ABSTRACT
Pleasure is central to sport fandom. Yet, surprisingly little research has attempted to capture how fans understand fandom pleasures. Sport fan research has begun to explore fandom as gendered and there is a growing interest in examining how female fans negotiate being fans of male sports. Existing research has documented that sport is a gendered space that reinforces masculine identity, bonding and relations of power (Hargreaves 1994; Messner 1988; Whitson 1994). This research also has shown that female fans are often questioned by male supporters about their motives; men claim that women are not sufficiently committed to sport (Ganz and Wenner 1995), or that they are groupies more interested in male players’ bodies or money than in their sports performances (Gmelch and San Antonio 1998). Some academics have responded to these depictions by providing evidence of ‘authentic’ female fandom (Crawford and Gosling 2004; Gosling 2007; Ben-Porat 2009) and exposing misogynist fans (Jones 2008). Yet while providing critical challenges to the assumption that sports fandom equates to masculine fandom, limited information is available on feminized or feminine sports fandom pleasures and practices (Kim 2004; Tanaka 2004).
