Fandoms exist over a wide spectrum of activities and interests, from sports, to the arts, to television shows and movies. Sport fandoms are a particularly well-known sect of avid supporters, but what makes them so unique? Murray State professor of psychology, Dan Wann, visits Sounds Good to discuss.
"If the research that I and many of my colleagues have done over the last few decades has learned anything, it's that the reasons [for becoming a sports fan] vary from one person to another. One way to look at becoming involved in sport as a fan is sort of a stage process," Wann explains. "The initial stage is simply going to be awareness. You have to learn that something exists."
"I think when I talk about this in my classes, I often talk about [it] from the perspective of a foreign exchange student coming to Murray State for a semester or two. If you come from a country, the Middle East for example, and you learn when you get here about American football, that would raise eyebrows. You know, 'I had heard about this, but I really wasn't aware of the process.' So the first step I think for people is just finding out that sport exists, and then, does that sport provide something for you?"
"The foreign exchange student comes to Murray State for the fall semester," Wann continues. "That individual finds out that, 'oh, you know, seven, eight thousand people are going to go to this football game this evening? Well, it's Murray, and I've been looking for ways to get more involved in the culture and find out what life is like in this country. So if half of this city is going to this game, maybe I should go as well.' So you go there, and you're there with some friends that you've met, and you're like, 'this is really fun. I don't necessarily understand everything that's happening on the field because I'm just sort of learning about the game, but I do know this. I do know that I'm attached to this social setting. It's providing me with this chance to be with other people.' And then you think, 'they're constantly throwing t-shirts at people. I really like the fact that they're giving me apparel, I like that. They have these giveaways, this is kind of fun.' So there are extrinsic factors that are involved. And then you say to yourself a couple weeks later, 'man, you know, that game was really fun, that was a really enjoyable thing. I think I would like to go.' And now, it's above and beyond the extrinsic. Now it's more internal, it's more intrinsic."
"You have this sort of sequence of events where first, you become aware. Then, you become sort of attracted to it. Then, you get this attachment and then, this strong allegiance where nothing's going to matter. It doesn't matter how bad the team is, your allegiance isn't going to change. You'll sit there through the good times and the bad times. As long as the bad times last, you'll keep coming back," Wann says. "Winning from a sports marketing angle is icing on the cake. Certainly, you get more fans going to games when the team wins games. To say otherwise is in contrast to every sport team that has ever existed. But even when teams are horrible for years, decades, in the case of my beloved Cubs, centuries," Wann laughs, "there's still people that go. There are other aspects of sport that drive people to the event. And the notion of belonging to a crowd, this social nature of the event, is such a powerful, powerful force."
While some might consider sports fans worlds apart from theatre fans, the two groups are not all that different. "There's something about the sports setting that is particularly grabbing for the individual. The reality is, people have tastes. They have likes and dislikes. There are people out there that absolutely live for the opera and for the life of me, I don't get it," Wann says. "And they don't get how I don't get it. The two season tickets that [my wife] and I always make sure we always purchase are Racer basketball and the Murray State theatre department. People say, 'wait, what?' I'm like, 'yeah, I don't understand people that don't go to Racer basketball games.' Equally, I don't understand how people can not go to our theatre productions. They're that good. In high school, I was in sports, and I was in drama. So it's the person's background. There are things about events that some people like and some people don't like."
"In the book that Jeff James and I just published on sports fans, the last chapter we have dedicated to things that we think we need more knowledge about. Things that we think researchers will start examining in the future. And one of those things is an understanding about the similarities and differences between sports fandom and fandom for other activities. One thing we're learning is that sports fandom and interest in other activities, it's not competitive, it's complementary. In other words, research shows that people who are more likely to be interested in sport are also more likely to be interested in the arts. They're also more likely to go to museums. So there's actually positive correlation between being interested in going to a Murray State theatre production and going to Racer basketball. I think at first that sort of surprises people, because they think, 'well, people have their likes and dislikes, and they like what they like, and they don't like what they don't like. They only have so many hours in the day that they can do these sort of voluntary pastime activities.' But then you really start to unpack it and take a look at it, and you know, sport's a spectacle. It's theatre being played out on a court. Theatre is theatre. It's theatre being played out on a stage. They share a lot of things in common," Wann explains.
"One driver of fandom is drama. They like the stories being told. People like that for sports, [and] probably are also people who are interested in drama. The one difference, the one thing that sets sport apart in terms of what drives fandom for it relative to other activities, [is] we don't know what's going to happen in sports. The outcome is still in doubt. In sport, we don't know. When Ja goes down early in the Belmont game, we don't know. Is he coming back? Is he coming back fully healthy? What's this going to do? I think that part of sport that's in doubt, that part of sport where you just don't know [if] you're going to be happy in two hours or if you're going to be sad in two hours, that's what sets it apart from the other types of pastimes that are also highly popular," Wann concludes.
