Amid the recent furore over racism at football clubs, it is worth recalling fans’ long history of using their love of soccer to fight for change. Whether helping bring down managers like Jose Mourinho, leading a march against their club owner or pushing back against plans to commercialize the game, these fan protest stories remind us that, far from being a passing fad, the passion for sports can be an effective vehicle for social activism.
For example, when Black fans maintained a boycott of the Houston Oilers in 1961 because of segregated seating policies, they used the local Black press to keep fans informed about the boycott, as well as distributing boycott information through pickets and pamphlets. These tactics drew support from white fans and allowed Black athletes and supporters to continue their boycott even when a team changed its seating policy.
These examples point to a key dimension of the study of fan activism: its creative sociability. The negotiated meanings of slogans such as ‘Supporters not customers’ and ‘Football without fans is nothing’ demonstrate how, through their processes of collective action, fans can create new normative social discourses and become powerful political actors (Numerato, 2018).
Other essays in this issue expand the study of fan activism to include women’s mobilizations, digital spaces for mediatized protests, and new cases and contexts in the global south. The essays also examine how fans mobilize across issues that cut across the field of association football and fan-based movements, such as the moral dimensions of fan activism.