The trajectories leading to supporting at a distance: the Olympique de Marseille case study

Ludovic Lestrelin (1) , Loïc Sallé (2) , Jean-Charles Basson (3)

1 CETAPS - Centre d’études des transformations des activités physiques et sportives
2 Université de Lille, Droit et Santé
3 LaSSP - Laboratoire des Sciences Sociales du Politique

This article aims to define the dynamics leading individuals to get involved in a passion we chose to name "supporting at a distance". This practice involves actively supporting a football team that does not belong to one's own town or region. The study relies on to the concept of "career", directly stemming from the Chicago sociological tradition and studies on militancy. This concept will help to understand how someone starts supporting a club while living several hundreds of kilometres away. We therefore suggest analysing the careers of football supporters by focusing on the notion of rewards of the militant engagement, and by emphasizing the weight of "biographical accidents" in the construction of individual trajectories.

Keywords: Career; Engagement; Football; Supporters; Rewards

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Geography; Humanities and Social Sciences; Social Anthropology and ethnology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Political science

Ludovic Lestrelin, Loïc Sallé, Jean-Charles Basson. The trajectories leading to supporting at a distance: the Olympique de Marseille case study. European Journal for Sport and Society, 2006, 3 (2), pp.125-141. ⟨10.1080/16138171.2006.11687785⟩. ⟨hal-02177315⟩