Fandom Essay

It is impossible to not talk about fandom when we try to analyze modern football, as one of the basements of the house, fandom has been affected by many aspects of social stratification. In terms of class, it also played a significant role in changing the status of fandom. Social class is regularly defined by the occupation, which splits the class into the manual (working-class) and non-manual (middle-class) occupation (Malcolm, 2008). And having acknowledged of this definition, we will take a closer look into how these two diverse classes, majorly the working class, shaped the fandom in England and the special pub football culture brought by the working class.

According to Pope (2015), football in England is traditionally regarded as a sport for the “working class”, and we can also see an uneven number of participants in football are working class (Malcolm, 2008). Considering the low cost of competing in the game and the wide-spread popularity across the country, it is hard to argue that nowadays people participate in football are not constrain by the social class. However, being a football fan is another story, it will cost much more money to watch people play than kick the ball around by yourself. As Giulianotti (2002) defined in his journal, he divided fandom into four different sectors in terms of hot & cool, traditional & consumer: supporter, fan, follower, flaneur. And each different category would occupy different amount of money and time. For the hot & consumer
fan, their connection to the club or specific players will be enforced by the consumption practice (Giulianotti, 2002). And even for the traditional & hot supporters, Marxism will interact with their emotional investment with the club in terms of the home tickets and half time drink. The average cheapest price of one match day ticket of the EPL match is £30.68 in 2015 (Critchley, 2015). Giving this statistic, Giulianotti (2011) took the famous 1990 Talyor report as a measurement, Talyor pointed the cheapest seat in the matchday stadium should be around £6, and the equivalent inflation rise is about 90 percent, whereas the lowest price of one ticket is 400 percent higher than the recommended £6. Compare to other major football leagues in Europe, for instance, La Liga and Bundesliga, the ticket price is way higher (Pettinger, 2016). Despite the durable local bonds between the supporters and the clubs, the ridiculous match day cost is somehow pushed some of the long-term fans back to the sofa. It is necessary to physically in the location of the live game as a “supporter” in Giulianotti (2002)’s definition, but it becomes harder and harder for the working class to cheer for the team in the stadium. Even if the fan is passionate about the game, and having a traditionally local bond with the team, the inevitable role of Marxism in the modern football has priced out the working class from the match day experience. Many fans nowadays will only choose matches to go instead of going everyone as before (BBC, 2013).

Nevertheless, there are always alternatives for football fans, the high-ticket price has helped the prosperity of the football pub culture. The pub culture gained its popularity long before the Marxism interact with the football, as Huggins (2004) clarifies that it became a habit for football supporters to gather in the local ale house to discuss the latest match and to prospect the future ones throughout the 19th century. Originally, the pub and football are both defined as for working class, the pub and football is a reasonable combination. The tradition has inherited in today’s football fandom culture. In Dixon (2013)’s interview with Tina, a 19 years old Middlesbrough fan, Tina pointed now the real fans go to the pub more than to the match themselves. The youthful fandom revealed the pub above the stadium, and for them, the concept of “be there” need not to be necessarily the stadium (Dixon, 2013). The intense atmosphere in pub outweighs the actual game atmosphere because you will seat next to strangers in the stadium, not the mate you permanently know in the pub (Dixon, 2013). The concept of the “supporter” (Giulianotti, 2002) has been shaped by the prosperous pub culture and the highly currency dependent live match experience. Instead of travel to the stadium, some fans will travel 10 miles to one specific pub to watch the game with their mates (Dixon, 2013). The pub, a place for working class to relax (Dixon, 2013), has magnificently affected the football fandom in England.

There are also some distinct examples of the social class historically representing the different club in the same region.
For instance, in the city of Manchester, it is commonly being seen that the Man City represents the working class and the Man United represents the middle class, and public do view their fans contrarily due to the different club represents (Hughes, 2014). This is the situation when the social class influences the regional rivalry and set up the background for the club
fans.

Although recently, as Fürtjes(2014) argues, football has become a classless football due to the bourgeoisification of the football crowds, the ways fans use to cheer for the team are inherited from the early working class. And also, fans claimed that the stadium becomes “quiet” on the match day (Dixon, 2013), which is a direct result of this bourgeoisification of the fans. The different social class constitutes the whole fandom culture in England, though the commercialization of the modern football market has excluded some of the working-class fans (BBC, 2013), the traditions made by the working class remain and vibrate among the neo hybrid class crowd of football fandom.