Consuming Sport

Consuming Sport offers a detailed consideration of how sport is experienced andengaged with in the everyday lives, social networks and consumer patterns of itsfollowers. It examines the processes of becoming a sport fan, and the social andmoral career that supporters follow as their involvement develops over a life-course.

It argues that while for many people sport matters, for many more, it does not.Though for some sport is significant in shaping their social and cultural identity,it is often consumed and experienced by others in quite mundane and everdayways, through the media images that surround us, conversations overheard andin the clothing of people we pass by.

As well as developing a new theory of sport fandom the book links this dis-cussion to wider debates on audiences, fan cultures and consumer practices.The text argues that for far too long consideration of sport fans has focused onexceptional forms of support ignoring the myriad of ways in which sport canbe experienced and consumed in everyday life.

Garry Crawford is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Studies in Sport atSheffield Hallam University, UK.

Consuming SportFans, sport and culture

Garry Crawford

First published 2004by Routledge11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

& 2004 Garry Crawford

Typeset in Goudy by BC Typesetting Ltd, BristolPrinted and bound in Great Britain byTJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,or other means, now known or hereafter invented, includingphotocopying and recording, or in any information storage orretrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and informationin this book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However,neither the publisher nor the author can accept any legal responsibility orliability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of drugadministration, any medical procedure or the use of technical equipmentmentioned within this book, you are strongly advised to consult themanufacturer’s guidelines.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataA catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0–415–28890–8 (hbk)ISBN 0–415–28891–6 (pbk)

For my Mom and Dad, thank you for always being there.

Contents

Preface ixAcknowledgements xi

PART I 1

1 Introduction 3

PART II

Studying sport fans 17

2 Conceptualizing sport fans 19

3 Sport fan communities 52

PART III

The sport venue 63

4 The meaning of the contemporary sport venue 65

5 Consumption, spectacle and performance 77

6 Social control and supporter violence 89

PART IV

Everyday life 103

7 Sport fans and everyday life 105

8 Consumer goods 112

9 Mass media and new media technologies 130

PART V 155

10 Conclusion 157

Notes 161References 164Index 178

viii Contents

Preface

This book has arisen out of the ideas and thoughts developed in my doctoralthesis. However, this is not the book of the PhD. My doctoral thesis consistedspecifically of an ethnographic analysis of the followers of one particular sportteam: the British ice hockey team Manchester Storm1 (Crawford 2000). Britishice hockey in the late 1990s presented a significant case for understanding thecontemporary nature of sport fans. Ice hockey is a sport with little (recent)history or tradition in Britain, which in the early 1990s was reinvented andmarketed towards a more affluent ‘family-based’ audience (see O’Brien 1998).It was sold to this audience as ‘another show . . . with [a] Disney, concert men-tality’, where the spectators were given an ‘entertainment package’ – to quotethe (then) Marketing Director of the Manchester Storm (Crawford 2003).This presented a significant example of the changing nature of contemporarysport, and how a sport, stripped of heritage, tradition and the importance oflocality2, could be sold alongside other forms of ‘family entertainment’ such ascinemas and theme parks.

British ice hockey constitutes an advanced example of the globalization,commercialization and changing nature of sport, and it would have been easyto damn the new followers of this sport as ‘cultural dopes’ (Garfinkel 1967) and‘inauthentic’ in their patterns of support – as had already been done by manylongstanding ice hockey fans (Sluyter 1996). However, three years of researchon this particular supporter base revealed a far more complex picture of therelationship between these fans and the sport than many macro-process theories,such as those of globalization, commonly allow for. In particular, this sport wasconsumed, utilized and experienced in the supporter’s everyday lives in manydifferent and complex ways. This support formed the basis of social interactions,networks and performances, and was the foundation of both social distinctionsand community as well as a constituent part of many fans’ social identities.

Though the nature of British ice hockey has witnessed rapid change andredevelopment over the past decade or so, it has continued to occupy an impor-tant role in the everyday lives of its followers. However, far too often researchand discussions of the contemporary nature of sport have focused upon itschanging nature and macro-processes, with little interest or concern for patternsof continuity and how sport is received and constructed in the everyday lives of

its followers. Put simply, though many studies of contemporary sport tell us whatfans get, they do not tell us what they then do with this.

Though this book does on occasion draw on data gathered from my ownresearch on British ice hockey fans, this book expands these debates and discus-sion beyond this limited scope, drawing on a range of secondary sources, litera-ture and data, to provide a much wider picture of the contemporary nature ofsport fans. Inevitably, relying on secondary material published in English andavailable in the UK means that the majority of these data and examples are pre-dominantly either British or North American. However, it is my assertion thatmany of the arguments set out in this book could be applied (to a greater orlesser extent) to the followers of other sports in other late-capitalist societies.

A second consequence of relying on existing data and literature on sport fansis that the vast majority of this has been written on the followers of male massspectator sports3. Though numerous authors have highlighted that morewomen are now regularly attending and following sport than probably everbefore (see Wann et al. 2001), it is apparent that the majority of these are stillattending and following sports dominated by male participation. However,this inevitable focus on male mass spectator sports does not mean that genderis irrelevant to this debate, and in many ways is quite fundamental to under-standing both the changing nature and continuity within the contemporarynature of sport fan culture4.

Garry Crawford

x Preface