Scoring more goals, or furthering political goals?: An in-depth interview study on how football supporters handle sportswashing-practising club owners
2023 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
In the 21st century, the football community has seen a considerable increase in club owners with links to authoritarian regimes. These owners have been scrutinised for using clubs, in order to sportswash the image of their regimes. Limited research has been made on the incentives of these owners and how they are perceived by the media. This thesis, however, intends to create an understanding of how supporters of these clubs perceive their owners. No considerable research has been conducted with this angle, which is important in order to comprehend the growing issue of sportswashing generally. As a method of research, four football supporters have been interviewed semi-structurally, after which three identity-based concepts have been used to analyse the answers deductively. The results obtained show that no matter how morally conflicted about their team’s owner a football supporter is, the strong connections between their identity and their supportership, may seriously hinder the ability to question a sportswashing-practising owner, or renounce their supportership for the club. This shows how deep identity-based relationships can be used by an actor to reach political goals. While also shedding a light on the complex situation supporters may find themselves in, regarding sportswashing.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 45
Keywords [en]
sportswashing, football, football supporter, supportership, club ownership, Premier League, identity, spectator identity, social identity, identity fusion
National Category
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-536618OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-536618DiVA, id: diva2:1890704
Subject / course
Political Science
Educational program
Bachelor Programme in Social Sciences
Supervisors
Examiners
2024-08-212024-08-202024-08-21Bibliographically approved