Peter Millward

The Rebirth of the Football Fanzine Using E-zines as Data Source

This article presents e-zines as both a legitimate data source and a basis of investigation for sociologists of popular culture. To do this, the article describes and evaluates the rise of the “fanzine” in the 1970s and 1980s along with its decline in the final years of the 20th century and parallels this with the emergence of the Internet as an “everyday” commodity. The unfolding argument is that e-zines provide a site for both the construction of (collective and individual) identities and “information age” sports fan democracy.

Reclaiming the Kop? Analysing Liverpool Supporters’ 21st Century Mobilizations

For at least the past three decades, the sociology of football and its supporter cultures has been responsive to the social issues which have emerged within it. Today, the fact that fans rejoice and protest at overseas purchases of their club means that the time has come for research to reflect on elite-level English football’s position in a transnational space. In this context, this article focuses on the football supporters’ protests connected to Liverpool FC, centring on the Spirit of Shankly mobilization, and uses Manuel Castells’ theories to understand them. The argument that emerges is important for sociologists understanding the contemporary world because it illustrates the connections between local sites around the world, the internet as a tool through which collective action takes place, and discusses what ‘power’ means in these contexts.

Official policies and informal transversal networks: Creating ‘pan‐European identifications’ through sport?

The idea that sport has been drawn into helping build a collective identity around the nation-state, particularly in the immediate ‘era of independence’ after 1945, is well documented. However, it is only recently that sport has been linked to notions of moulding what we term here as ‘pan-European identifications’. It is our argument that there are two distinctive forms to such identification. The first posits a tangible notion of identity based around territories such as nation-states. Sport assists in this process through ‘official’ policies, such as declarations, reports and statements by the European Commission and other pan-European institutions. The second form recognizes that increasing transversal interactions weakens ideas of territorialized identity, resulting in a looser ‘sense of belonging’. Sport helps craft identifications here in an informal manner through pan-European sporting competitions, such as the UEFA Champions League and 2004 European football championships. This article is structured to look at both forms of this sport/identification interface whilst also considering the complex nature of sport and identity by explaining how sport can simultaneously erode such identifications.

Sport and Austerity in the UK: An insight into Liverpool 2014

The UK’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 2010, outlined £81 billion of cuts across government departments by 2014/15 was delivered. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat reform was premised on the ‘Big Society’ making up for their austere cuts to the state. In this piece, we discuss the impact of this we debate the impact of this on sports development, taking the case study of inner city Liverpool. This example is marked because, on the one hand, it presents cuts to municipal sports facilities which are threatened with closure as a result of shrinking local authority budgets, and on the other this role is partially taken on by an offshoot of Everton Football Club (EFC). The points we debate are: 1) Is the change in responsibility from the Local Authority to a Private Enterprise, staffed by volunteers a new turn in sport policy? and 2) What are the consequences of this on grassroots sport participation?

Glasgow Rangers supporters in the city of Manchester: the degeneration of a 'fan party' into a 'hooligan riot'.

On 14 May 2008 Glasgow Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg contested the UEFA Cup final at the City of Manchester Stadium. Zenit St Petersburg won the match but the event was marred by violent clashes between Glasgow Rangers supporters and Greater Manchester Police’s Tactical Support Group officers in Manchester city centre during the game. News coverage largely attached blame for the disorder upon Glasgow Rangers’ supporters, however, this article, principally drawing upon participant observation material supported by other relevant literature, will argue that responsibility is diffuse across a number of constituencies and that Rangers fans alone should not be blamed for the degeneration of a ‘fan party’ into a ‘hooligan riot’.

New football directors in the twenty-first century: profit and revenue in the English Premier League’s transnational age

The importance of governance in football has been underlined recently by the UK government’s cross-party enquiry which, amongst other issues, explored debt levels and ownership patterns in football. This article addresses the latter of these themes by exploring ‘new directors’ ways of developing revenue and potentially extracting profits from football in the twenty-first century. By embedding the argument into discourses about the globalisation of the English Premier League (EPL) that borrow from Castells’ notion of the ‘network society’, I critically identify four potential areas in which ‘new directors’ can make money from associations with football. These are: (i) the proliferation of deregulated television revenues; (ii) using a football club as a vessel to promote other businesses; (iii) overseas stock market floatation; and (iv) promoting a football club into the EPL.

True Cosmopolitanism or Notional Acceptance of Non-National Players in English Football: Or, why ‘bloody foreigners’ get blamed when ‘things go wrong’

The essay focuses upon the issue of xenophobia in English football cultures, utilizing data taken from a random sample of Liverpool and Oldham Athletic ‘e-zine’ messageboard fan-sites (from 1 April 2004 to 31 May 2005). Recognizing that xenophobia may exist within, as well as across, national boundaries, this essay considers the conditions under which xenophobic comments may emerge. The essay finds that both fan groups can be critical of players. However, the circumstance under which each fan group is likely to ‘become’ xenophobic differs. For instance, Oldham Athletic supporters are more likely to use national boundaries to formulate ‘otherness’ during international tournaments, whilst Liverpool fans are more likely to ‘blame’ non-local British players during periods of poor on-the-pitch results.

Rivalries and Racisms: 'Closed' and 'Open' Islamophobic Dispositions Amongst Football Supporters

Racism in football has been the topic of much academic discussion. However, the issue of Islamophobic racism has received very little attention. This article looks at Middlesbrough FC and Newcastle United FC fan discussions around the ‘Mido affair’ in August 2007 to consider the issue and uses this evidence to discuss the effectiveness of the football Faith Summits policy suggestions to combat Islamophobia in football. The unfolding argument is that Middlesbrough FC and Newcastle United FC both use ‘open’ and ‘closed’ Islamophobic positions opportunistically to express their feelings of rivalry toward each other and the emergent policy suggestions are that the football authorities should seek to work with football fans, rather than potentially punish them, in order to reduce anti-Muslim sentiment in spectator football.

Sport management issues in an era of austerity

The article discusses various papers published in this joint special issue corruption in sports including one by Gardiner, Parry and Robinson on sports integrity industry, one by Lee on how Confucian cultural factors contribute to corruption cases, and one by Nowy and Breuer on match fixing in European grassroots football.

Against Modern Football: Mobilising Protest Movements in Social Media

Recent debates in sociology consider how Internet communications might catalyse leaderless, open-ended, affective social movements that broaden support and bypass traditional institutional channels to create change. We extend this work into the field of leisure and lifestyle politics with an empirical study of Internet-mediated protest movement, Stand Against Modern Football. We explain how social media facilitate communications that transcend longstanding rivalries, and engender shared affective frames that unite diverse groups against corporate logics. In examining grassroots organisation, communication and protest actions that span online and urban locations, we discover sustained interconnectedness with traditional social movements, political parties, the media and the corporate targets of protests. Finally, we suggest that Internet-based social movements establish stable forms of organisation and leadership at these networked intersections in order to advance instrumental programmes of change.