Sports Fans: Diehards, Casuals, and Bandwagoners

For the most part, everyone has their team allegiances. And for most people, the allegiance was formed based upon where they live, or because one or both of their parents is a diehard fan of a team, even if they don’t live in that city anymore. What really got me thinking about all that was a conversation I had with a friend about the NBA. She was told by someone that she is now a fan of a team because she lives in that city and then the added bonus to her new fandom is that she has gone to several games. Is that really the standard of fandom? Like “oh I grew up in a city that has all four of the major sports leagues and am a casual fan of the NBA team there, but because I live in City X now, and enjoy live entertainment, I am now a fan of City X team.” Ummm… what? Hell no! That’s not how this shit works! Like at all!!!  

I admit I don’t have an NBA team and that I have never been to an NBA game in my life. It’s usually something that throws people off about me, and is a great one for two truths and a lie, but despite playing basketball for a descent chunk of my life, I just don’t have an allegiance to any pro basketball team. But by the standard given to my friend, I should currently be a Celtics fan after being a Bulls fan a few years back. I know that’s not tied to team success, but it just seems bandwagon-y to me.

I even said to my friend that I guess my own argument could be used against me since my teams are the Baltimore Ravens, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Tampa Bay Lightning, but she assured me that that was different. My sports allegiances are because I consider myself to be from both places. I hadn’t even started middle school when my family moved from Maryland to the Tampa Bay area, and the move was before the Lightning won their Stanley Cup and before the Rays dropped the Devil. Looking back now, I realize I actually lived longer in Florida than I did in Maryland and since I don’t remember much from when I was a baby, I would argue that I spent even less time in Maryland than I physically did.

Another type of fans we discussed were the individual athlete fans that temporarily turn someone into a fan of the team as a whole or that permanently turn you into a fan of the team. Personally, I think that first one is bullshit. I think I can be a fan of a player, enjoy watching them play their sport, and still want my own team to win the championship over them. These fans are not full bandwagoners but are pretty darn close. Like a friend of mine used to claim she was a huge Yankees fan, but in reality, she was just a Derek Jeter fan. Now that he is retired, she doesn’t give two shits about the Bronx Bombers. Which I am not all that upset about because of my hatred of the Yankees… but it’s like at least admit that you don’t care about baseball. Admit in the moment that all you cared about was how hot Derek Jeter looked in those pinstripes, and not his Hall of Fame career. If she stayed a Yankees fan after he retired, I probably wouldn’t have bitched about her “allegiance” for a whole paragraph. If an icon like Jeter, Gretzky, or Jordan was the reason you became a fan of a sport or a team, and you stayed a fan after their retirement, I can’t really bemoan if a true allegiance was formed at some point.

Discussing my detestation for bandwagon fans is probably not even worth it. But, from a sport business standpoint, these people, and the individual player fans, are necessary for revenue streams. With that said, at least those pesky NFL blackout rules won’t plague the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the next two seasons.✌