The Fandom Of Sports As An Individual's Consumption Of Culture

Question 1:

a.) In today’s society, the fandom of sports has become as social and well as an individual’s consumption of culture. Over time, developments in the social world have altered these ways of consuming sports, which is what Richard Giulianotti focuses on. Giulanotti believes that the normatively desirable form of cultural consumption of sports is the attachment of sports franchises to a city and the “die hard” attitudes of fans. This is what the MLB represents, compared to the NFL, which focuses its broadcasting on a nation-wide basis to gain a national public. This way of consuming sports demonstrates the importance specific spaces, such as the stadium, to the fans, as well as the strong local sports subculture.

The “die-hard” fan

The NFL is a fundamentally different type of product than baseball, in that instead of settling for the local team, followers search for a team, such as on national television. With this, it attracts a national public. Two ways football differs from other sports are through globalization and commodification. First, the globalization of sports refers to the decline of the attachment of sports to certain regions. The NFL has developed to become less centralized, and with the followed the broad trend in sports identification away from the supporter model and toward the more detached, consumer-oriented identification. This creates one national public instead of many different local publics such as in the MLB. Another aspect is that of commodification, in that the leagues have created competitive equality among teams by imposing “sameness” on teams. This would make contests more even, and hence presumably more dramatic to a national public. This means that instead of being attached to cities, they are tied to leagues and networks.The commodification includes the aspects such as the “burgeoning popularity”, the “advent of pay-per-view television” and “increased ties with corporations and other business institutions” (Giulinaotti 3). The connection individuals have towards a team become to be mediated by the market. Ultimately, changing social institutions have produced different types of sports spectators over time,

According to Kaufman & Patterson, this is due to the popularity of a sport being a function of the social class structure of a country that adopts it. With this, Cricket has not succeeded in becoming popular in the United States, and North America in general, due to certain individuals wanting the sport to be exclusive to themselves. They do this in order to receive and retain a certain social status which would not be possible if everybody was able to play this sport. The key factor in the decline of cricket’s popularity in North America was the equality of economic opportunity, which is how Jason Kaufman and Orlando Patterson would explain cricket’s lack of commercial popularity and success in the United States. Social elites limited the equality of cultural opportunity for cricket due to facing the loss in economic