in order to examine the pre-determined themes and questions (Dalen 2015, 40). Based on this test interview, questions and themes were reformulated and clarified to produce the version of the interview guide used during the interviews. The interviews were performed with digital tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and smart phones. They lasted between 30–60 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. Subsequently, the material has been thematically structured based on the themes in the interview guide, coded, and analyzed. (Dalen 2015, 78).

The research project has been conducted in accordance with Swedish legislation regarding ethics review as stipulated in the Ethics Review Act (SFS 2003:460 on ethics review of research involving humans). The project does not process sensitive personal data, nor does it process personal data related to violations of the law. The research project also abides by the Data Protection Ordinance (GDPR) and other data protection legislation and takes special account of the requirements for information, informed consent, and storage. For ethical reasons, the informants have been anonymized and assigned pseudonymous names.

Discussion and findings

Drawing on the theoretical framework of topophilia, space and place, and emotional attachment, we discuss three themes that stand out as significant from the interviews: the importance of physical places for the audience, the absence of live events, and the role of digital media and virtual places. The importance of the physical place for the supporters strengthens the impression of the centrality of the arenas for the feeling of topophilia that creates commitment and a sense of community among supporters. The supporters express a sense of placelessness when describing how much they miss visiting the stadiums—being unable to follow live events appears to create a vacuum in their emotional attachment (Giulianotti 1999).

Ongoing changes within the digital media landscape have long affected the symbiotic relationship between sports and the audience (Radmann 2013). While it is too early to draw any definitive conclusions regarding the long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on this relationship, certain themes in our material may give a preliminary indication as to future developments. In a subsequent section, we will discuss the extent to which our findings align with earlier research about football ‘coming home’ through digitalized experiences in the private sphere, with live football being replaced by the latest AV technology (Giddens 1991; Giulianotti 1999).

Physical locations for supportership

The present section describe how different physical places have got a different meaning for supporters during the Covid-19 pandemic. As discussed above, the place can be experienced in different ways, such as a physical, concrete place or as a feeling of coming home. Our study shows that the feeling of ‘coming home’ is closely connected to supporters’ home arena. Additionally, away trips seem to acquire particular meaning through the places the supporters pass while travelling to the away matches. Physical places that are given a special topophilic meaning because they are connected to a football context lose this meaning when visited by supporters outside of the football context (Bale 1993). Our interviewees indicate three main categories of places as being the most important and as the places they miss the most: the arena and the match experience, the trip to the away match, and places in cities.

The home arena and the match experience

Supporters have been unable to visit places such as sports arenas, stands, or other sporting events due to the pandemic:

The football stands are a part of your life, that is so constantly present, things you talk about, but like, when you are not at a match, you talk about what has been and then start planning for the next match as well, so it’s just like the “circle of life”, but that just like, yes has disappeared. (Viktoria)

Viktoria expresses that the ‘circle of life’ is broken because she cannot visit her favorite arena. She describes how the arena is a part of life itself; always present, the arena is linked to a continual circularity tied together through reminiscence about previous matches and planning for future matches. A strong feeling of topophilia emerges where the arena itself is the physical condition for the circle of life to continue as before. Viktoria experiences an emotional vacuum because the context for her football experience is gone—the living collective in the arena does not exist during the pandemic, producing a feeling of placelessness (Asplund 1983; Bale 1993). Victoria expresses something that many supporters experience—no audience has been able to be or be present at the match events. The supporters claim that the Covid-19 pandemic has to some extent forced them to pause their commitment, as they have been unable to visit sports stadiums to participate as an audience during matches. As our interviewee Ellen puts it, ‘I can hardly live out my support, I think. And then, I often think that supportership is about being in place and showing support, doing different activities, like painting flags’.

Ellen expresses that she cannot ‘live out’ her supportership. This statement may be interpreted to mean that living out one’s supportership requires being physically present in the arena. Topophilia—the feeling of being physically present in the arena and actively showing support for their team through various (physical activities) appears to be essential for the supporters, who seem to associate this experience with being a real supporter (Giulianotti 1999). Much of their commitment disappears when this is not possible.

Both men and women in our material express the same feeling of spacelessness when they cannot visit the stands. This lack of gender differences is congruent with Pope’s findings and suggests that both men and women have the same emotional attachments to the football arenas (Pope 2017).

The journey to the stadiums

Aside from the fact that supporters cannot visit the arena, they cannot travel with other like-minded people to matches to participate as spectators. For some supporters, travelling by car to a match can be a family activity. For others, the essential experience is to travel to the match by bus with fellow supporters of their team. Others again may undertake planned trips abroad with friends to watch their team face another European team, or to follow the Swedish national team in the European Football Championship. The trip to matches can also be regarded as a place; one which the informants describe as having disappeared, and which they miss. Per, who usually travels to different countries to follow the football team he supports says, ‘Because you always follow where the team goes, you meet everyone else, and these trips are also like a fun thing’. Further, he describes how the supporters usually travel together and that communal traveling is an important part of being a supporter. Ellen, who usually travels with supporter buses, describes that she misses traveling to other places, ‘It’s also the place, I miss it very much, very much. It is, yes, but partly that place and partly all the people there. Yes, it has changed a lot and it is empty without it’.

The joint trip to a competition or match can be interpreted as a place in which people socialize. During the trip, one visits several different places. In their recurrence, these places help create a community that includes other people and that is considered part of the sporting event that they are traveling to or from. The journey to away matches, wherever these take place, is a continuous and recurring element of supportership, contributing to a feeling of topophilia.

In relation to travel, some informants also describe places that they pass during the trip as important for their supportership and which have now ‘disappeared’ during the Covid-19 pandemic. These may include rest areas or localities where supporters usually stop for breaks or meals. Ellen says, ‘Brahehus, and such places that are sacred to my supporter culture, also disappear here then, not just arenas and match uploads’.

Brahehus is a castle ruin located near the E4 highway in Sweden adjacent to a rest area with a gas station and restaurants. It is common for drivers traveling along the road to pause there to refuel and eat. The above quote indicates that place—in this case rest stops and landmarks one passes on the way to a sporting event—is an important part of the supporter experience. Ellen describes how some places are ‘sacred’ to her supporter culture, and that these have disappeared during the pandemic. Places that are strongly associated with the football team and the community of supporters thus have special significance. The sites of repeated visits, they acquire particular meaning, being associated with happy memories. The interviewees assert that the supporter context makes these places unique and valuable—the place, Brahehus in this example, might not be perceived as unique in itself when visited by a non-supporter. It is the communal journey with like-minded supporters, sporting clothes with the club’s colors, that creates a positive atmosphere around this particular place for Ellen and her supporter friends. In other words, the symbiotic interaction between the place and the supporters creates topophilic meaning.

Places in cities

On match days, the supporters meet at specific places in either their own city where their team has home matches, but also in other cities to support the team away from home. Although these places have not physically disappeared, they have disappeared as arenas where supporters meet. The interviewees describe a sense of loss with regard to such places—which include parks, restaurants, pubs, squares, streets, corners, and other physical places—both in one’s own city and elsewhere:

Möllan, which is MFF’s haunt. On a match day, usually there are flags and people and you meet someone you know. And it is completely, completely gone now, more or less. So, it has changed a lot. Just the road between Möllan and Stadion, which as usual was a massive crowd moving, that is, yes you do not even notice that it is match day nowadays. (Lisa)

Möllan, described in the above quote, is a square with many restaurants in Malmö, where supporters of the team Malmö FF gather prior to matches before proceeding together to the arena. The road that runs between the square and the arena is described by our interviewee Lisa as a ‘massive crowd moving’—the supporters walk together to the arena, which is inaccessible during the pandemic. The square and the road leading to the arena can therefore be interpreted as two places that are part of the match event, even though the walking takes place before the match itself. These two places—the square and the road leading to the arena—have different meanings for the supporters involved. The square is a physical place where supporters customarily meet to get into the right spirit together before the match. Conversely, in the hours before the match, the supporter culture changes the square into the scene of a party populated by singing and flag-waving supporters, all of them wearing the same club-colors. Many people drink beer and the whole square is colored, literally, by the supporters’ club t-shirts and flags and figuratively by their love of their team. Gradually, more and more supporters flock to the site; the blue (MFF’s colors) crowd of thousands of supporters beginning at the square and winding its way through streets and the nearby park, all the way to the arena, united in a common goal: to cheer their team to victory. Through this communal walk, the road, the park, and the walking path itself acquire special significance for those who are part of the crowd as well as for the residents of Malmö who see and hear the singing supporters.

In the wake of the crowd of supporters, several police officers follow: some on foot, some by car, others on horses—all with weapons. This changes the meaning of the above-mentioned places for those involved during the hours leading up to the match and can create a special topophilia. For others, who may be anxious or afraid of thousands of supporters gathering, an opposite sense of strong aversion may appear, producing a feeling of topophobia (Bale 1993; Radmann 2015). Thus, the site is not just a physical square or promenade but a place that acquires a different meaning on match days. During the pandemic, both the square and the promenade have lost their topophilic dimension for those who participate in the supporter culture, as well as their topophobic dimension for those who dislike this culture.

Another interviewee, the football supporter Maja, mentions other places. Maja describes how her team would have faced rivaling club Varberg BoIS away during the summer of 2020 were it not for the pandemic. Varberg is a coastal town in Sweden and a popular summer destination. Maja:

I have not been able to be in the stands, have not been able to be in arenas in general, have not been able to see different parts of Sweden in different seasons/…/, not only season as in football season, but also in weather seasons as well as, seasons, it is a pretty big experience and it is something that I like to feel, like experiencing sports in different weather, I would visit Varberg’s arena for the first time, which I had really looked forward to. (Maja)

Visiting different arenas under different weather conditions and seasons and in different cities is part of supporting a team and something the interviewees attest to missing. Arenas visited during away matches could also be interpreted as places where audience engagement is strong. In other words, it is not only the home arena, but also arenas in other cities in Sweden, that can be seen as recurring places for the supporters, and thus also part of the creation of topophilia.

Maja’s words can also be interpreted to mean that seasons—experiencing football under different weather conditions—are an important factor in the audience’s sense of place. Those who follow a team for several consecutive years want to experience the seasons—by, for instance, watching football in a town like Varberg during the summer—with weather, wind, and time characterizing the experience, the place, and its memories. In Sweden, the football season begins in late winter/early spring and ends in late autumn, meaning that all kinds of weather can be experienced during one football season.

Virtual sites of supportership

The informants describe differing experiences of how the pandemic has affected their media use in terms of audience and supporter involvement. Some have spent more time in front of various screens and media platforms while others feel that their media use, especially when it comes to social media, has declined. This section describes the experience of following sports without a live audience via digital platforms and how the supporters’ involvement and engagement in social media has been affected during the pandemic.

To follow sports via digital platforms and streaming

While some of the interviewees were already in the habit of following their team via digital platforms, this was new for others. Both supporters who had previously followed sports via digital platforms and streams and those whom the pandemic compelled to do so stress the sense that something is lost when there is no live audience at competitions and matches:

But even the Premier League, now when they play without an audience, has become very strange. It’s basically like watching training matches. It will not be the same at all and it is especially in the Premier League, where there will be no crowd. It will not really be the same football. There is not really the same feelings and commitment in the players, and it is only natural that you, you realize more what you are missing. (Thomas)

Thomas’ statement could be interpreted to mean that his audience interest, which usually takes place via a digital screen, is also linked to the presence of a physical audience at the match he is watching. These words can be understood to mean that Thomas views the live audience as part of the place in which the football match is played, and which is now unavailable even though the matches themselves take place. The lack of an audience on digital broadcasts is highlighted as a substantial loss by those who watch sport via live streamed broadcasts on various digital platforms or on TV.

Those who usually follow their team or sport on site agree with Thomas that a football match without an audience is not the same. Erik says, ‘It’s not the same, watching TV, I do not think. So, it’s a substitute and it’s what you get, you take. But football without an audience, I think is pretty dead, it’s soulless’.

Jonas also misses the audience, but is still content with the digitized experience and has continued to follows the league intensely. He expresses, ‘I still think that the Allsvenskan works—to watch on TV. I have still seen some matches because it is still, still the Allsvenskan’.

Erik’s and Jonas’ quotes shows that they consider the audience as part of the sport they usually follow. Their commitment, though cooled, is still there, and they express a need to follow, view, and be part of both the league and the team. As indicated above, we can interpret their words to mean that they consider the audience as part of the activity that creates the place/arena where football matches are played. They also regard the lack of an audience as something that is missing for the match and for the game—as Erik phrases it, the game is ‘dead’ without spectators.

Following their sport on social media

Our material shows how audience involvement in sports has to some extent moved to social media. Some of our interviewee’s state that their supporter engagement through social media has increased while others attest that it has decreased radically. The latter category of interviewees explains this by the fact that there is little to discuss on social media when matches are suspended and supporters unable to gather and watch football together (as was the case at the time of the interviews). Thus, at the same time as audience interest and support has moved online, the use of social media in relation to supporter activity has decreased:

Yes, I have thought about it a lot. I have not used Twitter at all. Because what should you argue about on Twitter when you have not argued about it in the stands? (Viktoria)

No, there has not been any activity when the matches have no audience, then I have not started any discussion on social media at all in the same way/…/The ongoing conversation and fuss is not going on. (Olof)

These quotes show that live audiences are needed to keep the discussion and engagement on social media alive. While supporters were unable to be part of a football audience — much of the social context lost its purpose. When the audience is not present, social media discussions may be perceived as devoid of purpose; supporters do not share the same relationship to an event as they were not there to experience it.

Our findings are, however, ambivalent, as other supporters attest to increased engagement on social media. During the pandemic, football clubs have arranged a variety of activities on social media, including digital quizzes and competitions as well as various campaigns to raise money for their clubs. Some football clubs have established independent studios and shows dedicated to their own history. The clubs have posted videos on their websites or on YouTube highlighting past successes and achievements. Some of the interviewees, who serve on the boards of their respective clubs, indicate that board meetings have become more open and public because they have been digital. Lisa, who is involved in a supporter association, provides further examples of how social media use has increased:

We have run a quiz over YouTube, which we posted before which was very fun and that worked better than you might think. […] And then we have had player interviews on Instagram that have received very, very many viewers and reactions.

The player interviews Lisa mentions can be seen as a new way for the club to keep in touch with supporters, using social media to increase the contact areas between supporters and players. Another interviewee, Maria, states that there has been more direct contact with the players, ‘Well, one thing that differs before the pandemic is that we are very much better at supporting the players, sending messages to them’.

This is an example of how supporters themselves increase their contact with the club and players, contacting the players directly via their social media accounts. Social media has been an important tool for maintaining interest and commitment, both between club and supporters and between supporters. Social media can be understood as a tool and a complement to on-site audience engagement. However, supporters seem more hesitant to partake in online discussions when they have not experienced the match live.

New physical locations under covid-19

The physical places that the supporters have frequented during the Covid-19 pandemic have mainly been at home on the couch or outdoors in their immediate neighborhoods. Many of them have also begun spending more time outdoors; for example, in order to socialize with friends and family, or to find an alternative activity instead of following their team. Håkan says:

The forest has become even more important, I would say. Nature. Now we live so well too, so that there is a lot of forest and water around. But yes, I guess I have more, more outdoors, homecoming, then.

When sports have been shown on TV, the interviewees have mainly watched from home, and usually from their couch. They describe watching matches and competitions with family members or close friends. As stated by Viktoria, ‘So, for me it has mostly been that I have seen matches at home, yes, via like some type of streaming service at home in my living room’.

Watching sports on TV is not an entirely new experience to the supporters; even before the pandemic, the interviewees were not able to physically attend all competitions that interested them. However, there is a clear difference between occasionally watching sports at home on one’s couch to this becoming one’s primary manner of watching sports.

The live feeling—what the supporters miss the most

When asked what they miss the most about watching matches physically in the arenas, the interviewees emphasize the atmosphere, the community, and the emotions, which together form a holistic experience. Maria highlights the profound social exchange she experiences at matches as well as how football matches function as a source of continuity and stability in her life:

It’s the meetings and the socializing. To feel that it is one, yes but one, one like, a fixed place in one’s life, one knows like that, that it is permanent and just be there and know that when I come, yes but then that this week it is football, when I get there I know what I can expect, I know that when I get there, this and that will be delivered in the social exchange. Then you have no idea what happens in the match, but if it’s a big match, I know I will get this excitement, the tingling, the anxiety, the rush of joy when the march is ongoing. (Maria)

For Maria, the social interaction at the stadium is an integral part of the support and something that she describes as ‘a fixed place’ in her life, indicating an emotional attachment and a strong feeling of topophilia connected to the interaction that occurs at the arena.

Thomas highlights the strong physical and mental feeling he experiences when attending a live event:

The pulse. So, the proximity to a live arena when you are in an exciting match. You can almost feel the atmosphere. That is, if you cannot play yourself, you can almost be a part of the match. By being there and feel the energy and the emotions that are around. You can never get that on TV. Without, seeing the sweat, hearing the bangs. You know, hearing how people struggle and struggle. It’s like that which gives a moment of excitement that is difficult to replace with television. (Thomas)

Thomas emphasizes ‘feeling the pulse’, meaning a strong sense of presence in combination with a physical experience, as the most essential aspect about being physically present in the arena during the matches. The pulse, sweat, sounds, and loud bangs form part of Thomas’ description of a deeply physical experience that he feels is lost when matches are digitized.

Other interviewees also portray some of their experiences during the pandemic in terms of what is lost when physical attendance at matches is precluded. They express that they struggle to attain the same feeling and sense of commitment when not on site. The emotions they often describe are the energy, the excitement, the joy, and the anxiety, as the quotes above show.

The interviewees describe the sense of community and the atmosphere as linked to sharing a physical space with other supporters. In other words, they do not wish to be alone in the audience; their experience is dependent on others being present and actively participating in the event. Being an audience can thus be interpreted as something that touches and requires the presence of other participants as spectators in order to create a shared community.

The specific experience and feeling offered an audience on site, and which is more difficult to provide through TV and streaming platforms, can thus be interpreted as a bodily experience. The quote from Maria also conveys that the person misses having their own place, which they describe as a ‘permanent’ and important place in their lives.

Conclusion

The physical contextuality of the football grounds has been lost during the Covid-19 pandemic as it has not been possible physically to attend either home or away matches. Both the home city’s specific supporter sites and other cities’ arenas have lost their topophilic meaning during the pandemic.

A crucial criterion for a real place is that it is shared, and the deep sense of place is social. Visiting a real place means leaving one’s own corner and doing something collective—the egocentric space and the social space coincide, and the feeling of place implies deep participation (Asplund 1983, 184). The different ‘rooms’ of sport—including the actual arena, the physical places in the city that the supporters associate with their team, and the physical places that are important in connection with travel to sport events—are real places that the supporters miss and long for.

A physical locality needs to be shared—common, collective, and characterized by community—in order to be experienced as a genuine place (Asplund 1983). The place needs a social understanding of how people should orient themselves in it. The place must also be able to express itself by making an impression and it must be possible to make an impression on the place. In modern society, the place that topophilia represents is a security and somewhere to return to, which Asplund (1983) states is important for people’s sense of well-being. Our findings confirm this—most of the supporters long for their home stadiums where they can socialize with each other and create a common history both for themselves and for the next generation. There is also a strong sense of pride connected to the home arena—the supporters, supporting Malmö FF, tell us about ‘Their stadium, the stadium for all people living in Malmö, a place called home’. The emotional attachment and the commitment to the stadium is thus something the supporters are aware of and able to explain.

Our material does not support a decisive conclusion that the Covid-19 pandemic has strengthened ‘the privatization of passion’, discussed by Giddens (1991) and Giulianotti (1999). Though our material indicates a privatization of supportership in the sense that more supporters follow their sport through different media channels, it also appears as though passion for the digitalized version of sport has decreased. Digitization without a base in the physical place and in the social community in the arena seems to be losing its value. The partial decrease is explained by the fact that supporters have not shared an experience on-site in the physical stadium that can then be followed up through discussions on social media. This way of communicating has largely disappeared during the pandemic.

However, there has also been an increase in communication on social media, not least in the contact between active sport practitioners and their audiences. Several interviewees claim that they have gained closer contact with the players, who have been more accessible on social media and been active in communicating with their supporters. Several sports clubs have actively sought financial support from fans through social media campaigns, ranging from charging money for digital away trips and media links to matches in exchange for season tickets to other efforts to strengthen the clubs’ finances. Another finding is that the work of club boards has become digitalized and, consequently, more transparent.

Contemporary digital technology is awe-inspiring; with total richness of detail in television coverage, everything happening on the field is meticulously portrayed. Media and technical conditions are optimal; TV screens have never been bigger, picture quality has never been better, the surround sound is spectacular. Nonetheless, our interviews suggest the football experience is incomplete due to the absence of the most important player; player number twelve, the supporters. Giulianotti’s (1999) idea of football ‘coming home’ is still relevant, but the digital football experience is empty without a live audience—it creates a vacuum in the emotional attachment for the supporters. Despite this, the mancaves can play an important role as therapeutic, integrative spaces and afford men a place for ‘reinventing themselves’ (Moisio and Beruchashvili 2016, 647) as true football supporters and as more and more women are football supporters, perhaps mancaves in the future will contain both men and women watching sport together.

As of the time of writing (2021) most adults in Sweden have been vaccinated, while many young people are still unvaccinated. Schools have just opened again after the holidays; football clubs can welcome a limited number of spectators—and infection rates are rapidly rising again. As a result, it is not possible to draw any definitive conclusions about the ultimate consequences of the pandemic on Swedish and international sport and its audience. Further research is needed.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to associate professor Manon Hedenborg White for language editing and useful comments. We would also like to thank Alexander Jansson, Jens Radmann and Karin Andersson who took part in the collection of data and the data analysis within the research  project Voices from closed stadiums.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Swedish Research Council for Sport Science and The Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research.