Sports Fans and Fan Culture: A Critical Reflection on Fandom as Communicative Leisure in a Commodified World

This critical reflection tries to understand sports fandom and sports fan culture by framing it in wider forms of fandom: music fandom and SF fandom. The reflection involves a review of key literature on sports fandom and wider fan cultures, but the main methodological focus is a critical reflection on the author's own fandoms. Specifically, the reflection returns to a PhD on rugby league and rugby union in the north of England, the first major ethnographic study undertaken by the author, before re-engaging with other forms of fandom in his personal life and his published research. New research is undertaken for this project in the form of personal reflections on fandom in the author’s own autobiography. The author argues that fandoms are important leisure spaces shaped by commodification, but which are still spaces where identity and community can be constructed by individual agency.