A Game of Two Halves: Football Fandom, Television and Globalisation

Professional soccer is one of the most popular televised sports, attracting the support of millions of fans throughout the world, and the sponsorship of powerful companies. InA Game of Two Halves,Cornel Sandvoss considers soccer's relationship with television, its links with transnational capitalism, and the importance of soccer fandom in forming social and cultural identities, showing how soccer both reflects and responds to postmodernity and globalization. Through a series of case studies, based on ethnographic audience research among fans of some of the world's largest and most successful clubs, Cornel Sandvoss explores the motivations and pleasures of soccer fans, the intense bond formed between supporters and their clubs, the implications of soccer consumption on political discourse and citizenship, soccer as a factor of cultural globalization, and the pivotal role of football and television in a postmodern cultural order.

Cornel Sandvoss is Lecturer in the School of Media and Cultural Production at De Montfort University, Leicester.