Football Fandom in Late Modernity: Alternative Spaces and Places of Consumption

This chapter explores the ways in which modern English football is currently invented and packaged as a technologised media spectacle, and how this spectacle is consumed by fans present at the event itself and those watching it via alternative media platforms, such as television and the internet. Taking the specific case of the pub as a virtual football fandom venue the discussion will then critically consider how this acts as the optimal sporting experience in late modernity. In exploring discussion of Paul Virilio, and in particular his concept of city of the instant within the context of the live football event, the chapter examines how the culture of watching sport in late modernity is speeding up at an ever increasing rate. Whilst Virilio brings a high modernist stance in comparison to other theorisations of modernity such as Becks second modernity, Baumans liquid modernity or Castells conceptualisation of the global network society.