Yawning Bread. June 2006

Football fan-dom, part 1

    

  

 
On 31 May 2006, I put up on this site a simple survey asking for views as to why there is such a mass following for sports, particularly soccer. Although the FIFA World Cup in Germany was starting 9 June, the survey was not specifically related to that.

Between 31 May and 15 June, when I took down the survey form, I received 72 replies. Their profile can be seen at right.

In Part 1 here, I will discuss the replies to the first 3 questions in the survey. Links to the transcripts of the replies can be found in the footnotes.

See also Parts 2 and 3 where I discuss the replies to the remaining survey questions.
 

Question no. 1

The first question was: Half or more of males in Singapore ardently read the sports pages of newspapers. Many flip to the sports pages first before reading other news. Do you agree? Why do you think they are so interested in sports news, as compared to other news?

Some respondents did not agree with me that sports fans are as numerous as I have observed. While this statement may be true of readers of the New Paper, which one writer said has "more sports stuff than the Straits Times", it may not be true of readers of other newspapers.

Many respondents pointed out, albeit in varying ways, that sports news is more like entertainment than news. It's a "fantasy world", one said, with similarities to "celebrity gossip".

It's like "watching drama", another said. "We see their trials & tribulations, they hope and dream, and eventually succeed or fail; only to try again next year."

Sports news is always "active, visceral and in flux" unlike politics where, take the Arab-Israeli conflict for example, no conclusion can seen for years. 

And like entertainment, watching sports does "not require too much thought when you are a spectator."

It's the male equivalent of what many females do, which is "to flip to the fashion and style pages first," said a respondent.


  

But what is it about sports that tends to attract men disproportionately?

Many pointed to the competitive spirit and the "tribal" affiliations underlying team sports. Fans identify with their favourite teams and enjoy the ups and downs of the ride.

"The appeal of war/hunting to men (e.g. the thrill of contest & physical violence) is met, in a more civilised way, through sports," wrote Dinesh.

"Team sports are a form of male bonding," wrote a female teenager. At the very least, a shared interest is a social lubricant. It gives people something to talk about when they meet, and this then reinforces the desire to follow the news more closely to keep up to date.

Among the writers were detractors. Betting was commonly mentioned as a reason why some people are reading the sports pages avidly, while others pointed out that interest in sports is socially constructed, especially in the context of gender. "Everywhere, though, men are buying into the hegemonic constructions of masculinity. What they consume is what they have learned to consume," a reader wrote.

 

Question no. 2

Most people who read the sports pages in depth and follow soccer matches on television have never and do not play soccer regularly. Do you agree? If you do, why do think they are still so interested in soccer?

A majority tended to agree with my observation that most people who are avid followers of soccer do not actually play the game. This is not always true of all games. With golf, for example, most people who follow golf actually play golf.

However, many readers pointed out that most male Singaporeans would have played soccer in school, and the reason they don't continue doing so as adults could be due to a lack of time, and probably a lack of available fields. Also, soccer is an "unforgiving" game, lowtide said, so people can get demoralised easily and just stick to watching TV. 

Despite this, many continue to love the game. As Johnny B described it, "even if they don't play, as long as they appreciate the intricacies of the game, a match is just as good [a form] of entertainment as any other television show or movie, with the added benefit that it's unpredictable and unscripted." 

More succinctly, another said, "passion never dies."

In any case, not a few pointed out, one doesn't have to play soccer to appreciate it. For example, a reader remarked that one does not have to know how to sing to appreciate American Idol. In a more salty vein, another pointed out that those who enjoy watching porn do not act in porn.

A minority disagreed with me. Their observation was that many who watched soccer continued to play the game, although at a lower level. One reader pointed out that there are a number of shops at Queensway selling football jerseys and the like, so obviously there is fair demand from real-life players.

Of all the sports, soccer has the greatest mass following. Why is that, I asked? Other than having been familiar with it at school, another possible reason was that it has been well marketed. Mister Porcupine said, it is a kind of "universal language."

Less charitably, another said, it's simply because of the "collective madness/passion of the crowds." People follow what others follow, in order to stay included within social networks.

Masindi pointed out the distinction between "sport" and "game". He wrote, "these people are not reading about sports but rather about games that involve sports. They are interested in soccer not because it is a sport; it is the game aspect of soccer that they love the most", that is, the thrill of winning and losing, goal totals, and arguments between players and coaches, rather than the artistry of football.

In the same way, another reader commented that "The difference between locally-churned reports of the local leagues and a report of, say, the English Premiership in a UK newspaper, is simply that local ones invariably go for the flash and the UK newspapers go for the flesh."

There is a football culture in the UK and Brazil, he said, and a "genuine interest in its details." In Singapore, he felt our local sports pages were "lacking in terms of depth, and tend to pander towards the flashy aspects", such as goals and goalscorers, "rather than the more sober, technical and less appreciable aspects, like tempo, possession play and style."

 
Question no. 3


Watching a match at Chijmes
  

Soccer fans -- in fact probably all sports fans -- are predominantly male. Do you agree? If you do, why do you think that is so?

There's a general agreement that soccer fans are majority male, though some felt that "predominantly" would over-state the case. As for why this was so, the comments got interesting. 

Many simply ascribed it to nature: "It's the genes, stupid!"

"Because the males species are by nature more active, competitive and confrontational than female," wrote Recruit Ong.

Others described it as the "testosterone thing", machismo and "one-upmanship", implying something fixed in nature.

Wrote another: "something to do with the need for competition and the instinct of survival of the fittest. Sports allow us to bring out that old macho feeling lying dormant in us males."

Nearly half however, wondered to what extent school and social conditioning played a part. "Socialisation since grade school...role of father in fostering habits" was Mr. Tibbs' view.

"When you start young," said kungfubunny, "I suppose you develop a passion for the sport, perhaps this is why few girls feel the same way."

Some writers saw this kind of social conditioning as deeply related to the formation of gender hierarchy. "I guess sports used to be seen as a male preserve, women were discouraged from it (just like women were discouraged from being soldiers or engineers)," commented Dinesh.

Echoing that, another said, "there probably was a period of time where men actively discouraged women from showing interest in the sport in order to feel MALE."

The result was, "And if, as a male, you don't, then peer pressure kicks in. 'I don't watch soccer, therefore I am a sissy, or they will think I am one anyway'."

The flip side would be girls who might be interested in sports, but hold themselves back because they don't want to be seen as butch. "I bet there are a lot of female closet fans who are simply afraid of being labelled tomboys if they ever admitted they watch soccer," said a respondent.

Some readers pointed out that while soccer fans tended to be male, this was not true of other sports, such as netball. However, I still find it hard to see how the mass following for female-identified sports comes close to male-identified sports in terms of numbers and passion.

However, female following of soccer is growing. This was noted by a number of writers, but there wasn't much consensus about the reasons. Some attributed it to girls' soccer in schools, where having learnt the game when young, some women continued to take an interest in it even as adults.

Others put it down to the marketing of celebrity footballers -- "cute bums" as one put it. Another said there "are those who just watch it because their partners do as well."

© Yawning Bread 

 

Why do I call it soccer?

A few respondents queried my choice of the word "soccer" rather than "football" in designing this survey. Once said it was an Americanism.

No, it isn't.

Yawning Bread editorial policy is to use a form of English that is clear to all readers anywhere in the world. Just because a term or spelling convention is standard for Singapore is no reason for me to use it, even though I am based in Singapore.

For example, you may have noticed that I refer to the urban railway as a "metro", never as "MRT", because "metro" is the international word for this kind of transport system. Very few people outside Singapore would understand "MRT".

Having a match between two teams and a ball (or a human head) dates from time immemorial, from many different cultures, and there were no universal rules. Even in mid 19th century England, different public schools, within a few miles of each other, had different rules.

In 1863, eleven schools and clubs sent representatives to a meeting at the Freemason's Tavern in London, where the Football Association was then founded. Their top priority was to draw up a set of common rules.

Gradually, these rules became the standard, and the game that complied with these rules became known as Association Football, to be distinguished from other kinds of football.

Before long, university slang developed, calling the game "assoc football", and by 1895, it had been shortened to "socker" or "soccer". By the same process of slang,  the other popular form of football -- Rugby football -- became known as "rugger".
 

Footnotes

  1. The appendix contains verbatim replies to
    Question 1, Question 2 and Question 3.

 

Addenda

None