Beyond Text: Spectacles, Sensations and Affects

Abstract

Sport invites spectatorship and very powerful allegiances, for example, through the identifications of fans and supporters that go way beyond the practices that are being enacted in its performances. The team might even stand for the nation at some moments and the history of sport is replete with dramatic and iconic moments. Sport elicits and creates passionate feelings through the enfleshed experiences of participants and of spectators who, through the senses, are drawn into the exhilaration of athletic achievement even vicariously. Sports fans play a key role in the co-production of spectacle and in the spectacular (Gamson, 1994; Rojek, 2001). Fandom too is constituted through the regulatory bodies of sport. This can be illustrated by the different experiences of British football and the Football Association, when contrasted with the US NFL. The Premiership, and indeed the Football League, is dominated by the top four or five clubs. Other clubs, especially those outside the Premiership, or only recently promoted to it, struggle, often to the point of facing administration and bankruptcy. The Super Bowl is one of the most spectacular mega events in the sporting calendar, but NFL regulations mean that this event always carries the democratic potential of including different clubs in the league. The NFL does not permit the massive transfer deals and huge salaries of the British Premiership and thus promotes a more egalitarian game in which fans from all clubs have a chance of making it to the Super Bowl.