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Discordant fandom and global football brands: ‘Let the people sing’

Hewer, Paul; Gannon, Martin; Cordina, Renzo

Authors

Paul Hewer

Martin Gannon

Renzo Cordina



Abstract

This article has three main objectives. Our first is to turn to sport as a particularly illuminating and revealing example of consumer culture in the making. Marketplace logic suffuses consumer culture, and exploring practices of fandom as performed thus becomes particularly revealing of the tensions and contradictions which are thrown up when passions collide with finance and branding strategies. Our second objective is to mobilise this insight to further research on brand communities through better situating social practices as entangled in this heady nexus of passions, power and cultural politics. Through a netnographic analysis of forum posts from Celtic Football Club’s notorious ‘Green Brigade’ ultras-style fan-group, we focus on how such social formations forge counter-identities, which act not in harmony with the larger brand ethos but serve to legitimate and affirm a counter-philosophy. As such, our final objective is to better understand the roles of brand agitator and brand heretic as key roles within this contested social formation. Fandom as dramatic ritual and social drama brings in its wake contradictions and tensions especially when it goes toe-to-toe with the forces of economics, branding and marketing strategy. Here, a counter-brand community as we reveal mobilises marketplace logic and appears to adopt their own practices of mimicking brand strategising for their own ends, or as they assert, ‘Let the people sing’.

Citation

Hewer, P., Gannon, M., & Cordina, R. (2017). Discordant fandom and global football brands: ‘Let the people sing’. Journal of Consumer Culture, 17(3), 600-619. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540515611199

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 18, 2015
Online Publication Date Oct 18, 2015
Publication Date 2017-11
Deposit Date Jan 17, 2019
Publicly Available Date Jan 18, 2019
Journal Journal of Consumer Culture
Print ISSN 1469-5405
Electronic ISSN 1741-2900
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 17
Issue 3
Pages 600-619
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540515611199
Keywords discordant fandom, rebels with a cause, cultural politics, brand agitator, brand heretic
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1496581
Contract Date Jan 18, 2019

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