1st Edition
Routledge Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom
This is the first book to explore the full significance of sport fans and fandom from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, across different sports, communities and levels of engagement. It gives a comprehensive overview of the undeniable economic and cultural influence of sport industries for which fans are the driving force.
The book examines different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of fans, including typologies of fandom, and presents cutting-edge discussion across broad thematic areas such as performance and identity, the business of fandom, and fandom and media. It considers the experiences of diverse and marginalized fan groups, with an emphasis on intersectional analysis, and shines new light on key contemporary themes such as fan activism, violence and deviance, mobility and migration, and the transformative effects of digital and social media. This volume includes chapters by many of the leading scholars responsible for having laid the foundation for sport fan research as well as early-career scholars who examine the newest developments in media technologies, legalized betting, gaming, and fantasy sports.
Including perspectives from disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, management, economics, and media studies, this book is essential reading for anybody interested in the study of sport and wider society or fans and subcultures more broadly.
1. Editors’ Introduction
Danielle Sarver Coombs and Anne C. Osborne
Part I: What Is a Fan and How Do We Know?
2. Imagining the Citizen-Fan: Sport Metaphor in American Politics and Implications for Democratic Culture
Michael Butterworth
3. Using Sport Fandom to Fulfill Personal and Societal Needs
Daniel L. Wann
4. Experiences of Female Fans in a Female-Defined Sport: Central, Valued and Visible
Toni Bruce and Margaret Henley
5. Understanding Demand for Women’s Sports Begins with Understanding Men’s Sports History
David Berri
6. Comparing the Cost of Fandom in European Football
Selçuk Özaydın and Cem Tinaz
7. Building Civic Identity around a Suburban Ballpark District
Tim Kellison and Beth A. Cianfrone
8. Studying Sports Fans through Ethnographic Method: Walk a Mile in their Shoes
Jessica Richards, Keith Parry and Daniela Spanjaard
9. Media Coverage of Sports Fans: A Framing Analysis
Mark Turner
10. Rebounding as Praxis: Interrogating Positionality and Proximity in Sporting Fieldwork
Courtney M. Cox
11. Should We Admire Athletes?
Ben Bradley
12. Centering Race in Sport Fan Research: A Call to Action
Anne C. Osborne and Danielle Sarver Coombs
Part II: Who Fans Are
13. Sport Fandom: The Complexity of Performative Role Identities
Shannon Kerwin and Larena Hoeber
14. Women Sports Fans
Katharine Jones, Stacey Pope and Kim Toffoletti
15. The Sports Fanship Lifecycle
Irene I. van Driel, Walter Gantz and Lawrence A. Wenner
16. The Olympics Sports Fan: A Distinctive Demographic
Andrew C. Billings, Samuel Hakim and Qingru Xu
17. Para Sport Fandom: Fans and Followers of Paralympians
Linda K. Fuller
18. English Football, Sexuality, and Homophobia: Gay Fans’ Perspectives on Governance and Visibility
David Letts and Rory Magrath
19. Photography, Autoethnography & Mapping Sporting Transformations: A Discussion of Stuart Roy Clarke’s Work on British Football
John Williams
20. The Ecosystem of Football Supporter Groups in Brazil: Traditions, Innovation, and Hybridity
Ana Carolina Vimieiro
21. Athletes with Disabilities and their Use of Social Media to Cultivate Fandom
Joshua R. Pate and Robin Hardin
22. Engaging the Non-Local Sport Fan
Dorothy Collins
Part III: What Fans Do
23. Digital Sport Fandom
Heather Kennedy, Josh Gonzales and Ann Pegoraro
24. Online Performances of Fandom: Selective Self-Presentation, Perceived Affordances, and Parasocial Interactions on Social Media
Kathryn Coduto
25. The Construction of Sports Fandom by Sports Betting Companies
Jason Kido Lopez
26. Fandom in the Realm of Fantasy Sport
Brody J. Ruihley and Robin Hardin
27. Understanding Sport Videogames: The Extensions of Fan
Steven Conway
28. Sports Fans Hunt for Women’s Games: Beyond News Media Coverage
Anji L. Phillips and Dunja Antunovic
29. Twitter Discourse in the Southeastern Conference: The Nick Saban Effect
Vincent L. Benigni and Lance V. Porter
30. Football Fan Reactions to Video Assistant Referee: No More Hand of God
Yuya Kiuchi
31. Reconfiguring Transnational Fan Experience through Digital Media: European Football in China
Yuan Gong
32. The Commodification and Mediatization of Fandom: Creating Executive Fandom
Brett Hutchins, David Rowe and Andy Ruddock
33. Football Fans and Food: Feeding the Desire
Keith D. Parry and Jessica Richards
34. Fan Reactions to Athlete Activism: “Stick to Sports”
Stephen Warren
Biography
Danielle Sarver Coombs is Professor in the School of Media and Journalism at Kent State University, USA. She has published extensively around politics, sports, and the politics of sport.
Anne C. Osborne is Professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, USA. Her research and teaching focus on gender, media, and sport.