ABSTRACT
It is one of the most peculiar phenomena in sports cultures worldwide that the most successful team with the most fans in any given country or city is often at the same time the most unpopular among everybody else in the country, city, or league. The New York Yankees, for example, continue to maintain a love-hate relationship with baseball fans across the USA and even with fans in their hometown New York City, where in the past the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Mets used to fascinate urbanites with their image of the likable though unsuccessful underdog. The top European soccer teams with a comparable magnitude in their respective leagues, such as Juventus F.C. in Italy or Bayern Munich in Germany, experience the same. Fans who usually find it hard to agree on anything (be it referee decisions, the likability, or the talent of certain players) because they are emotionally attached to different teams come together in the same blog or Facebook group to agree on one thing: that Juventus, the Bayern, or the Yankees are simply despicable. Sport teams thus represent a simple, yet most fitting example of Lüthe’s and Pöhlmann’s assessment that today, cultural products are often popular and unpopular at the same time (cf. 21).
