Experience Design: Traditions, Pastimes and Rituals. A Focus on the Football Fan Experience: Fans

Sports fandom is either an aspect of a person's fundamental identity, or completely incomprehensible to those who aren't fans at all. What is happening in our brains and bodies when we feel strong emotion while watching a game?...

".... Identity and socialization among sports fans are particular burgeoning areas of study among a growing cadre of specialists in the social sciences....In the communication revolution of the twenty-first century, the study of mediated sports is critical. As fans use all media at their disposal to consume sports and carry their sports-viewing experience online, they are seizing the initiative and asserting themselves into the mediated sports-dissemination process. They are occupying traditional roles of consumers/receivers of sports, but also as sharers and sports content creators. Fans are becoming pseudo sports journalists. They are interpreting mediated sports content for other fans. They are making their voice heard by sports organizations and athletes. Mediated sports, in essence, provide a context for studying and understanding where and how the communication revolution of the twenty-first century is being waged...."

Sports are a multibillion-dollar global business that will continue to grow by leaps and bounds into the foreseeable future. The bad news is: It's never been harder to attract, engage, and retain the sports fan.

Today's sports fans are bombarded by choices. Traditional sports, such as baseball, football, and basketball, compete for fans' dollars with snowboarding, lacrosse, poker…even paintball. The old business formulas, developed in the age of three TV networks and creaky stadiums, no longer apply.

World-renowned communication expert Irving Rein, international marketing guru Philip Kotler, and communication specialist Ben Shields deliver an innovative new business model centered squarely on fan satisfaction and retention. They give you the tools to transform your sports product into an enduring brand-immune to the vagaries of winning and losing-that quickly adapts to changing market conditions. Along the way they illustrate their points with fascinating case studies, including

• Manchester United's transformation from a plucky home team to a billion-dollar international franchise
• Professional golf phenomenon Michelle Wie's quest to maximize her talents and marketability
• Southlake Carroll High School football team's benchmarking of professional and college football programs to build its own brand
• Daytona International Speedway's reinvention of fan intimacy

Combining expert analysis with field-tested strategies for winning hearts and minds,The Elusive Fanis your guide to surviving and thriving in today's ever-widening world of sports.

This is a book on sport fans and spectators which will appeal mostly to undergraduate and graduate students in psychology, sociology, sports marketing and HPER. It is a thorough introduction to social and behavioral science methods and applications as applied to sports fandom.