ABSTRACT
Football is, incontestably, the most popular sport in France, and has been for a very long time, but there have always been fewer spectators, and it has aroused less passion, than in other major European countries. A way for assessing the importance of football in France is to look at the increase in the sums of money invested in it since the beginning of the 1980's. The regular expression of the new supporterism in France in fact begins in the 1980s. Professionalism in football was established in France in 1932, but it was not unusual up until the 1960’s for talented players to remain amateurs, adding to their salary the benefits of a possible promotion within the enterprise of the local club’s patron and the bonuses which he paid. For a long time in France, football was an affair of local notables who saw in it a means of acquiring a local and national reputation.
