Some Patterns of Female Fans’ Supporting Performances and Behaviour

Abstract

Football fandom impacts on everyday life, not just the times when one is actively supporting one’s team. This chapter examines the everyday manifestations of fandom, such as their purchase, consumption and display of different types of merchandise, and looks in detail at their consumption of football media, with particular reference to the Sky Sports magazine show Soccer AM. Carrie Dunn assesses the ways in which female fans create and navigate identities for themselves as ‘authentic’fans within a sport and a fandom that is institutionally sexist, looking more specifically at their reactions to former Luton Town manager Mike Newell’s argument that women should not be involved in professional football, and also exploring the ways in which clubs and the football authorities continue their institutional sexism.