Fandom and Community

This is preprint version of a chapter forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Sports Ethics, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, Sebastian Holmen, Jesper Ryberg (eds). New York, Oxford University press This chapter explores fan communities in sports. The first part explores the nature of these communities. By looking at some ultras groups, this chapter suggests that some purported members are not in fact part of the community, because they do not care about the team and are instead focused on their own performances. The chapter goes on to explore how particular behavior by community members might also not reflect on the community, such as when violent or otherwise immoral behavior lacks a robust enough connection to the sporting activities at the center of the community. In the second part, this chapter argues that the reason why the behavior of vicious members of the community matters to virtuous members is not because the virtuous members become complicit in this behavior; by exploring the wrongdoing involved in friendship with bad people, it becomes clear that the same arguments do not clearly apply to sports fans. Rather, the reason why bad behavior by the community affects those who are in the community but opposed to that behavior is because this behavior affects what it means to be a member of that community: it affects the identity of community members because it affects what it means to be a fan of that team.