'Surf's up!':A call to take english soccer fan interactions on the internet more seriously

Soccer fandom practices in England have been significantly impacted by globalization. The creation of the Premier League in 1992, and the way in which satellite television company BSkyB dominated coverage of this, together with other developments, have led to changes in how fans consume top-level English soccer. Whilst such global transformations are well documented in the sociology of soccer literature, the implications of the rise of the most advanced global form of communication - the Internet - on the practices of fans of English soccer clubs, have not been fully taken into account by academics. As such, the significance of the Internet as a site for fans to interact remains under-investigated. This article argues that online interactions between fans of English clubs need to be taken more seriously by academics if they are to more fully understand how soccer contributes to the maintenance of social identities in contemporary England

The Evolutionary Significance of Red Sox Nation: Sport Fandom as a Byproduct of Coalitional Psychology

Sport fandom has received considerable attention from social scientists, yet few have considered it from an evolutionary perspective. To redress this gap, we develop the hypothesis that team sports exhibit characteristics that activate mechanisms which evolved to facilitate the development of coalitions in the context of small-scale warfare. Based on this by-product hypothesis, we predicted a correlation between fandom and binding (i.e. group-relevant) concerns, especially loyalty. To test this prediction, we administered the Sport Spectator Identification Scale (SSI) and the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) to 495 undergraduates. The MFQ measures three binding concerns, including loyalty, and two individualizing ones, harm and fairness. As predicted, fandom correlated significantly with loyalty ( r = .27) and, within men, the two other binding concerns, authority ( r =.22) and purity ( r = .24). By contrast, fandom did not significantly correlate with harm or fairness. In addition, we predicted and found that men reported significantly higher levels of fandom (Cohen's d =.45) and loyalty ( d = .27) than did women. In conclusion, this study presents data supporting the coalitional by-product hypothesis of fandom and should spur further research using fandom as a window into our evolved psychology