The Female Vikings,a Women's Fan Group in Denmark: Formation and Development in the Context of Football and Fan Histories

Traditionally, football and fandom have been male domains and celebrations of masculinity. So far there has been some sociological and historical research on women's football; however, little is known about women's fandom, in particular about its formation and development. This article focuses on the historical development of a Danish women-only fan group called ‘The Female Vikings’, which support a professional football club, Lyngby Boldklub (BK), in a city north of Copenhagen. The article explores the backgrounds and motivations of female fans, as well as their ways of staging femininity in a man's world. Drawing on available information about football and fans in Denmark, we have reconstructed the developments of both Lyngby BK and its supporters. Special focus was placed on the histories and cultures as well as the experiences of female fans in this club. Insights into the foundation of the women's fan group were provided by problem-centred interviews which also contained open questions. The foundation and activities of the Female Vikings show how women can perform gender in the fan's stands and how they play a significant role in the fan movement. The interviews also reveal the loyalty of the female fans during the club's ‘crisis’ and their ‘collective memories’.     

‘It was precious to me from the beginning’: material objects,long-distance fandom and home

Material objects and football fandom are intimately linked. As a repository of emotion, memorabilia holds value as a marker of identity. For many football fans, the conception of ‘home’ is integral to their identity. Despite its centrality to football fans’ construction of identity, the notion of ‘home’ has received little attention from sports scholars. Drawing on recent work in cultural geography, this paper employs concepts of home to explore the ways in which materiality holds identity for football fans. Evidence from New Zealand-based fans of European teams displays how material objects are able to collapse distance between fans and their club, acting as palimpsests for memory and narratives for significant emotional experiences. Embedded in the New Zealand home of the fan, memorabilia resides as an emotional bridge to their football home locality, stadia and supporters.     

Fandom face to face

This essay focuses on the contexts away from the stadium where fans congregate, organise, develop and learn to perform their fandom. I define the concept of performance and show how it applies to fandom. I describe how, in small to medium scale, face-to-face settings, fans are able to form bonds and validate each others’ fandom. For some, fandom is an extension of playing the game as in Holland, where one might play in the amateur ranks of one of the famous professional teams. In Italy, organised fandom follows from a history of neighbourhood social clubs. I describe the Roma Club Testaccio as the epicentre of Roma fandom, and how it serves to educate fans in Roman-ness. Hardcore fan clubs support the team home and away, and I describe one of my own intense experiences travelling on the bus with some of the most notorious hardcore fans in Italy. Italians can also visit the grounds at which their beloved team practices and where they can catch a glimpse of the players up close, and connect with other devotees. As these snapshots demonstrate, the social gatherings of fans away from the football stadium are where fandom takes shape.     

Fan politics: dissent and control at the stadium

This essay delves into the theoretical and practical dimensions of political expression at the stadium. While previous chapters are organized around the form of media, this essay considers the breadth of media put to use to convey political sentiments. While the notion of sport as apolitical has surface appeal, the stadium has always been political, and provided that sport continues to aggregate tens of thousands of fans in an enclosed space, there is little hope of eliminating politics. The stadium offers the chance for average citizens to gain a voice and, I argue, the stadium is an important part of the public sphere. The chapter considers how the stadium is used for dissent in several contexts. In Italy, the stadium has long been a site of political expression while more recently, in Cairo and Istanbul, football fandom has provided the tools to directly confront the state.     

The importance of research on the ultras: introduction

Abstract

The ultras have become the most spectacular form of football fandom in the early twenty-first century. Thanks to global media, social media and increased travel, fans view, engage and interact with a range of fans from across the globe and bring various local dimensions to their fandom. This volume brings together a range of articles into the ultras style of football fandom. Whilst the ultras phenomenon began in Italy, then spread across Southern Europe into Northern Europe, it has now become truly global. This volume is designed to be an introduction; a first account of ultras for the uninitiated. What follows are analyses and accounts of ultras in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Israel, North America, Australia, Indonesia and Croatia. Not only does this demonstrate the prevalence of the ultras style of fandom across the globe, it shows how football becomes an important cultural arena to see the intersections of globalisation and localism.     

Of magic and mania: reflections on the fan following of Brazilian football and Pelé in Calcutta

Why do Indians celebrate Brazilian football? Is it because Indians do not have local stars to root for? Why does it have to be Brazil? Why was a generation of football fans in Calcutta in awe of an exotic South American footballer called Pelé? This essay responds to these conundrums by analysing transnational football fandom from perspectives of cultural diffusion and image-making. It situates circulation of culture in a historical study of the impact of Brazilian football, with particular emphasis on Pelé, as borne out by fan culture in India. It examines if the similarities between India and Brazil in the global meridian of development had any bearing on football fandom. Next, it studies particularly how Pelé’s visit to Calcutta in 1977 was registered by the overlapping categories of fans, politicians and journalists. By doing so, it offers a model of understanding moral/cultural networks of transnational fandom in terms of hero/icon/legend worship.     

Sport activism and political praxis within the FC Sankt Pauli fan subculture

FC Sankt Pauli is often portrayed as a rebel football club that represents an ideal manifestation of fan centredness. But whilst the club’s reputation is mostly well earned, there is much to distinguish the fans from the club and conflict between the two is prominent and ongoing. This research, based on more than 10 years of ethnography amongst the fans and questionnaires and interviews with key individuals, looks behind the scenes to reveal how fans challenge their club, the authorities and much more beyond. Authentic voices of fan activists tell a story of fervent sport activism, fan power and resistance, alive and well inhabiting a vibrant subculture. Political praxis and protest are prolific amongst Sankt Pauli fans. By illuminating the radical sport activism of Sankt Pauli fans, this paper offers a vision for other football fans to emulate and for sport more generally to realize a more transformative potential.     

Performance in the stands

This essay focuses on the football stadium and all the communicative acts that happen therein. Building on the definition of performance, this essay lists the ways in which fans communicate in the stadium in order to perform fandom. Every fan brings their voice and body to the stadium as communicative means. Others bring small banners, while many groups bring huge visual symbols and pointed messages on banners that can stretch for 50 meters. The performance of the fans at the stadium builds on the bonds formed outside the stadium. The passion that goes into everyday fandom sustains the energy that ignites in the stadium.     

Ultras in Turkey: othering,agency, and culture as a political domain

Abstract

Football administrators and non-fans or non-ultra fans in Turkey tend to posit ultras as either the ‘fire of the show’ or write them off as instruments of violence guided by irrationality. These two stances are the two sides of the same coin which points to a fascination/fear discourse that serves to produce ultras as the perfect other. The financially powerful actors of football tolerate and accommodate ultras so long as they don’t challenge dominating commercial or political interests. This relegates ultras to the supposedly innocuous realm of culture divorced from politics, especially in the aftermath of the Gezi Uprising of 2013. However, through organizations like the Fans’ Rights Association and in their everyday practices of fandom, ultras reject subjectivities assigned to them by the fascination/fear discourse, they agentively engage with their own spectacularization and othering as well as the legal or administrative efforts to contain and confine thesm.     

‘True fan = watch match’? In search of the ‘Authentic’ soccer fan

Academics have created typologies to divide association football (soccer) fans into categories based upon the ‘authenticity’ of their fandom practices. One of the main requirements of ‘authentic’ fandom has been assumed to be match attendance. The goal of this paper was to critically assess this assumption by considering how fans themselves talk about the significance of match attendance as evidence of ‘authentic’ fandom. In the light of the fact that the voices of English non-league fans on the ‘authenticity’ debate have so far been overshadowed by the overbearing focus of much previous research on the upper echelons of English soccer, an e-survey was conducted with 151 members of an online community of fans of English Northern League (NL) clubs (a semi-professional / amateur league based in North East England). Findings revealed that opinion was divided on the constituents of ‘authentic’ fandom and match attendance was not deemed to be the core evidence of support for a club by 42% of the sample. Elias (1978) suggested that dichotomous thinking hinders sociological understanding and it is concluded that fan typologies are not sufficient for assessing the ‘authenticity’ of fan activities.     

‘Highlander Ithimu yezwe lonke!’: intersections of Highlanders FC fandom and Ndebele ethnic nationalism in Zimbabwe

Football is one of the most emotive cultural forms through which people experience and express nationalism. The study demonstrates intersections of Zimbabwean Premier Soccer League (PSL) team – Highlanders FC fandom and Ndebele ethnic nationalism in Zimbabwe. This nationalism challenges state narratives of a ‘united Zimbabwe’ and advocates for secession of Bulawayo and Matabeleland provinces to form an ‘independent Ndebele nation’. Literature on Zimbabwean football has under-theorized its interface with football discourse. The author was an observer as participant in Zimbabwean football stadia for a four-year period observing terrace rituals, especially songs and chants during Highlanders FC matches. In-depth interviews were also conducted with selected fans to get clarity on observed issues. The study concludes that while discussing secession is criminalized and condemned as ‘tribalism’ in Zimbabwe, Highlanders FC fandom is a critical site where some people express feelings and aspirations towards establishment of a separate ‘independent Ndebele nation’.     

The football brand dilemma

Brands symbolize our market-dominated, globalizing world. Football brands are particularly well suited for an economy of attention where branded goods are worth more because of their connection to abstract ideas. Football is media friendly, and, in its current incantations, corporate friendly. While football teams are bound to particular places such as Manchester or Madrid, they garner massive global TV audiences that dwarf the in-stadium crowd. The ambivalent relationship between a football team and a place is a hallmark of our times. Football teams are community goods – they require people to give them value and meaning, but what people and where? What happens when fans attempt to go from symbolic to real owners of a team? The mutiny of a group of Lazio fans serves as an illustration of the tension between the performance of fandom and the market logics of branding.     

‘If God Be for Us,Who Can Be Against Us?’: Religion and Religiousness in Polish Football, 2008–2017

Abstract

Relations between sport and religion constitute an intriguing field of research. The aim of this paper is to analyze the historical development of a religious face of Polish sport (mostly football). Religion – meaning here the Catholic Church, since Poland is an almost completely Catholic country – pervades sport in different ways. The teachings of Pope John Paul II, who appreciated the role of sport in developing the all-around integrated personality, are still often recalled in Poland. The paper includes several sections. First, the policy of the Church towards sport in the last decades is discussed; then, the question of sports chaplaincy in Poland is presented. Next, public manifestations of religious beliefs of football players, managers, and fans (for example, crossing oneself or fans’ choreographies with religious overtones) are analyzed. The main focus of interest is, however, very popular religious pilgrimages organized (since 2008) by the fans of most Polish clubs. The main objective is to examine some selected cases, representative of Polish football fandom of the last decades, showing the phenomenon clearly. The study has largely been based on historical and statistical data. The information about this period (2008–2017) was garnered mainly from newspapers and fans’ publications.     

Supporters and football governance,from customers to stakeholders: A literature review and agenda for research

The commercial and political development of association football (soccer) in Europe has transformed the relationship between the sport and its fans. A growing political discourse has argued that football has lost the connection with its (core and traditional) supporters; a connection that should be regained by allowing them a greater say in the governance of the game as legitimate stakeholders. This article reviews the emerging academic literature on the role of supporters. It suggests that the evidence to support a case in favour of increased supporter involvement in football governance is limited. This group of literature is theoretically and conceptually incongruent and fraught with contradictions. Academic attention thus far is broadly divided into two areas with little overlap between them: analysis of supporter engagement at the macro (government/policy) level with a top-down focus, and sociological ‘bottom-up’ case studies of supporter engagement and activism at the micro level (individual clubs/supporter groups). The study of supporters has predominantly focused on them as customers/fans and it needs to articulate a new narrative around this ‘governance turn’ to consider supporters as stakeholders, hence responding to ongoing policy developments. By doing so, it will be possible to reconcile the existing disparate bodies of work to gain a greater understanding of the new demands from the supporters and, moreover, the literature will be better placed to have an impact, hence contributing to policy-making if public authorities decide to continue their existing agenda in favour of supporter involvement in football governance.     

Broadcast media: live and in-person

Radio broadcasts brought fans into the drama of the football match in real time for the first time. The indelible impact of radio shaped the development of football fandom in the early to middle 20th century. While television is now the biggest financial supporter of top-level football, owners used to worry that TV would diminish gate receipts. Mass media are often suspected of contributing to social alienation, this chapter shows how fans use television broadcasts to create social events. This essay discusses various viewing contexts such as pubs and fan clubhouses in order to illustrate how media is used by fans to create social bonds.     

The (Re)Constitution of football fandom: Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem and its supporters

Abstract

Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem, a fan owned club in Israel, was established in 2007 by fans of Hapoel Jerusalem, in protest against the management of the original club. The fans have adopted anti-racism, opposition to violence and inclusiveness as markers of their identity, while stressing their links with the surrounding community. The paper emphasizes the role of reflexivity and agency, as the fans built the new club to embody their aspirations. The emphasis on reflexivity is required to integrate in the analysis, both macro-social elements, and processes linked with ‘everyday life’. The paper stresses the unintended consequences of the fans’ success, in creating a football club owned by them. The performance of HKJ fandom forged, over a short time, an inclusive ‘protected space’, wherein norms of solidarity and trust were developed. Such a space attracted several thousand persons – many of them coming to football for the first time – and cultivated a sense of ‘community’ that has become of growing importance in the fans’ collective identity.     

Football and its continuity as a classless mass phenomenon in Germany and England: rethinking the bourgeoisification of football crowds

Considering football’s popular notion of a working-class sport in England and Germany – at least in the 1950s – the shift towards present classless fandom in football is mainly explained by the genesis of a middle-class fan culture induced by the process of football’s accumulating (hyper-) commodification. However, this so-called ‘bourgeoisification thesis’ cannot be verified on the basis of empirical data – neither on the basis of the employment status of people attending football matches in the stadia of the top league clubs in England and Germany between 1977 and 2009 nor on the basis of representative data pertaining to the social-class profile of regular readers of German football magazines carried out in 1954. It is demonstrated that football has enjoyed continuous popularity among all social classes. Hence, the bourgeoisification of football fandom can basically be ascribed to the inter- and intra-generational upward mobility in postmodern societies induced by socio-structural change.     

Push-and-Run between Power,Participation and Performance: Political Playmaking and the Tactics of the Asian Football Confederation

In the wake of the nomination of Qatar as host country for the World Cup 2022 and the subsequent debate on ethical and organizational aspects of running world football, more public attention has been drawn to actors that play an important role in the politically, economically, and culturally globalized ‘game’ of football. Journalists, academics, and fans have therefore spotlighted the significance of sport governing bodies in the context of aspects relating to power, profit, participation, and performance. This article provides an insight into the significance of political issues in sport in general and particularly with regard to football in Asia and the role of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Referring to the political processes within the football system as well as the political relations between non-governmental, governmental, and business actors this analysis produces an account of the complexity of football politics. Under consideration of three theoretical perspectives – globalization, neo-institutionalism, and governance – the paper assesses the AFC as Glocal Player, Corporate Actor, and Skilful Negotiator.     

Team identification and sports fandom as predictors of fan aggression: The moderating role of ageing

In the current study, the explored the moderating role of ageing in the relationship between team identification/fandom and fan aggression. The authors used an online panel-based survey that offered access to a realworld population of sports fans. Participants were 740 fans of Israeli professional basketball. Results from structural equation modelling demonstrated that older fans reported higher levels of mere sports fandom and lower levels of self-reported aggression and acceptance of aggression. Moreover, age moderated the relationships between team identification (or fandom) and self-reported aggression, such that team identification (or fandom) was more strongly associated with selfreported fan aggression among younger fans than among older fans. The moderating role of age in the relationships between team identification (or fandom) and perceptions of appropriateness of aggression was not supported. The findings contribute to our theoretical understanding of the role of ageing in the relationship between fan identification and fan aggression. Based on these findings, the authors assert that managers might particularly benefit from leveraging the potential, but often neglected, segment of senior fans, since older fans can play a key role in reducing the level of aggression during competitive sports events. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

Ultras in Indonesia: conflict,diversification, activism

Abstract

Ultras play a vital role in the life of Indonesian football. Ultra fandom has emerged as a highly visual, highly spectacular, and frequently violent form of fandom in post-reformasi Indonesia. Ultra fan groups are overwhelmingly made up of young, urban men who dedicate much of the leisure time to supporting their club – whether through being at the stadium, creating on tifos, or through social-media campaigns. Supporter groups such as PSIM’s Brajamusti are linked to the cultural and political realities of everyday life in Yogyakarta. While the Surabaya-based Bonek are engaged in an ongoing struggle against FIFA and Indonesia’s football federation. The Solo-based Pasoepati are a more recent fan group who have supported several Solo-based teams. This article draws on field work carried out between August and December 2014. The article explores how the different fan groups interact with each other with their city and how they imagine an improved ‘soccer-scape’ in Indonesia.