Football fans and stakeholder theory – A qualitative approach to classifying fans in Germany

Abstract

PurposePublic debates and scholarly literature on football fandom are often characterised by generalisation and lacking differentiation. The changing ethnography of fans, affected by the rapid commercialisation and internationalisation of the game, reinforces the demand for contemporary classification criteria and fan typologies that take the complexity and heterogeneity of fans into account and draw a more differentiated picture of fans and sub-groups.Design/methodology/approachBased on the grounded theory methodology and a systematic literature review on stakeholder theory, stakeholder classification criteria and football fandom, the authors conduct and analyse 14 semi-structured expert interviews with fan managers employed by German professional football clubs. Building on the analysis, the authors identify, present and discuss ten contemporary criteria and five corresponding typologies for the classification of football fans.FindingsThe grounded theory analysis suggests that football fans can be characterised according to ten classification criteria. Building on the analysis, the authors derive five fan typologies that differ in their characteristics along the continua of the identified criteria. Typologies comprise (1) active fans, (2) consuming fans, (3) event fans, (4) corporate fans and (5) passive followers.Originality/valueThe paper enlarges prior knowledge on the behavioural and attitudinal characteristics of fans as individuals and adds knowledge regarding relationships within fan groups, and regarding formal and non-formal relations between fans and clubs. The results provide scholars with a framework for further scientific investigation and practitioners with a concept for a more sophisticated and differentiated approach to managing fan relations.

Just one screen is not enough: Social TV role to Brazilian fans of Major League Soccer

“…Sports fandoms are specialized consumer groups that assume several market functions (Andrews and Ritzer, 2018; Jaeger, 2021). These functions lead them to act among different networks, as well as to be an active part of several interaction flows in order to create or manifest relationships inherent to their consumption practices (Giulianotti and Numerato, 2017; Lugosi and Quinton, 2018).…”

Sportfunkciókkal kapcsolatos preferenciák a magyar atlétikában = Preferences related to sport functions in Hungarian athletics

“…A klub jellegű sportszervezet társadalmi teljesítményét hatékonyabban lehet elemezni és értékelni az érdekelt felekkel fenntartott kapcsolatai révén (Mainardes, Alves & Raposo, 2011). A sportban dolgozó vezetőknek fel kell mérniük a tágabb politikai, gazdasági és társadalmi környezet változásait, ahogyan más iparágak menedzserei is egyre inkább figyelemmel kísérik és kapcsolatba lépnek érintettjeikkel (Breitbarth & Harris, 2008;Jaeger, 2021). A sportkluboknak egyre jobb vezetési gyakorlatot kell alkalmazniuk, ahol az érintettekkel történő együttműködés és párbeszéd elengedhetetlennek bizonyul, melynek révén növelhető a politikai támogatás, információkhoz és különböző forrásokhoz való hozzáférés (Zdroik, 2016).…”

Sport Management Maturity Assessment: Application to Cosma Competencies Scale

“…Some researchers have highlighted the importance of stakeholder management and inclusion in elite sports (De Bosscher et al, 2021;van der Roest & Dijk, 2021). Others have applied stakeholder theory in analyzing and classifying football fans' behavior and needs (Jaeger, 2021;Perechuda & Čater, 2022) and others to basketball (Leiñena & Merino, 2021). Neto et al (2022) elaborate on the concept of stakeholder leadership in soccer clubs.…”