What Does it Mean to be a Loyal Sports Fan? Sports Communication Expert Weighs In

As the Super Bowl nears, two teams – and two fanbases – will have the chance to win a championship.

But what about the rest of the teams that have seen the season come to an end without earning a ring?

While hearts may be broken now, when preseason begins this summer, those teams and their fans will begin a new season with hope that this is “the year.”

So why do fans keep coming back to the teams they love? We asked Stephen Andon, Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, to weigh in.

What keeps fans hopeful, even after a season or years of losses?

Sports fandom is an inherently hopeful cultural practice, in large part because sports are so unpredictable. On any given day, any given team or player can win. It’s why even the smallest sports Cinderellas still believe they have a chance.

For example, every semester I ask my Sports Communication students, “If you could pick any team to be a part of, from any point in history, what team would you choose?” At least one student mentions the 2008 New York Giants, who famously upset the undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl 42. It is largely regarded as one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history and it resonates even for those too young to remember the event.

Hope is always eternal, but never more so than in sports. This is partly due to the idea that hope is also a collective feeling, intensified through what communication theorists would call identification – or sharing and connecting with those around us – whether it’s gathered around a TV at home with family and friends while wearing a lucky shirt, or at the stadium with thousands of other screaming fans.

Talk about fanatic behavior. What makes a loyal fan?

The first component of a fan is the idea of ritual. Professional sports is highly ritualistic – games occur at regular intervals, at regular seasons during the year, and to be a fan requires this kind of annual participation. For many, being a fan is a tremendous part of their family identity. Consider the example of Giants QB sensation Tommy DeVito, a New Jersey kid from a family known for their tailgate parties rife with chicken cutlets. Loyalty to a team offers the chance for fans to come together on game days, whether that is at home, a local sports bar or at the stadium. These regular, ritualistic, performances deliver comfort and community.

Related: How a Montclair professor’s piece about Tommy DeVito’s Italian hand motion sparked a cultural conversation

Emotions and feelings are the second component of being a loyal sports fan. The powerful feeling of elation after a win can be so powerfully rewarding that any suffering that comes with the lows will be worth it in the end. Famously long championship droughts by the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, or the Cleveland Cavaliers, for example, have shown that even after decades of losing, the payoff of being able to celebrate is worth it. Suffering fan bases are bound together through hope that, despite what’s happened, the next game could very well be different and could deliver on the ultimate feeling in sport of being crowned champion.

Why do many fans feel so personally invested in their teams?

Fans tend to overestimate their direct influence on a team’s performance, but it’s an inherent part of sports fandom. Researchers have investigated the language that fans use regarding their teams after wins and losses, and it’s no surprise to find that fans of teams that are winning use more “we language,” like “we won last night,” while fans of teams that are losing choose language that separates themselves from the team, like “they lost last night.”

The identities of fans can often be tied closely to the performance of the team, and our impact on the team as a result is often mythologized. Sports media often ranks which teams have the best “home-field advantage,” a quasi-scientific means of measuring just how much impact a group of fans can have on the game – the Seattle Seahawks, for example, call their fans “the 12th man,” as do fans at Texas A&M football games. There is a real belief that fans are able to both positively motivate their home team and somehow negatively impact the visiting opponents.

What role do superstitions play in sports fandom, and why do fans feel responsible for their team’s success?

Sports often can come down to one play, one moment that can change the outcome of a game at any time. With the margins between victory and losing so razor thin, fans believe that any little bit of magic, luck, good juju, whatever you want to call it, can make a difference. So, fans do feel like they have agency, or power, to influence an outcome. This is perhaps best observed in professional soccer, where chanting, singing, and music-playing supporters bang on drums, jump, and generally embody chaos for the entirety of the game. The collective understanding among these groups is that their energy is connected to the energy of the players, and that – especially in a sport that can be decided by a single goal – their volume and passion can inspire their team.

Superstitions are a curious part of sports, a sort of magical quality that can tip the balance in contests. It’s all a part of the irrationality, or emotional quality of sport and sports fandom.

How do discussions about sports fan behavior and similar topics prepare your students as future professional sports communicators?

As communicators, we recognize how critical it is to know what makes our audience tick. And so, as we train students to be storytellers and creators in this field, they absolutely must understand their audience. That includes understanding the history of sport and how fan cultures developed, in addition to theories that help us understand fan behavior and investigate how the media covers and creates meaning around sport. I offer two courses as examples:

• Students in Introduction to Sports Storytelling learn how myths adopted by our culture through the centuries are reflected in the stories we write and film and edit about sports. Think of the Cinderella narrative, David vs. Goliath narrative, or the hero’s quest – these are all recognizable storytelling archetypes that fans embrace, or sometimes reject, that our students must understand in order to write the next story.
• In Sports, Media, and Society, we talk about fan rituals and creative activity, in addition to the impact that big ideas like media framing, or commodification have for the common sports fan. We also tackle ethical questions that fans face, and how the consumption of sports might look if fans were in charge. And we use theory to consider how the media frames the success or failure of athletes or teams on the big stage.

Related: I actually wrote a journal article about a successful group of fans who prevented their team from relocating back in 2018.

These ideas, histories, and theories provide the foundational platform for our students to embark upon careers in sports media.

Photo by Mike Peters for Montclair State University

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