The Anatomy of a Fan

In many ways, I consider myself relatively late to the game here (pun intended). As a young child, I had few positive memories of football—at least when it came to watching it, I always loved to play it. In fact, most of them consist of my griping over my father and mother changing the channel from baseball, or basketball, or any other American sport, to some random football match, played somewhere in the world far from me.

But how things have changed.

My father recently sent through a photo to our family’s group chat. It was of himself, in a Chelsea jersey, celebrating the clinching of this year’s Premier League title in the small house my family is renting in suburban St. Petersburg, Florida. In his arms, my old dog, Luka. They both seemed happy (perhaps I was projecting onto the latter, but still). My father has recently vocally expressed his admiration and loyalty for Chelsea FC, a West London-based club that has been superbly successful in the past decade. Since Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich purchased the then-struggling club in 2003, they have gone on to win 5 Premier League titles, 4 FA Cups, 3 League Cups, 1 Europa League, and 1 Champions League. They were in the second tier of English football as recently as 1989, so their turnaround has been nothing short of remarkable.

I expressed my surprise at his loyalty back in 2015, on New Year’s Day. I was sat on the sofa of our apartment in Downtown Chicago, eagerly awaiting Tottenham Hotspur to play Chelsea—by ‘eagerly’, I mean it; it was 6:30 AM. Tottenham Hotspur, as many people close to me know, are a club that I have supported since late 2012 when then-star-player Gareth Bale was evolving into one of the world’s rising talents. Like Chelsea, they are also located in London, but in the North, and have a long, illustrious history of failing to live up to their potential. The club last won the Premier League title in 1960, and have since put together several quality teams with notable players such as Luka Modric, Jurgen Klinsmann, Dimitar Berbatov, David Ginola, only to see nothing materialize, those very star players leave and win titles elsewhere (often with their rivals), and to have their fans left nursing their damaged pride. Tottenham are often criticized for being ‘Spursy’ an adjective which, loosely-defined, means to ‘screw the pooch.’ To have everything going for you but ultimately choke. On this day, however, Tottenham would not choke. They would go on to beat Chelsea 5 goals to 3, but my father and I had an exchange that I would not forget.

My father had, as my parents do, gotten up naturally at what seemed to be the crack of dawn, so he was seated next to me to watch the match. I had my Tottenham jersey on, and nervously babbled on about the stadium and the state of the new team. I had recently had my first visit to Tottenham’s stadium, White Hart Lane, in the winter of 2014 where I saw a Tottenham team capitulate to Manchester City, losing 1-5 and going down to 10 men (video above, photo below). This game started similarly, with the first goal scored by Chelsea. To my surprise, my dad erupted in elation. I took it personally. He had never expressed any love for a Premier League club, and he now, suddenly, was a fan of a rival of my favorite club right when they scored the first goal against us. At this point, my mother had entered the room and began defending him. Apparently, my father had long been a fan of Chelsea, he just hadn’t mentioned it. Frankly, I was hurt by his sudden admission of loyalty to a rival club. I legitimately thought he simply wanted to see Tottenham and, by extension, me, fail.

I am aware at how ludicrous that statement sounds. It really is only a sport, and we aren’t actual participants, yet it is incredibly personal. This past weekend, Tottenham celebrated the impending death of their stadium, White Hart Lane, as demolition begins to build a new stadium with nearly 2 times the capacity. With ticket sales proving to be such a large revenue source for teams, this is considered an investment to become one of the largest clubs in Europe. The team has been on an upward trajectory since 2011, but more recently has become a more-dominant force then it ever has been, coming in 3rd last year, and 2nd this year. The starting 11 are nearly all under the age of 25, the manager is young and ambitious, and the club’s director is a shrewd businessman, having spent net £7 million on the squad in the past two years, while clubs like Chelsea and Manchester United have spent hundreds of millions. White Hart Lane had been the home of Tottenham since 1899, and was where I, like many Tottenham fans, first saw Spurs play in-person. The send-off for the stadium was remarkable. For 90 minutes, the crowd sang in unison and waved flags as Spurs would go on to ease past Manchester United 2-1. It was difficult, even from my apartment in Tribeca, to not get emotional myself. It was a familial thing, almost tribal. As I tried to explain the situation to my girlfriend—who really could care less about football—I realized it sounded pretty ridiculous, yet nevertheless it was quite real to me. I was perplexed at myself.

I started wondering where this emotional attachment came from. Whereas for all other sports, the teams I root for are chosen due to having been the local teams at the time of my birth, Tottenham was a chosen club, from a country where I have no roots nor familiarity. I even pledged my loyalty to Tottenham before I took my semester abroad in London in 2014. Unsatisfied and, to be honest, uncomfortable with this odd attachment, I began to do some research.

When you ask most casual fans why they choose the teams they choose to support, it often comes down to surface-level platitudes like, I like the way they play or PLAYER is awesome. And while the latter is a component in what breeds an often tribal association to a sporting organization, it is just that. Instead, loyalty to a club, it seems, is predicated on the individual’s identification with the club’s values, with trust being the key factor. Short-term identification can come from being a fan of an individual player, but long-term fandom comes from trust in the club itself. As such, you often see clubs pouring resources behind cultivating the image of star players who convey the organization’s internal values. Think Tom Brady and the Patriots, Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers. Wayne Rooney and Manchester United. In fact, research shows similarities between a fan’s identification with a sports team and how people identify with their nationality, ethnicity, even gender. Most of that made sense to me. My father, an immigrant from India who had built his career from relatively nothing to a c-suite executive, perhaps identified with Chelsea’s rise from relative obscurity when he was in his 20s to global power in his 40s and 50s. This seemingly fits his exact professional trajectory. Tottenham’s struggles in spite of high ambition culminating in the past 5 years of real, tangible success match my own feelings of being an underdog, a mixed-race child with no hometown or real heritage, but with high ambitions and a run of what I consider several successful years for myself. My old roommates, one an Arsenal fan and the other a Manchester City fan, also fit this bill. Arsenal, an extremely successful club in the mid-2000s on the back of style and grace, gel well with him, a classical violinist who has long been a football purist. Manchester City, a club that rose from mediocrity to lift a title in 2012 after being purchased by an uber-wealthy Qatar-based group, match the fan, who is keen to win now but would never hop on an established bandwagon.

However, the roots of fandom can be traced to something even more instinctual. A study of 21 males watching the World Cup in 1998 found that levels of testosterone in their saliva increased when their team was winning, and decreased when the club they supported was losing. According to the researchers, “watching one's heroes win or lose has physiological consequences that extend beyond changes in mood and self-esteem.” In short, the connection between a fan and their team goes beyond just either lifting them up or bumming them out, instead it actually affects their hormonal balance—it is directly fucking with their bodily systems.

All this explains why and how a person comes to identify with a winning club, but my relationship with Tottenham seemed stranger. Tottenham didn’t win. They perpetually struggled. While I might have identified with the club’s high ambitions and underdog status, shouldn’t my own high ambitions have dictated I at least choose a winning club that was just a notch below the top, mega-clubs? That too, it seems, can be explained. A study at the University of Ontario found that for fans of successful hockey teams, the determining factor behind their fandom was performance. However, for losing teams, that relationship was nonexistent. Instead, their loyalty came from other aspects of the team, such as individual players, community, or values. The lead researcher, Robert J. Fischer, likened a fan’s rationale behind supporting a losing team to choosing a spouse: “We have to find ways to work around their failings to keep them close to us.”

Ultimately, what I found most surprising was that the selection of a club to support is highly indicative of the self. It is a reflection of individual ethics, self-esteem, ambition, and world view. Like our relation to brands in general, we attach our emotions to these external things, deriving pleasure from interacting with them. Yet, the fan’s—even a casual spectator’s—attachment to their favorite club is the most involved of any brand to consumer relation. Fans literally believe that they are a part and can, in some cases, actually affect the organizational outcome. Their physiology changes as they invest themselves in the brand’s successes and failures. It is, to be fair, absolutely absurd. But somehow it makes sense.

And yet, for however absurd this relationship is, my father liking Chelsea is still the most absurd thing I’ll ever encounter.