ABSTRACT

Consuming Sport offers a detailed consideration of how sport is experienced and engaged with in the everyday lives, social networks and consumer patterns of its followers. It examines the processes of becoming a sport fan, and the social and moral career that supporters follow as their involvement develops over a life-course.

The book argues that while for many people sport matters, for many more, it does not. Though for some sport is significant in shaping their social and cultural identity, it is often consumed and experienced by others in quite mundane and everyday ways, through the media images that surround us, conversations overheard and in the clothing of people we pass by.

As well as developing a new theory of sport fandom the book links this discussion to wider debates on audiences, fan cultures and consumer practices. The text argues that for far too long consideration of sport fans has focused on exceptional forms of support ignoring the myriad of ways in which sport can be experienced and consumed in everyday life.

part I|16 pages

chapter 1|14 pages

Introduction

part II|46 pages

Studying sport fans

chapter 2|30 pages

Conceptualizing sport fans

chapter 3|11 pages

Sport fan communities

part III|40 pages

The sport venue

chapter 4|38 pages

The meaning of the contemporary sport

chapter 5|12 pages

Consumption, spectacle and performance

chapter 6|14 pages

Social control and supporter violence

part IV|52 pages

Everyday life

chapter 7|7 pages

Sport fans and everyday life

chapter 8|18 pages

Consumer goods

chapter 9|25 pages

Mass media and new media technologies

part V|6 pages

chapter 10|4 pages

Conclusion