Football!Supporter!Cultures!in!Modern3day!Brazil · Football!Supporter!Cultures!in!Modern3day!Brazil:! Hypercommodification,0networked0collectivisms0and0digital0productivity! 0 0

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Football!Supporter!Cultures!in!Modern3day!Brazil:!Hypercommodification,0networked0collectivisms0and0digital0productivity!

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Ana!Carolina!Vimieiro0BCommun/BJ,0Pontifical0Catholic0University0of0Minas0Gerais,0Brazil00MSc0(Communication),0Federal0University0of0Minas0Gerais,0Brazil0

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Submitted0in0fulfilment0of0the0requirements0for0the0degree0of0

Doctor0of0Philosophy0

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Creative0Industries0Faculty0

Queensland0University0of0Technology0

20150

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Keywords!

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all$seater! stadium,!Brazilian! chronicle,! Brazilian! football,! conjunctural! analysis,!

digital!methods,!fan!blogs,!fan!textual!productivity,!football!culture,!football!fan,!

football! fandom,! football! literature,! football! political! economy,! football!

supporter,!hypercommodification,!mixed!methods,!networked!collectivisms,!new!

supporting! leaders,! new! supporting! movements,! new! Brazilian! middle! class,!

novos% movimentos% torcedores,! online! communities,! online! fandom,! organised!

supporter! groups,! Orkut,! soccer! culture,! soccer! fan,! soccer! fandom,! soccer!

political! economy,! soccer! supporter,! sociology! of! sport,! sporting! chronicle,%

torcida,%torcida%organizada,%Twitter!!

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Abstract!

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This!thesis! is!a!conjunctural!analysis!of!the!relationships!between!the!changing!

socio$economic! setting! of! contemporary! Brazil! and! dislocations! in! football!

supporter! cultures.! Two! interrelated! lines! of! analysis! are! developed! to!

understand! these! relationships:! the! first! focuses! on! the! ongoing! economic!

restructure! of! the! Brazilian! football! industry,! and! the! second! explores! the!

implications! of! the! large$scale! adoption! of! new! technologies! for! ordinary!

football$fandom!practices.!The!first!part!of!this!study!is!a!combination!of!critical!

political! economy! with! discursive! analysis! and! explores! the! modes! of!

commercialisation!and!power!relations!structuring!this!sector.!The!second!part!

is!a!contemporary!cultural!analysis! that!applies!digital!methods!and!traditional!

qualitative!strategies!to!investigate!the!forms!of!organisation!and!expression!of!

football! supporters.! Generally! speaking,! this! thesis! draws! on! theoretical!

perspectives! and! concepts! from! cultural! studies! and! the! field! of! sociology! of!

sport.!

In! terms! of! findings! and! conclusions,! the! political$economy! analysis! indicated!

that! we! have! today! in! Brazil! a! context! similar! to! what! has! been! called! a!

hypercommodified! phase! of! football! in! Europe.! In! Brazil,! two! elements! are!

central!for!understanding!this!period:!the!12!high$priced!seating!stadiums!built!

or!renovated!for!the!2014!FIFA!World!Cup;!and!the!recent!escalation!in!the!top!

clubs’!media!revenues.!The!intensification!of!this!market$centred!model!has!also!

resulted!in!many!conflicts!and!controversies.!In!particular,!I!analysed!the!fan$run!

campaign!#ForaRicardoTeixeira!(Get!out!Ricardo!Teixeira)!and!the!small!protest!

#VergonhaMinasArena!(Shame!on!you,!Minas!Arena)!as!examples!of!the!current!

imbalances!and!contentious!issues.!

The! cultural! analysis! suggested! that! in! terms! of! organisation! there! has! been! a!

shift!in!football!fan!cultures!toward!more!decentralised!forms!of!coordination!in!

collective! actions! such! as! stadium! performances.! In! the! past,! these! types! of!

actions!were!mostly! planned! and! executed! by! organised! groups! of! supporters!

with!considerable!levels!of!institutionalisation.!In!Brazil,!these!groups!are!called!

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torcidas% organizadas! (TOs).! Today,! these! formations! are! still! important! for! the!

coordination! of! performances! and! other! collective! practices.! However,! the!

emergence! in! the! Brazilian! context! of! less$institutionalised! groups! of! fans! and!

the!popularisation!of! football$related!online!communities!since!the!early!2000s!

have!been!implicated!in!a!more!diverse!and!fragmented!environment,!with!new!

and!old!actors!dialoguing!in!increasingly!complex!ways.!

In!terms!of!expression,!new!technologies!are!also!related!to!a!significant!increase!

in!the!number!of!amateur!media$production!projects!led!by!fans,!individually!or!

in! groups.! Football! supporters! who! produce! blogs,! YouTube! channels! with!

original!content,!photos,!digital!radio!stations!and!podcasts!about!their!teams!are!

often! leaders! of! their! communities! and! important! articulators! for! the!

decentralised!coordination!of!on$site!collective!performances.!From!analyses!of!

social$media! conversations,! in$depth! interviews!with! key! fans! of! a! single! club!

(Clube%Atlético%Mineiro),! and! close! readings!of! the! textual!productivity!of! these!

very! same! supporters,! I! argue! that! the!work! of! these! new! leaders! brings! to! a!

hypercommodified! and! highly! globalised! culture! a! pinch! of! regionalism! and!

authenticity.!

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Table!of!Contents!

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Keywords%....................................................................................................................................................%iii!Abstract%.......................................................................................................................................................%iv!Table%of%Contents%....................................................................................................................................%vi!List%of%Figures%........................................................................................................................................%viii!List%of%Tables%.............................................................................................................................................%ix!Glossary%.........................................................................................................................................................%x!Abbreviations%.........................................................................................................................................%xiv!Acknowledgements%..............................................................................................................................%xvi!Statement%of%Original%Authorship%.................................................................................................%xix!Previously%Published%Work%................................................................................................................%xx!

1! Introduction!..............................................................................................................!23!Research!problem!........................................................................................................................!28!

Research!questions!.....................................................................................................................!40!

Methodological!design!...............................................................................................................!41!Description!of!data!sources,!data$collection!strategies!and!data$analysis!techniques

!.......................................................................................................................................................................!43!Computational!turn:!taking!advantage!and!mitigating!problems!....................................!44!

Overview!of!the!thesis!...............................................................................................................!53!

2! Fandom:!Theoretical!Grounds!and!Perspectives!..........................................!59!Football$fandom!approaches!..................................................................................................!64!Football!Hooliganism!..........................................................................................................................!64!Fan!Democracy!.......................................................................................................................................!71!

Pop$culture!fandom!approaches!...........................................................................................!80!

Football!fandom,!media!cultures!and!conjunctures!.....................................................!83!

Conclusion!.......................................................................................................................................!90!

3! Inside!the!Industry:!!The!Political!Economy!of!Football!.............................!91!British!context:!brief!introduction!to!the!early!days!of!modern!football!and!its!

following!industrialisation!process!.....................................................................................!92!

Brazilian!context:!origins!and!developments!until!the!late!1990s!......................!100!Elitist!clubs,!team!clubs!and!factory!clubs!..............................................................................!102!State!intervention!and!the!redemocratisation!......................................................................!106!Labour!relations:!‘passe’!abolition!and!the!search!for!new!sources!of!revenue!.....!109!

Brazil!of!the!2000s:!hypercommodification!and!the!reinvention!of!the!game’s!

social!relations!...........................................................................................................................!116!New!stadiums!......................................................................................................................................!120!Renegotiation!of!TV!rights!.............................................................................................................!122!

Conflicts!in!a!transforming!environment!.......................................................................!129!#ForaRicardoTeixeira!......................................................................................................................!131!#VergonhaMinasArena!....................................................................................................................!134!

Conclusion!....................................................................................................................................!138!

4! Collective!Football!Supporting!in!Brazil:!!Organised!Groups,!New!Movements!and!Online!Communities!....................................................................!141!Traditional!organised!groups!..............................................................................................!143!

New!supporting!movements!................................................................................................!152!

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Recent!Brazilian!political!history!and!its!implications!for!modern$day!football!fan!

culture!.....................................................................................................................................................!160!Online!communities!.................................................................................................................!167!

From!subculture!to!mainstream!........................................................................................!173!

Conclusion!....................................................................................................................................!179!

5! Online!Football!Fandom:!Networked!Collectivisms,!Opinion!Leaders!and!Convergence!Points!.....................................................................................................!183!Methods!and!brief!contextualisation!of!the!data!sets!...............................................!185!

Temporal!rhythms!....................................................................................................................!194!

Cultural!authority!of!new!leaders!......................................................................................!200!They!are!like!Oldenburg’s!regulars!............................................................................................!212!

Remix,!parody!and!appropriation:!how!dispersed!football$supporter!

collectivisms!converge!...........................................................................................................!214!Inferno!Alvinegro!...............................................................................................................................!218!

Conclusion!....................................................................................................................................!225!

6! The!Digital!Productivity!of!Football!Supporters:!Formats,!Motivations!and!Styles!........................................................................................................................!229!Textual!productivity!................................................................................................................!231!

Galo!supporters’!productivity!.............................................................................................!238!Formats!..................................................................................................................................................!241!Motivations!and!purposes!..............................................................................................................!245!Styles!and!approaches!.....................................................................................................................!254!

Journalism,!literature!and!postmodern!chronicle!......................................................!265!

Conclusion!....................................................................................................................................!271!

7! Conclusion!................................................................................................................!273!Contributions!to!knowledge!and!core!findings!............................................................!280!

Limitations!and!future!research!agendas!.......................................................................!284!

Recent!conjunctural!developments!in!Brazil:!or!the!beginning!of!the!end!of!the!

pact!between!leftists!and!neoliberalism?!.......................................................................!287!

References!......................................................................................................................!293!Appendix!A!......................................................................................................................!317!Semi$Structured!Interview!Guide!......................................................................................!317!General!questions!..............................................................................................................................!317!Specific!questions!(regarding!each!fan’s!project)!................................................................!319!

Appendix!B!......................................................................................................................!321!Detailed!Description!of!Chapter!5!Data!Analysis!........................................................!321!(1)!Planning!..........................................................................................................................................!322!(2)!Collection!........................................................................................................................................!322!(3)!Pre$processing!.............................................................................................................................!323!(4)!Processing!......................................................................................................................................!326!(5)!Visualisation/analysis!..............................................................................................................!327!

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List!of!Figures!

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Figure!4.1:!Evolution!of!Brazilian!football!clubs!on!Twitter,!Facebook!and!Orkut!from!

Sep!to!Nov!2013.!.................................................................................................................................!177!

Figure!5.1:!Number!of!tweets!and!accounts!involved!in!interactions!on!Twitter!

surrounding!the!12!Brazilian!professional!football!clubs!with!the!largest!fan!bases!

in!the!country!during!three!months!of!the!2013!Brazilian!Football!Championship!

(between!September!and!November).!......................................................................................!187!

Figure!5.2:!Followers’!base!of!each!Brazilian!club!here!considered!(as!at!August!24,!

2014).!......................................................................................................................................................!188!

Figure!5.3:!Yes%We%CAM!mosaic,!displayed!during!the!final!of!the!2013!Libertadores!da!América!by!Atlético!supporters.!Photo!by!Daniel!Teobaldo.!..........................................!193!

Figure!5.4!(a–d):!Types!of!communication!by!day!type!for!all!clubs.!....................................!197!

Figure!5.5:!Social$media!URLs!shared!in!football$related!tweets!by!day!type.!.................!199!

Figure!5.6:!Contribution!to!the!conversations!of!different!groups!of!accounts.!Leading!

accounts:!top!1%!most!active;!Highly!active!accounts:!following!9%;!Least!active:!

bottom!90%.!.........................................................................................................................................!205!

Figure!5.7!(a–c):!#CampanhaMascarasNoHorto!(‘Mask!Campaign!at!Horto’;!Horto!is!the!

suburb!where!Atlético’s!stadium!is!situated).!Photos!by!Daniel!Teobaldo.!.............!216!

Figure!5.8!(a$f):!Supporters!performing!Inferno!Alvinegro!on!multiple!occasions!in!2013!

and!2014.!Photos!by!Daniel!Teobaldo.!.....................................................................................!219!

Figure!6.1!(a,b):!Photos!of!the!match!Atlético$MG!vs.!Tijuana$MEX!(quarter$finals!of!the!

2013!Copa!Libertadores!da!América)!taken!by!Gabriel!Castro.!....................................!257!

Figure!6.2!(a–c):!Photos!of!the!match!Atlético$MG!vs.!Tijuana$MEX!(quarter$finals!of!the!

2013!Copa!Libertadores!da!América)!taken!by!Daniel!Teobaldo.!................................!258!

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List!of!Tables!

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Table!1.1:!Summary!of!thesis!structure.!................................................................................................!43!

Table!3.1:!Modes!of!commercialisation,!power!relations!and!dominant!values!in!

Brazilian!football!1894!to!the!present.!Periodisation!reworked!from!Levine!(1980),!

Ouriques!(1999)!and!Rodrigues!(2007),!with!the!addtition!of!a!further!phase:!

Hypercommodification!and!growing!consumer!culture.!..................................................!130!

Table!4.1:!!Modes!of!collective!supporting!in!Brazil!over!history.!Systematised!from!

characteristics!discussed!by!de!Toledo!(1996),!Teixeira!(2010,!2013)!and!de!

Hollanda!and!colleagues!(2014).!.................................................................................................!168!

Table!4.2:!Size!of!the!largest!communities!found!on!Orkut!of!each!club!considered!here!

and!their!creation!date!(as!at!September!6,!2013).!.............................................................!175!

Table!4.3:!Size!of!the!largest!communities!found!on!Orkut!of!each!club!considered!here!

over!the!years.!.....................................................................................................................................!176!

Table!5.1:!Performance!of!each!Brazilian!club!here!considered!at!the!final!of!the!2013!

Brazilian!Football!Championship!(Série!A).!*!Palmeiras!was!playing!the!second!

division!of!the!Brazilian!Championship.!..................................................................................!188!

Table!5.2:!Club!members,!supporter!bases!according!to!Ibope,!and!total!attendant!public!

for!the!period.!......................................................................................................................................!190!

Table!5.3:!Tweets!and!accounts!by!day!type!for!all!clubs!(medians,!averages!and!

standard!deviations).!........................................................................................................................!196!

Table!5.4:!Percentage!of!messages!carrying!URLs!by!day!type!for!all!clubs!(medians,!

averages!and!standard!deviations).!...........................................................................................!198!

Table!5.5:!30!accounts!with!the!highest!levels!of!cultural!authority!within!the!Atlético!

data!set.!Fan$run!accounts!highlighted.!...................................................................................!206!

Table!5.6:!!Top$20!domains!shared!on!Twitter!football$related!interactions!in!Brazil.!

Dark!grey:!conventional!media;!light!grey:!alternative!media;!white:!social$media!

websites.!................................................................................................................................................!212!

Table!6.1:!List!of!participants,!projects!they!have!been!involved!and!selection!criteria!for!

each!one.!................................................................................................................................................!240!

Table!6.2:!Digital!productivity!of!football!fans!and!their!distinct!formats,!motivations!

and!style!of!writing.!...........................................................................................................................!241!

Table!B.1:!Contextualised!Twitter!metrics!(part!of!the!table!built!with!context!

information!and!Twitter!metrics).!..............................................................................................!328!

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Glossary!

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Atleticano(a):! Atleticano! or! atleticana! are! expressions! used! in! Portuguese! to!

describe! a! fan! of! Clube% Atlético% Mineiro% (the! club! that! most! of! my! empirical!

research! focuses!on).%Both!terms!may!be!used!as!adjectives!or!nouns!and!their!

suffixes!(o!or!a)!follow!a!gender!inflection.!!

Barra! Brava! (see! also! Torcidas! Organizadas):! A! popular! type! of! football!

supporters’! group! in! Latin! America,! especially! in! Argentina.! Barra% bravas! are!

different! in! terms! of! organisation! and! practices! from! the! popular! Brazilian!

torcidas% organizadas% (TOs).! Barra% bravas! also! have! a! different! genesis:! the!

context! in! which! they! emerged! in! Argentina! was! dissimilar! to! the! context! in!

Brazil!when!TOs!were!first!created.!Barra%bravas!are! less! institutionalised!than!

TOs!and!significantly!more!powerful! in! football!politics! (especially!within! their!

clubs).! Inside! the! stadium,! members! of! TOs! generally! wear! their! own! jerseys!

(which! support! the! organisation! itself! and! not! the! club)! and! their! chants! are!

played!along!to!drumbeats!and!other!musical!instruments;!barra%bravas,!on!the!

other! hand,! sing! uninterruptedly,! with! the! supporters’! voices! playing! a! more!

central!role!than!musical!instruments.!Barra%bravas!use!distinct!artefacts!at!the!

stands,! such! as! small! flags!with! the! colours! of! the! club;! TOs! instead! generally!

adopt! bigger! banners.!Barra% bravas! have! been!more! often! associated!with! the!

illegal!drug!trade!and!violent!acts!than!Brazilian!TOs!(even!though!TOs!were!also!

often!associated!with!violence!in!the!1990s).!!

Campeonato! Brasileiro! de! Futebol! (Brazilian! Football! Championship)! or!

popularly!referred!to!as!Brasileirão:!The!main!club!tournament!in!Brazil,!which!

has!four!divisions!(Série!A,!Série!B,!Série!C!and!Série!D).!Since!2003,!its!top!tier!

level!competition,!Série!A,!has!used!a!double!round$robin!system,!in!which!each!

team!plays!every!other!team!twice!—!once!at!their!own!home!ground!and!once!

at! the! other! team’s!home!ground.! Série!A! runs! from!May! to!December,! has!20!

teams!(with!the!promotion!of!the!best!four!clubs!from!Série!B!to!Série!A!and!the!

relegation!of!the!worst! four!every!season)!and!it! is!both!the!most!watched!and!

the!most!valuable!league!in!the!Americas.!It!is!organised!by!CBF.!

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Clube!Atlético!Mineiro,!Atlético[MG!or!simply!Atlético:!a!Brazilian!club!based!

in!Belo!Horizonte! (BH),! capital! of! the! state! of!Minas!Gerais.! Atlético$MG! is! the!

club!that!most!of!my!empirical!research!focuses!on.!

Clube!dos!13!(Club!of!the!13):!An!association!that!used!to!be!formed!by!the!most!

traditional! clubs! in! Brazil! and! it!was! named! Club! of! the! 13! because! of! the! 13!

teams!that!originally!founded!it!back!in!1987.!Club!of!the!13!organised!the!Union!

Cup,! the! first!market$oriented! version! of! the! Brazilian! Football! Championship.!

Club! of! the! 13! was! virtually! extinct! in! 2011! and! its! extinction! was! directly!

related!to!the!efforts!of!Rede!Globo!(the!biggest!media!network!in!Brazil)!to!keep!

the!oligopoly!of!TV!broadcasting!in!the!country.!

Copa! do! Brasil! (Brazil! Cup):! The! second!most! important! club! tournament! in!

Brazil.!Unlike!Campeonato!Brasileiro,!Copa!do!Brasil! is!a!knockout!competition!

that! involves! many! more! clubs! (86! in! 2014),! with! participants! from! all! 26!

Brazilian!states!plus!the!Federal!District.!Cup!matches!are!currently!played!from!

March! to!November! and! this! competition! is! recognised! as! the! opportunity! for!

small!clubs!to!play!against!the!top!teams!in!the!country.!The!best$placed!clubs!in!

the! previous! year’s! state! championships! (traditional! tournaments! played! by!

clubs!of!the!same!state),!plus!the!top$10!clubs!in!CBF’s!ranking,!qualify!for!Copa!

do!Brasil.!

Copa! Libertadores! da! América:! The! most! prestigious! continental! club!

competition! in! South! American! football,! which! has! been! played! in! a! similar!

system!since!1960.!Libertadores!gathers!the!best$placed!clubs!from!the!previous!

year! in! the! domestic! leagues! from! all! South! American! countries! (plus! Mexico!

since!1998)!and!runs!from!February!to!July/August.!Argentina!and!Brazil!are!the!

most!successful!countries! in!Libertadores;!to!date,!Argentinean!clubs!have!won!

23!titles!and!Brazilian!clubs!have!won!17.!The!Libertadores!champion!qualifies!

for!the!FIFA!Club!World!Cup.!

Copa! União! (Union! Cup):! The! first! market$oriented! version! of! the! Brazilian!

Football!Championship,!organised!in!1987!by!the!Club!of!the!13.!The!Union!Cup!

was! the! first! version! of! the! Brazilian! league! to! be! televised! live! and! is! also!

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notable! for! bringing!unprecedented! sponsorship! and!broadcasting! revenues! to!

the!clubs.!!

Galo!(Rooster):!Atlético$MG’s!mascot!and!nickname.!

Passe!(Pass):!A!legal!instrument!that!tied!players!to!clubs!in!a!similar!way!to!the!

transfer! system! in! England.! Pass!was! created!with!Lei% do% Passe! (‘Pass! Act’)! in!

1976!and!it!was!replaced!by!a!system!of!compensatory!fees!with!Lei%Pelé!(‘Pelé!

Act’)! in! 1998.! The! end! of! passe! was! related! to! a! growing! flexibility! in! labour!

relations! in! Brazil’s! football! sector;! the! cessation! led! to! increases! in! players’!

mobility!and!in!external!agents’!investments!in!the!athletes’!negotiations.!

Seleção:!A!popular!name!for!the!Brazilian!national!football!team.!Seleção!means!

‘selection’!but!became!a!proper!noun!in!Brazil.!If!seleção!is!used!without!another!

qualifier! (for! example,! seleção% brasileira% de% vôlei,! ‘Brazilian! volleyball! national!

team’)!it!implies!the!national!football!team.!

Torcida:!A!Portuguese!expression!used!both!for!the!stadium!crowd!and!for!the!

whole! body! of! supporters! of! a! club! (which! includes! fans!who! are! not! stadium!

attendees,!that!is,!the!supporter!base).!Torcida!comes!from!the!verb!torcer,%which!

originally!means! ‘to! turn’;!however,! in! the! football! context! it! came! to!mean! ‘to!

root! for’.!Torcer! generated! the! two! Portuguese! expressions! that! designate! the!

crowd,!torcida,!and!the!supporter!itself,!torcedor!or!torcedora.!

Torcidas! Organizadas! (TOs)! (see! also! Barra! Bravas):! The!most! traditional!

type!of! football! supporters’! group! in!Brazil.! TOs! are! legally! formalised! as!non$

profit!recreational!associations,!with!complex!organisational!structures,!and!are!

formed!by!young!adults.!TOs!first!emerged!in!the!late!1960s!in!Brazil,!during!the!

most!repressive!period!of!the!military!regime!that!ruled!the!country!from!1964!

to! 1985.! Members! of! TOs! generally! interact! with! each! other! on! match$days!

(during!the!different!practices!and!performances!that!take!place!at!the!stadium!

or! in! its! vicinity)! and! at! their! headquarters! (which! serves! as! an! everyday!

meeting!place!for!members!of!the!torcida).!Members!are!easily!identifiable!at!the!

stadium,! often! positioning! themselves! behind! the! goals! (usually,! the! cheapest!

stands).!These!groups!wear!their!own!customised!clothes!(not! the!clubs’),! they!

exhibit! flags! and! banners,! and! they! chant! anthems,! battle! cries! and! songs!

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especially!developed!by!them!for!their!stadium!performances.! In!addition,! they!

have!a!particular!form!of!physical!expressivity!that!differentiates!them!from!the!

supporting!masses:! intense!choreographies!cadenced!by!their!bateria!—!a!kind!

of! simple! orchestra! of! percussion! instruments.! They! became! associated! with!

violence! in! the! social! imaginary,! especially! after! the!moral! panic! that! followed!

violent!incidents!involving!them!in!the!late!1980s!and!early!1990s.!

Tupiniquim:! The! name! of! a! group! of! Brazilian! indigenous! people.! This!

expression!is!often!used!in!Portuguese!as!a!synonym!of!‘Brazilian’!and!‘national’.

!

xiv!

Abbreviations!

!

ABC! American!Broadcasting!Company!

AI[5! Institutional!Act!Number!Five!

API! Application!programming!interfaces!

BBS! Bulletin$board!systems!

BH! Belo!Horizonte!(city)!

BNDES!!!Brazilian!Development!Bank!

CADE! (Brazilian)!Administrative!Council!for!Economic!Defence!

CAM! Clube!Atlético!Mineiro!

CBF! Brazilian!Football!Confederation!!

CCCS! Centre!for!Contemporary!Cultural!Studies!

CEBS! Basic!ecclesial!communities!

CND! (Brazilian)!National!Sporting!Committee!

CPI! (Brazilian)!Parliamentary!Committee!of!Inquiry!

DIY! Do$it$yourself!

EBITDA!!!Earnings!of!a!company!before!interest,!taxes,!depreciation!and!amortisation!

ESPN! Entertainment!and!Sports!Programming!Network!

FHC! Fernando!Henrique!Cardoso!

FIFA! Fédération!Internationale!de!Football!Association!

GNV! Galo!na!Veia!(Atlético’s!season$ticket!program)!

GDP! Gross!Domestic!Product!

IBOPE!!!Brazilian!Institute!of!Public!Opinion!and!Statistics!

IPCA! (Brazilian)!Extended!National!Consumer!Price!Index!

ISL! International!Sports!and!Leisure!(company)!

LGBT! Lesbian,!Gay,!Bisexual,!and!Transgender!

MFC! MyFootballClub!

MLS! Major!Soccer!League!!

!

xv!

PFA! (British)!Professional!Footballers’!Association!

PT! (Brazilian)!Workers’!Party!

SBT! Sistema!Brasileiro!de!Televisão!

SNS! Social$network!sites!

TIF! Torcida!Internet!Flamengo!

TO! Torcida!organizada!

TUSP! Torcida!Uniformizada!do!São!Paulo!

VK! VKontakte!(social$network!site)!

WRG! Web!Rádio!Galo!

WSC! When!Saturday!Comes!(magazine)

!

xvi!

Acknowledgements!

!

I!am!deeply!grateful!to!so!many!people!who,!in!different!ways,!made!this!thesis!

and! PhD! possible.! Unconventionally! I! must! start! the! acknowledgments! by!

thanking!my!family.!Doing!a!PhD!overseas!is!a!big!challenge!in!every!single!way,!

but!one’s!family!pays!the!highest!price.!I!missed!so!many!birthdays,!a!couple!of!

Christmas! and! wedding! celebrations,! some! graduations! and! births,! and! sadly,!

also!a!few!funerals!along!the!way.!It!was!not!easy!for!me;!however,!it!was!even!

tougher! for! my! parents,! siblings! and! close! relatives.! Therefore,! I! am! deeply!

thankful! for! their! incommensurable! love,! incredible! patience! and! continuous!

support.!

A! special! thanks!definitely!goes! to!my!mum,!Rita,!who! I!know!was!never! truly!

happy!with!my!choice! to!do!a!PhD!overseas.!But!how!could!she!be!happy?!Her!

daughter!was!going!to!Australia,!a!country!that!is!‘only’!16,000!km!from!Brazil!—!

a! two$day! trip! when! you! are! lucky.! Despite! this,! she! patiently! waited! for! the!

moment!when!I!would!complete!my!studies!and!return!home;!she!respected!my!

decision,!supported!me!through!it,!and!told!everybody!how!proud!she!was!of!the!

first!PhD!in!the!family.!Ritoca,!the!countdown!is!over,!I’m!coming!home!!Another!

special!thanks!goes!to!my!dad,!Jésus,!who!is!definitely!behind!this!whole!thing:!if!

it!wasn’t!for!him,!football!would!never!be!such!an!important!part!of!my!life!and!I!

would!never!have!thought!of!this!thesis!topic!in!the!first!place.!I!am!also!grateful!

to!my!brother! and! stadium!mate!Bruno,!who! is! the! first! person! that! comes! to!

mind!when! I! think! about! the! place! of! football! in!my! life.! Apart! from! that,! our!

uncountable! conversations! about! football! and! Galo! contributed! immensely! to!

shaping!some!of!the!ideas!I!discuss!in!this!thesis.!To!my!sister!Alessandra,!who!I!

actually!don’t!even!know!how!to!start! to! thank...besides!being!there! for!me!my!

whole!life,!you!also!gave!us!João,!my!nephew,!who!even!via!Skype!was!still!able!

to!delight!me!during!my! time! in!Australia.!My!sister$in$law!Lili!also!deserves!a!

special!mention!for!being!such!good!company!in!my!first!year!(Why!did!you!go!

back!to!Brazil?!The!last!two!years!were!not!even!half!the!fun!).!Last,!but!not!least,!

I!thank!Renato,!my!husband,!who!shared!every!single!moment!of!this!adventure!

with!me:!it!wasn’t!easy,!but!we!made!it!!

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xvii!

I! am! also! deeply! grateful! to! my! supervisory! team! for! all! the! support! and!

insightful!guidance!they!provided!in!the!last!three!years!and!a!half.!I!am!forever!

indebted!to!my!principal!supervisor!Jean!Burgess,!who!made!my!decision!to!do!a!

doctorate! in! Australia! worthwhile.! I! came! to! Australia! looking! for! the! great!

things! that! an!unconventional! road!would! take!me! to.!And!what! great! things! I!

found!! Coming! from! a! different! theoretical! background,! Jean’s! ‘unusual’!

suggestions! and! thoughtful! critiques! not! only! assisted! me! in! producing! this!

thesis,! but! her! mentorship! also! definitely! left! a! deep! impression! on! me! as! a!

researcher.! I! am! also! incredibly! grateful! for! Jean’s! sensitivity! in! the! tough!

moments!and! for!her!continued!encouragement! to!believe! in!myself!and! in!my!

project.!My!associate!supervisor,!Axel!Bruns,!also!deserves!special!thanks!for!the!

insightful!comments!he!made!about!my!work,!his!invaluable!technical!guidance!

since!day!one,!and!for!the!patience!and!solidarity!in!handing!on!the!methods!he!

developed! (and! helping! to! sort! out! all! the! problems! I! encountered! along! the!

way).!!

I! also! owe! thanks! to! the! Queensland! University! of! Technology! (QUT)! for!

providing!me! the! scholarships! that!made! this! PhD! practicable! and! the! Higher!

Degree! Research! team! for! their! good!work!managing!my! candidature.! Special!

thanks!go!to!Helena!Papageorgiou!and!Aislinn!McConnell!for!their!consideration!

and!efficiency!in!handling!my!issues!and!doubts.!And!to!the!Creative!Industries!

Faculty!and!the!ARC!Centre!of!Excellence!for!Creative!Industries!and!Innovation!

(CCI),!which!provided!the!necessary!support! for!me!to!attend!symposiums!and!

other!events!that!helped!to!improve!this!project!in!many!ways.!I!also!would!like!

to!thank!the!Journalism!Education!&!Research!Association!of!Australia!(JERAA)!

for!its!support!through!their!Conference!Award!for!Postgraduate!Students.!

Over! the! last! few! years,! I! had! the! opportunity! to! present! my! work! in! many!

conferences! and! workshops.! These! include! the! RC33! Eighth! International!

Conference! on! Social! Science! Methodology! in! Sydney! in! 2012,! the! JERAA!

Conference! in! Melbourne! in! 2012,! the! 11th! Oxford! Internet! Institute! Summer!

Doctoral! Programme! (OIISDP)! in! Toronto! in! 2013,! the! CCI! Winter! School! in!

Brisbane! in! 2013,! the! Ignite13!! conference! in! Brisbane! in! 2013! and! the! 14th!

Conference!of!the!Association!of!Internet!Researchers!(AoIR)!in!Denver!in!2013.!

!

xviii!

The! feedback! I! received! at! these! events! shaped! my! thoughts! and! was!

incorporated!in!one!way!or!another!into!this!document,!so!I!am!thankful!to!the!

people! I! encountered! there.! The! OIISDP! and! the! CCI! Winter! School,! intense!

workshops!where!I!had!the!pleasure!of!receiving!more!close!mentorship!and!of!

sharing!my!ideas!with!very!clever!cohorts!of!doctoral!students,!were!particularly!

important!in!my!PhD!journey!and!deserve!a!special!mention.!At!QUT,!I!also!thank!

Lee!McGowan,!Ben!Goldsmith,!Tim!Highfield,!Brian!McNair,!Stephen!Harrington,!

Jason! Sternberg! and!Ben!Light! for!providing!useful! suggestions! and! comments!

about!my!work!over!the!course!of!my!degree.!

I!would!also!like!to!thank!the!football!supporters!I!interviewed!for!the!invaluable!

time!they!gave!to!my!project!and!for!how!much!I!learned!from!their!experiences!

and! ideas.! My! deep! gratitude! goes! to! Christian! Munaier,! Daniel! Teobaldo,!

Douglas! Pereira,! Eduardo! Guerra,! Elen! Campos,! Gabriel! Castro,! Leide! Botelho,!

Rafael! Lima,! Roberto! Guerra,! Rodolpho! Victor! and! Wilson! Franco;! after! all,!

without!you,!this!thesis!would!not!exist.!

I!am!also!deeply!thankful!to!Rousiley!Maia!and!Ana!Thereza!Soares,!respectively!

my!supervisors!on!my!Masters!and!my!undergraduate!degrees,!who!were!greatly!

responsible! for!my! initial! research! training,! and!who! are! still! for!me! personal!

and!professional!role!models.!

Now!to!the!amazing!people!I!had!the!pleasure!of!meeting! in!Australia!and!who!

gave!me!emotional!support! in!the! last!years!(and!whom!I!hope!I!will!see!again!

soon!).!Many!thanks!to!Alice!Baroni,!Anja!Ali$Haapala,!Aline!Frey,!Chloe!Warren,!

Heloisa!Milioli,!Jorge!Martins,!Sam!Wright!and!Wilfred!Wang.!A!special!thanks!go!

to!Andreza!and!Tim!Ireland,!and!to!the!Osman’s!(Kim,!Matt,!Tate!and!Maya):!you!

were!my! family! in! Australia! and! the! support! and! affection! you! gave!me!were!

fundamental! to! getting! me! to! the! end! of! the! line.! And! in! Brazil,! a! more! than!

special! thanks! to!Mariana!Mendes,!my! lifelong! friend! and! part! of!my! ‘stadium!

gang’,!who!was!always!the!first!to!arrive!at!my!mum’s!place!when!I!was!back!and!

with!whom!I!enjoyed!the!nicest!trip!I!made!around!Australia.!!

At!last,!many!thanks!to!Melissa!Giles,!my!copyeditor,!who!was!very!attentive!and!

patient,!and!immensely!improved!the!clarity!of!the!ideas!contained!in!this!thesis.!

!

xix!

Statement!of!Original!Authorship!

!

The!work!contained!in!this!thesis!has!not!been!previously!submitted!for!a!degree!

or! diploma! at! any! other! higher! education! institution.! To! the! best! of! my!

knowledge! and! belief,! the! thesis! contains! no!material! previously! published! or!

written!by!another!person!except!where!due!reference!is!made.!

!

!

!

!

!

Signature:!!!

!

!

!

Date:!01!December!2015!

!

QUT Verified Signature

!

xx!

Previously!Published!Work!

!

Vimieiro,!A.!C.!(2013).!Fã$ativismo!no!Twitter:!comunidades!online!de!fãs!de!

esporte!e!a!campanha!#ForaRicardoTeixeira.!Ciberlegenda,!28(1),!55$68.!

!

!

Vimieiro,!A.!C.!(2014).!Afinal,!o!que!pensamos!da!Copa?!Uma!breve!análise!dos!

enquadramentos!do!tema.!Em%Debate,!6!(2),!38$45.!

!

!

Vimieiro,!A.!C.!(2014).!A!produtividade!digital!dos!torcedores!de!futebol!

brasileiros:!formatos,!motivações!e!abordagens.!Contracampo,!31!(1),!23$59.

Que%mistério%tem%o%Atlético%que,%às%vezes,%parece%que%ele%é%gente?%%Que%a%gente%associa%às%pessoas%da%família%(pai,%mãe,%irmão,%tio,%prima)?%%

Que%a%gente%o%confunde%com%a%alegria%que%vem%da%mulher%amada?%%Que%mistério%tem%o%Atlético%que%a%gente%confunde%com%uma%religião?%%Que%a%gente%sente%vontade%de%rezar%"Ave%Atlético,%cheio%de%graça"?%%

Que%a%gente%o%invoca%como%só%invoca%um%santo%de%fé?%%Que%mistério%tem%o%Atlético%que,%à%simples%presença%de%sua%camisa%branca%e%preta,%um%

milagre%se%opera?%Que%tudo%se%transfigura%num%mar%branco%e%preto?.%—!Roberto!Drummond,!in!Se%Houver%Uma%Camisa%Preta%e%Branca…!%

%%

Escolhe_se%um%clube%como%se%escolhe%uma%mulher.%Para%toda%a%vida%ou%até%que%Deus%separe.%É%mais%difícil%deixar%de%amar%a%um%clube%do%que%a%uma%mulher.%Qualquer%um%de%nós%

conhece%mais%bígamos%ou%polígamos%do%que%torcedores%que%mudaram%de%clube.%Ou%que%o%traíram,%mesmo%que%em%pensamento.%Talvez%porque%um%clube%nunca%se%entrega%a%um%

torcedor.%O%torcedor%é%que%se%entrega%ao%clube%ou%ao%amor%por%ele.%—!Mário!Filho,!in!Histórias%do%Flamengo!

!

!

Pode%haver%futebol%sem%jogador,%mas%não%sem%torcida.%Devíamos%erguer_lhe%uma%estátua%à%porta%dos%estádios%brasileiros.%

O%futebol%só%começou%a%ser%histórico%quando%apareceu%o%primeiro%torcedor.%—!Nelson!Rodrigues,!in!O%Torcedor!

What%mystery%has%Atlético%that%sometimes%it%looks%like%a%person?%That%we%associate%to%family%members%(father,%mother,%uncle,%cousin)?%

That%we%mistake%for%the%happiness%that%comes%from%the%beloved%woman?%What%mystery%has%Atlético%that%we%take%it%for%a%religion?%

That%we%feel%like%praying%‘Hail%Atlético,%full%of%grace’?%That%we%evoke%it%as%we%only%evoke%a%holy%saint?%

What%mystery%has%Atlético%that%with%the%mere%presence%of%its%black%and%white%jersey%a%miracle%comes%about?%That%everything%transfigures%in%a%black%and%white%ocean?%

—!Roberto!Drummond,!in!‘If!there!is!a!Black!and!White!Jersey…’!!

!

Choosing%a%club%is%like%choosing%a%wife.%For%life%or%until%death%do%us%apart.%It’s%harder%to%stop%loving%a%club%than%a%woman.%Any%of%us%knows%more%bigamists%and%polygamists%than%supporters%that%switched%clubs.%Or%that%betrayed%it%even%in%thought.%

Perhaps%it’s%because%a%club%never%surrenders%to%a%fan.%The%fan%is%who%surrenders%himself%to%the%club%or%to%his%love%for%it.%

—!Mário!Filho,!in!‘Stories!of!Flamengo’!!

!

Football%may%exist%with%no%players,%but%not%without%the%crowd.%We%should%erect%a%statue%in%their%honor%at%the%gates%of%Brazilian%stadiums.%

Football%only%started%to%be%historic%when%the%first%supporter%came%up.%—!Nelson!Rodrigues,!in!‘The!Supporter’

!

23!

1! Introduction!

This thesis is primarily an investigation about modern-day football supporter cultures in Brazil. It concerns the elite of the game, its industrialised version, particularly focusing on cultures formed around top tier professional clubs. These cultures are indeed deep-seated formations, constituted over the 20th century, which have undergone dislocations and transitions associated with the changing socio-economic setting of contemporary Brazil. Specifically, I investigate the relationship between these macro transformations and fan cultures through two lines of analysis: the first focuses on the ongoing economic restructure of the Brazilian football industry, and the second explores the implications of the large-scale adoption of new technologies for ordinary football-fandom practices.

In the first part of this thesis, I develop a brief historical review of the football political economy in which I explore the modes of commercialisation and power relations structuring this sector. This analysis culminates in an exploration of the current situation in which conflicts have emerged as a result of the recent intensification of a market-centred model in this field. In Brazil, neoliberal values and a business orientation started to take shape in the football sector in the late 1980s (Helal & Gordon, 2002; Ouriques, 1999; Proni, 1998, 2007; Rodrigues, 2007). However, it is only in the first decade of the 21st century that the Brazilian environment started to showcase signals of what is called hypercommodification (Giulianotti, 2002). Since the first presidential term of the leftist Lula, there has been a significant increase in the amount of

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24!

money circulating in the football sector and an expansion of the consumer culture in the country (Yaccoub, 2011). Above all, I call attention to two central aspects for understanding this context: the 12 high-priced seating stadiums built up or renovated for the 2014 FIFA World Cup; and the recent escalation in the top clubs’ media revenues due to a renegotiation of broadcasting rights between them and the largest media network in the country, Rede Globo.

Similar changes in the European context brought about a transformation in the audience of the game, with football adopting the same logic of the entertainment industry and assuming values that up to that point were not part of the ‘terrace culture’ — which used to be strongly influenced by working-class culture. Other scholars have investigated these new configurations, especially in England, and have associated the new shape of football fandom with postmodern culture (Giulianotti, 1999; Giulianotti, 2002; King, 1995; Redhead, 1997). Aspects explored in such literature include the transformation of players into celebrities, the dominance of spectacularisation and performative efficiency, the emergence of family football and global audiences, the rebranding of traditional clubs, and the sale of their equities in the stock market. Some scholars talk about a distinctive ‘coolness’ when it comes to the attitude of supporters regarding the game in this new stage of the industry (Giulianotti, 2002).

Considering Brazil, the above-mentioned changes are so recent — most of the new stadiums were opened in 2013 and the TV rights renegotiation occurred in 2011 — that there is still no detailed analysis of the current situation. As a transitional setting, it is not possible to make any definitive assertion about the values and practices emerging within football cultures there. However, the conflicts coming up are a significant indication of what it is at stake, especially because of their potential to showcase how fans and other actors are negotiating terms within this changing environment. I discuss some of these conflicts here.

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25!

Understanding the implications of the adoption of new technologies for football-fandom practices is another key aspect that will lead to a better comprehension of these cultures today. If in the first part of the analysis, I am concerned with the structures of the economy, in the second, I am interested in the structures of meaning and the subjectivities of football supporters in such a changing landscape. Some scholars see the Internet and other media as only part of the context leading towards a type of ‘cool’ identification between supporters and clubs that is built through a depersonalised set of market-dominated virtual relationships (Giulianotti, 2002). However, I analyse the ways football supporters use new media technologies to reappropriate discourses, express their passion for something that is much more than a brand, and organise their cultures in ways that are meaningful for them.

In the second part of this thesis, I explore how the increasing domestication of new technologies is transforming two central aspects concerning supporter cultures: their modes of organisation and their forms of expression. In relation to the first aspect — modes of organisation — other domains of social life, such as politics, social media and the Internet have contributed to a shift toward more decentralised forms of organisation in mobilisation processes and collective actions (Bennett & Segerberg, 2011; Juris, 2012). Such decentralisation is not only a result of digital media, but is also part of a complex set of changes taking place in postmodernity, including a growing level of individualisation and fragmentation (Bennett, 1998, 2003; Bennett & Segerberg, 2011; Bimber, 2008). Football supporter cultures have always encompassed a great deal of mobilisation and coordination because football fans have historically engaged on a regular basis in a vast range of collective performances. These actions were mostly planned and executed in the past by organised groups of supporters with considerable levels of institutionalisation. In Brazil, these groups are called torcidas organizadas (TOs). Today, these formations are still important for the coordination of performances and other collective practices, but the emergence in the Brazilian context of

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26!

less institutionalised groups of fans and the popularisation of football-related online communities since the early 2000s have been implicated in a more diverse and fragmented environment, with new and old actors dialoguing in increasingly complex ways.

About the second aspect — the current forms of expression of football supporters — new technologies are also related to a multiplication of projects of amateur media production led by fans, individually or in groups. Football fan cultures have historically been more oral than, for instance, pop-culture-fandom cultures and, as such, have generated more immaterial practices than words and textual content. Even so, the idea of football enthusiasts producing media is not entirely new. In England, the popularisation of personal computers and word processors in the 1990s boosted a football-fanzine culture that had emerged in the 1980s following the ethos of the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement and was related to the aftermath of the disasters of Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough (Haynes, 1995). In this thesis, I explore the developments of such a phenomenon, particularly the textual productivity of football supporters with the introduction of Web 2.0 tools. In Brazil, football-related online communities started to form in the early 1990s through bulletin-board systems (BBSs), they migrated to mailing lists in the mid-1990s and became very popular with Orkut in the 2000s. Today, communities formed on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are intrinsically related to the most popular projects of media production led by football fans. And that is because supporters producing original media content are often leaders of their communities and important articulators for the decentralised coordination of on-site collective performances.

To empirically explore both of these aspects — the modes of organisation and expression — the second part of my investigation focuses on one club’s torcida: Clube Atlético Mineiro (CAM, Atlético-MG or Galo, as it is called by its supporters). Atlético is not only the club I supported my whole life (which eased the access to the fans I interviewed, for instance), but it was

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27!

also a particularly successful club in the 2013 season (the year that is the focus of most of my analysis). Supporters of clubs doing well are especially active, producing diverse original content and organising a vast range of collective performances. Such an active situation may not provide an accurate representation of precisely what these cultures are on a regular basis, but it provides an insightful picture of the multiple ways supporters actually incorporate the affordances opened up by new technologies into their fandom activities.

In such a rich context, in terms of objects to be analysed, rather than looking for examples and cases to include here, I had to select carefully what could be managed for the sake of the argument and for the length of this study. I chose to focus on exploring two activities: one collective performance, selected purposefully because of its more regular status, and several fan-run projects that are particularly popular within this club supporter base. The latter are indeed long-term initiatives, led by fans who have been part of online groups dedicated to this club for many years. In this sense, even if I do select my cases and examples from a special moment in the history of this club, I opt for those projects and collective actions that are regular practices rather than seasonal initiatives. Social-media conversations, in-depth interviews and fan texts are the sources of analysis used in this part of the thesis.

In the following sections of the Introduction, I discuss my research problem in more concrete terms, approaching precisely which empirical and theoretical gaps I hope to fill in this thesis. After that, I phrase my research questions and subquestions, detailing what I approach in each part of this study. Then, I present a brief description of the data sources, and data-collection and data-analysis strategies adopted in this study, which is followed by a longer methodological discussion in which I address a critical point of my methodological design: how I incorporate digital methods in a project that has a rather qualitative nature. Even though I do touch methodological issues over the following chapters, in the

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Introduction, I purposefully concentrate on a philosophical exploration as a narrative strategy — so later I do not have to break the main story I seek to tell, that is, the story of football supporter cultures in Brazil. I conclude the Introduction with an overview of the topics approached in the chapters that follow.

Research!problem!

The most fundamental problem that motivated this project was to better comprehend the profound changes that Brazil (and to some extent, Latin America as a whole) has experienced in recent years and, specifically, to understand how these transformations are dislocating traditional cultures. A parallel could be drawn here with the long post-war boom that culturally reshaped British society and whose impacts Stuart Hall and his colleagues from the Birmingham School skilfully analysed in the 1960s and 1970s. That particular conjuncture, which Hall (1984) called “the most sustained period of capitalism expansion” (p. 18) in the past century, deeply modified everyday-life patterns, social experiences and expectations, and the lived universe of the majority of ordinary people in Great Britain (and to a great extent, the whole Global North). As Hall (1984) put it, even though the high wages and high-spend market-oriented consumer culture that came into existence after World War II did not destroy or overturn the barriers of class-divided society, consumer capitalism had a profound impact that was evident in a variety of ordinary practices: from the new cultural patterns of leisure, entertainment and holidays, to new fashions in drinking and food consumption.

In Brazil, since Lula assumed the presidency in 2003, the country has undergone changes that include, but are not limited to, drastic reductions of poverty and hunger, and steady decreases of inequality. The strategies adopted in his administration (2003–2010), as well as in his successor’s, Dilma Rousseff (2011–), still produced a significant increase in the purchasing power of the population and an intensification of consumer

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culture, culminating in an environment that resembles (although with its differences) that of the long boom experienced in the post-war Global North.

As in Britain, these transformations have also had far-reaching implications for society and everyday life in Brazil and, importantly, for working-class cultures. Here, I am particularly concerned with football supporter cultures. To solve this research problem in the particular context of my analysis — football supporter cultures in modern-day Brazil — also involves addressing two research issues along the way: one more theoretical and another more empirical.

The first concerns the relevance of a perspective grounded on communication and cultural studies to understand supporter cultures in a media-saturated landscape, where there exists an ever-deeper interplay between media systems and football industries. In Brazil, this approach is even more necessary due to the transitional nature of the sector’s current political economy, the growth of the consumer culture, and the decline of football as an integrator mechanism playing a central role in the formation of a national identity (Helal, 2011; Helal & Gordon, 2002). Here, the point is not a lack of studies about football and its supporters (which have long been topics of research in Brazil and elsewhere). The point is, rather, the relative absence of a particular theoretical perspective that seems not only relevant but also essential to approach the current shape of supporter cultures in that country as well as in other places.

In the international sphere, studies about football supporter cultures have historically developed in a close relationship with the sociology and psychology disciplines (Crawford, 2003, 2004; Gibbons & Dixon, 2010; Schimmel, Harrington, & Bielby, 2007). In Brazil, in spite of multiple influences (see below), there is a stronger association with an anthropological perspective (de Hollanda, Azevedo, & Queiroz, 2014; Giglio & Spaggiari, 2010; Helal, 2011; Toledo, 2001). In Chapter 2, I

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develop an extensive review of international studies about football supporters — most of them developed in the UK. The argument there is that, in the current media environment, it is necessary to move football-fandom research towards more contemporary approaches in the fields of media and cultural studies, which today are indeed more often adopted by scholars who research pop-culture fandom. Here, I will then concentrate on the Brazilian academic context. The argument in this case is still valid, even though the panorama is slightly different.

Brazilian social and cultural research about football began to consolidate as a field in the 1990s (Giglio & Spaggiari, 2010). Before this, some studies were developed in a rather sporadic and isolated way1, but the area lacked a greater level of systematisation through, for example, institutionalised spaces for reflection and debate — such as research groups, conferences, permanent interest groups within renowned events in the social science and humanities areas, specialised journals, and so on (Giglio & Spaggiari, 2010; Helal, 2011; Toledo, 2001). Some contributions from this incipient period deserve, however, to be briefly presented as a way to contextualise the later phase:

•! studies that adopted an apocalyptic tone, resorting both to Umberto Eco and Louis Althusser to approach football as an ‘opium’ of the masses and an alienation force

•! works of a more anthropological interpretation, which began with the publication of Universo do Futebol: esporte e sociedade brasileira (1982) (The football universe: sport and Brazilian society), a volume edited by the influential Brazilian anthropologist Roberto DaMatta.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!10Some0examples0of0this0are:0the0essay0‘O0papel0da0magia0no0futebol’!(The0role0of0magic0in0football),0by0Mário0Miranda0Rosa0(1944);0the0book0O!negro!no!futebol!brasileiro0(The0black0in0the0Brazilian0football),0by0Mário0Filho0(1947);0the0review0of0the0same0book0by0Luiz0Aguiar0Costa0Pinto0published0in0the0same0year0in0the0journal0Sociologia;0and0the0article0‘O0futebol0no0Brasil’0(Football0in0Brazil),0by0Anatol0Rosenfeld,0originally0published0in0German0in019560and0then0in0Portuguese0in019740in0the0journal0Argumento.0About0other0works0prior0to0the01980s,0see0Giglio0and0Spaggiari0(2011)0and0Helal0(2010).00

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Helal (2011) discusses in detail some studies published in the 1970s and 1980s that were influenced by a particular Marxist interpretation — which Toledo (2001) indeed refers to as a vulgar interpretation — that sees football as a powerful force of alienation over the dominated. Ramos (1984), for instance, grounds his work on Althusser’s essay ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’ to approach football as “one of the ideological state apparatuses that would contribute towards the perpetuation of the regime, destabilising ‘capitalism contradictions’, preventing a critical conscience and ‘disciplining’ the masses” (Helal, 2011, p. 15)2. In other works, such as Santos (1978) and Klintowitz (1978), the narrative takes a condemnatory tone, denouncing aspects such as the ‘militarisation’ of the Brazilian national team, the absence of black players in the squad, the lack of ‘dribbles’, an excess of ‘obedience’, and a supposed ‘decadence’ of the sport in the country. Such a perspective could be contextualised by the socio-political situation that Brazilians, and South Americans in general, lived through in the 1960s and 1970s, when football was used for political ends by many of the then current military regimes (Reis, 2012).

DaMatta’s edited collection, on the other hand, may be considered as the founding work for the establishment of this research field in Brazil (Helal, 2011). Adopting a ritualistic approach, the texts gathered in the book (mostly essays) demarcate a turnaround in the direction of thinking about sporting phenomena from an insiders’ perspective (Lovisolo, 2002). As Toledo (2001) asserts,

The! central! theme! that! appears! in! all! texts,! despite! their! significant!

nuances,! is! a! cultural! analysis! of! football;! the! aim! of! this! type! of!

analysis!is!first!to!refute!and!criticise!a!notion!of!football!as!opium!and!

a! factor! of! alienation! of! the! masses,! and! second,! to! start! an!

anthropology!of! sporting!phenomena.!This! analytical!model! […]!was!

intended! to! conceptualise! the! categories! of! sport! and! game! from! a!

theoretical!point!of!view.!They![the!essays]!constitute!a!body!of!work!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!20All0translations0from0Portuguese0are0my0own.0

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that!analysed!—!and!some!authors!persist,!more!or! less! loyal! to! this!

approach! —! the! conjunction! between! sport! and! game! through! the!

ritual!perspective,!more!precisely,!using!the!drama!notion.![…]!Such!a!

conception! was! reworked! from! the! studies! developed! by! Turner!

(1974)! and! Geertz! (1989[1973]),! in! addition! to! Leach’s! (1972)!

contribution,!which!proposed!an!extension!of! the!ritual! concept!as!a!

communicative!process.!(p.!142,!emphasis!in!original)!

According to Toledo (2001), this type of interpretation always refers to something else that extrapolates the ritual itself. In this sense,

The! drama! [...]! is! the! basic! ingredient! in! the! ritualisation! process;!

within!this!process,!sport!is!a!privileged!event!through!which!society!

allows!itself!to!be!read!and!through!which!society’s!own!history!is!told!

to!itself,!as!DaMatta!stressed!in!citing!Clifford!Geertz.!(Toledo,!2001,!p.!

143)!

As Helal (2011) argues, this perspective uses football to understand Brazilian society, or in other words, as a means to comprehend Brazil, and not as an end in itself. According to Toledo (2001), more recent works such as Guedes (1998), Pimenta (2001) and Toledo (2000), are, to a greater or lesser degree, indebted to these earlier discussions struck up by DaMatta and his collaborators. However, in the most contemporary studies, this anthropological perspective has been improved by more systematic ethnographic practices and questioning of the drama notion. For Toledo (2001), the ‘damattian model’ seems to confine sporting phenomena to a certain degree of opacity, not dialoguing that much with the idea of rituals as more dynamic processes of social construction. Then, more recently, some have conceived of football not as a drama but as a “contentious field of practices and professional experiences, power, visibility and institutional legitimacy” (Toledo, 2001, p. 144). In this sense, Toledo (2001) argues, “it is not about reading Brazil through football, as if it were an ahistorical self-representation, in the structural sense, but about understanding football from Brazilian society’s point of view” (p. 144).

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The book edited by DaMatta is also important for the inauguration of another approach, this one more connected to communication and cultural studies, and which is rather popular in Brazil. One of the book’s texts, ‘O Momento Feliz: reflexões sobre o futebol e o ethos nacional’ (Happy Moment: thoughts about football and the national ethos), by Arno Vogel, commences a type of analysis that particularly addresses the relationship between football and national identity. Indeed, two of the main Brazilian scholars who study the topic from a communication perspective, Ronaldo Helal, already mentioned, and Édison Gastaldo, have dedicated a large part of their work to the relationship between football and the formation of a Brazilian identity, and/or to themes concerning the national team and the World Cups (Gastaldo, 2002, 2009; Gastaldo, 2005; Helal, Cabo, & Silva, 2009; Helal & Gordon Jr, 2001; Helal & Soares, 2003).

In such a context, football and other sports have gained space in the communication field, with, for instance, the creation in 1999 of an interest group in one of the top conferences of the discipline in the country (Fortes, 2014). However, it is still important to stress that among student theses completed at PhD and Master’s level in Brazil between 1990 and 2009 that approach football from a social or cultural point of view, less than 10% (34 out of 356) were developed at communication-related graduate programs (Giglio & Spaggiari, 2010). What predominates there are works undertaken under the auspices of physical education (23.3%), anthropology, sociology and political science (19.3%) and history (10.1%) programs.

Recently, Helal (2011) raised a range of issues in the conclusion of an article that suggest an exhaustion of the strong association between football and national identity and, in my opinion, the need to resort to other theoretical tools to think about supporter cultures and their related processes of identity formation in Brazil in the communication and cultural studies area:

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Then! we! question! ourselves:! If! football! has! been! associated! with! a!

Brazilian! identity! for!so! long,!what!will!happen!when!postmodernity!

emphasises! fragmentation! of! identities?! If! this! sport! has! been! an!

integrator! mechanism,! what! will! happen! when,! in! theory,! there! is!

nothing!else!to!integrate?!How!can!football!be!represented!in!society!

if! the! important! thing! is! not! to! gather! anymore! (blacks!with!whites,!

rural!with!urban,!modern!with!archaic),!but!rather,!to!separate!(ethnic!

groups,! religious!groups,! cities!with!particular! regionalisms,! suburbs!

inside! cities,! condos! inside! suburbs,! shopping!malls! inside! condos)?!

Will! football! succumb! in! postmodernity,! making! it! clear! that! it!

belonged!in!fact!to!modernity!and!to!some!extent!helped!to!construct!

this! modernity! in! Brazil?! Or! will! it! survive,! announcing! that!

postmodernity! could! never! be! complete,! because! we! need! to! live!

under!the!signal!of!nationality,!as!if!“todo%o%Brasil%desse%a%mão%em%um%

só%coração3”?!(Helal,!2011,!p.!30)!

My argument is that football, which has its origins in medieval games that pre-date modernity, and was ‘reinvented’ inside the British education system with modern values and rules (more on that in Chapter 3), is being ‘recreated’ again in Brazil. In the current Brazilian context, football is assuming a new type of organisation and the supporters’ ties with the sport are being redefined. In fact, at the club level, Brazilian supporters’ feelings of ‘belonging’ to their team were already different to those experienced concerning seleção. However, the national agenda ended up undermining the investigation of other forms of belonging associated with football there4.

At some level, football was analysed for a long time in Brazil as a type of metaphor for society — scholars looked into football to theorise about broader issues. But I argue that a change of focus is required; my point of view is not exactly the opposite of what has gone before, but a rather more

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!30This0phrase0literally0means0‘all0Brazil0held0hands0with0a0single0heart’0and0is0often0associated0with0a0type0of0chauvinistic0patriotism,0jingoism,0typical0in0Brazil0during0the0military0period0of0the0second0half0of0the020th0century.0040It0is0important0to0note0that0belonging0relationships0established0at0the0club0level0were0explored0in0academic0research0in0Brazil,0but0most0of0them0did0not0adopt0a0communication0or0cultural0studies0point0of0view.0

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dynamic version of it. Many aspects discussed here work rather well as a lens to understand macro social and cultural processes, and ultimately, my theoretical approach implies an idea of reading society through football. Nevertheless, I am adopting what could be seen as a double reflexive perspective in the sense that I also look at society and the context to comprehend football. Here, football assumes a type of leading role, as an object of research by itself. This step, also taken by the above-mentioned contemporary works that used an anthropological approach, demonstrates indeed the maturity of football-culture studies.

Furthermore, getting closer to cultural studies provides a theoretical framework that enables researchers to keep a critical view about the neoliberal model of the sector’s organisation (strongly dependent on media systems) without losing sight of the ways that supporters appropriate and make use of media technologies themselves. This use, from contemporary approaches in the audience-studies field, goes beyond the idea of an oppositional reading, as classically theorised by Stuart Hall (2005[1980]). I mean here the approximation between producer and audience that concepts such as produser and produsage express (Bruns, 2008). As I detail in Chapter 2, the dominance of the resistance paradigm from the audience-studies field among research dedicated to football supporter cultures has prevented the emergence of analyses that work from the performance paradigm. Yet, the producer/audience separation inherent to the resistance paradigm also generates, indirectly, the empirical gap I explore here. In this case, I mean specifically the relative lack of studies that approach online communities of football supporters and the uses that they make of new technologies for their everyday fan practices.

In 2010, a paper published by Soccer & Society called attention to the fact that football-fan interactions on the Internet were not being taken seriously by academics. The authors, Gibbons and Dixon (2010), using Crawford’s (2003, 2004) arguments as a starting point, identified a knowledge gap (i.e. a lack of studies addressing online sports-fandom

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practices) and pointed out a series of historical and theoretical reasons sustaining it. They perceptively indicated that in most research about sports fandom the ‘authentic’/‘traditional’ supporter was overvalued, and other sports fans were downgraded as inauthentic and only ‘consumers’. Combined with the rigid separation between ‘virtual’ (online) and ‘real’ (offline) worlds still in vogue in this field at that time, online communities were receiving less attention than they deserved because they were regarded at some level as inauthentic.

Since then, a couple of studies have been published, but there is still a need to contextualise the investigation of both online groups and data collected from the Internet with previous formations and practices of football fans. In other words, some studies approach football-fandom interactions in a vacuum, as if they were groups and activities born digitally. This may be the case of some formations such as the Yarraside, the main supporter group for the Melbourne Heart football club analysed by Ruddock (2013), for instance. However, there is still a need to contextualise historically the dynamics, sociality forms and practices of online groups with their respective past formations, especially when it comes to countries where football cultures have a long history. Also, there is an absence of studies that address the overlaps and interplays between online and offline activities.

One of the first to discuss online interactions of football fans was Wilson (2007), who explores Internet discussion boards devoted to the United States professional association football league, Major Soccer League (MLS). In this work, Wilson (2007) is interested in how discussion boards provide a way for MLS followers “to build virtual communities around a league that lacks traditions and a strong identity, and teams that have no history of generational or geographically based loyalty” (p. 381). Wilson (2007) develops a qualitative analysis of interactions on BigSoccer.com, then the most-used discussion board site in the US, and identified four main topics of conversation: (1) the consumer’s experience; (2) football’s

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place in the US sport context; (3) the status of the country in world football; and (4) the role of Latinos in US football. For Wilson (2007), the Internet and its discussion boards (his focus of analysis) play a particular role in the US context. In a place where the most influential media remain inattentive to football, argues Wilson (2007), they offer a means of information exchange for enthusiasts, indeed facilitating fan networking in a geographically large country with only a small number of professional teams.

Ruddock, Hutchins and Rowe (2010) also approach online football-fandom practices, focusing particularly on the website MyFootballClub (MFC), a novel experience in terms of fan participation in clubs’ management. According to the MFC website, they form “the world’s first Internet community to buy and takeover a real-world football club”. Charging a membership of £50 per year (2012 fee), MFC purchased 75% of Ebbsfleet United, an English semi-professional club from Gravesend, Kent, and offers to its members the possibility of selecting the team, tactics, transfers, ticket price and so on by popular vote (Ruddock, et al., 2010). MFC is, for Ruddock and colleagues (2010), a logical outcome of football’s journey from folk to consumer culture, a shift from audience to user. MFC, then, “successfully places media at the centre of its claims that it revives lost football-supporter traditions, the very demise of which have conventionally been attributed to the growth and influence of media” (Ruddock, et al., 2010, p. 325). In this sense, MFC could be understood as a ‘new tradition’, a promise that has to negotiate many obstacles, including organicist myths of sport.

Even though Hutchins and Rowe (2012) do not focus particularly on football (they use examples and cases from a variety of sporting codes), their work is an innovative take on the relationship between sport and digital technologies. From political-economy issues to journalism and everything in-between, their book, Sport Beyond Television, is one of the

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first full-length books about the Internet, digital media and sport5. Hutchins and Rowe (2012) seek to identify “features of the market-place, communications technology, and uses of media that explain the appearance and operation of media sport in the digital age” (p. 5). Drawing on 45 interviews done in Australia with a variety of actors of the sport sector (including industry professionals, telecommunications operators, regulators, athletes and fans), Hutchins and Rowe (2012) discuss the birth of a new media order that according to them “is not dissimilar to that of the 1950s and 1960s when television began its ascent as the dominant medium delivering sport to viewers and advertisers” (p. 4). In the current technological landscape, the growing popularity and availability of social software have challenged centrally controlled media systems, creating concerns for clubs, sport managers and other insiders from the sports-media industry. On the other hand, explain Hutchins and Rowe (2012), various forms of social software also possess a Janus-faced character because this capacity has not often been used for transformative communications:

Even!when!fan$produced!content!and!comments!are!critical!in!nature,!

there! is! rarely! a! fundamental! challenge! to! those! who! possess!

overwhelming! symbolic! power! in! defining! and! anchoring! the! reality!

of! elite! sport! —! sports! organizing! bodies,! leagues,! clubs,! media!

companies!and!sponsors.!(Hutchins!&!Rowe,!2012,!p.!77)!

This context is the reason that Hutchins and Rowe (2012) are not completely convinced about the democratic potential of participatory culture when it comes to sports. Other scholars, such as Bruns (2008) and Burgess and Green (2009), have argued that users in produsage communities are challenging professional media providers, media norms and the cultural authority of ‘legitimate knowledge’ in two ways: through continuous collaboration and through creative decentralised ‘co-creation’

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!50Before0this0book,0Raymond0Boyle0and0Richard0Haynes0(2004)0published0Football!in!the!New!Media!Age,0which0focuses0on0association0football,0particularly0on0politicalbeconomy0issues,0and0was0developed0in0a0context0of0more0incipient0use0of0the0Internet0and0new0technologies.0

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with a clear democratic and transformative appeal. According to Hutchins and Rowe (2012), however, these arguments are more plausible for some cases than others. They recognise the potential of user communities formed around Flickr, Linux, Second Life and YouTube explored by Bruns (2008) and Burgess and Green (2009), for instance. Nevertheless, as other scholars have highlighted, sports-fan conversations frequently concentrate on how sport executives should improve their performance to get better results for their teams on the field and in financial terms, and how they should create more appealing action for the audience, clearly avoiding the politicisation of discussions about sport, even when it comes to cultural-politics issues (Hutchins & Rowe, 2012; Ruddock, 2005; Scibilia & Hutchins, 2012).

Recently, Hutchins and Rowe (2013) organised the collection Digital Media Sport: Technology and Power in the Network Society, which does a similar job to Sport Beyond Television, however, with a more clear global scope. Gathering essays by scholars from North America, Britain, continental Europe, East Asia and Australasia, the Digital Media Sport collection “identifies the intersecting issues of technological change, market power and social practice that shape the contemporary media sport landscape” (p. 5). Organised around three thematic sections, Part II is especially dedicated to ‘Users, Audiences and Identities’. Two of the five articles in that section are particularly inspiring for the ideas discussed in this thesis: Peter Millward’s (2013) ‘Fan Movements in the Network Society: Project, Resistance and Legitimizing Identities among Manchester United Supporters’ and the already mentioned ‘“Born on Swan Street, Next to the Yarra”: Online Opinion Leaders and Inventing Commitment’, by Andy Ruddock (2013).

Millward’s article (2013) adopts the framework developed by Manuel Castells, positioning the English Premier League and its economic organisation in the space of flows and fan movements that have emerged in response to the hypercommodification of the sport in the space of places

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in network society. Ruddock’s article (2013) adopts the concepts of performance, media practice and opinion-leading to explore how, in the digital era, highly engaged fans have claimed their “authority not only by leading chants in the stadium, but also through online discussions and by competing with commercial news media in ‘breaking’ news about player signings” (p. 161).

I will come back to Millward’s and Ruddock’s works in Chapter 5, but it is important to note at this point that both studies demonstrate the growing importance of developing studies in the academic field of football fandom that further investigate the role performed by supporters who occupy leadership positions within online communities. These fans exert a type of cultural authority over their peers and their online activities are interwoven with embedded practices. In Brazil, opinion-leading supporters are central nodes in the networks formed by conversations related to their clubs on social-media platforms. They are often original content producers (some of their projects are discussed in Chapter 6), have a long history of involvement with both online and offline groups, and are key articulators (along with organised groups) of collective performances and other social actions within their communities (discussed in Chapter 5).

Research!questions!

This thesis’s central research question and subquestions are as follows:

RQ: In modern-day Brazil, what are the relationships between (1) the socio-economic and technological changes and (2) the dislocations in football supporter cultures?!

a)! How has the Brazilian domestic football sector been organised? !

i)! What are the different formations, laws, values and modes of commercialisation that have defined each period of Brazilian football history? !

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ii)! How is the sector currently organised, and what do the emerging conflicts tell us about the implications of macro social changes for supporter cultures?!

!

b)! What are the implications of the emergence and popularisation of the use of new technologies for football-fandom practices in Brazil?

i)! What is the history of groups of football supporters in the country?

ii)! What is the history of online groups of football supporters there?

iii)! How have supporters used new technologies to organise traditional practices such as collective performances?

iv)! How have football fans used new technologies to produce original media content?

The first set of subquestions is explored mostly in Chapter 3 — even though Chapter 2 also works as an introduction to some of the issues. The second set of subquestions is approached over Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Methodological!design!

In general terms, this project adopts an empirical approach rather similar to most cultural studies: investigating the interplay between lived experiences, texts or discourses, and the social context (Saukko, 2003). In Chapter 2, I develop a theoretical discussion that culminates in an argument that a conjunctural perspective is fruitful for grasping the

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current moment of football supporter cultures in Brazil. Changes in the organisation of the domestic sector and the increasing adoption of new technologies in ordinary fan practices are important elements to understand modern-day modes of organisation of supporters, their everyday practices and collective performances, texts and other discursive expressions produced within such cultures, and the relationships of belonging established between fans and their clubs. This project analyses the interplays between these diverse aspects, particularly articulating the discussion in two axes: the structures of the economy, and the subjectivities and meanings attributed by supporters to their practices.

In the first part of the thesis, which deals with the structuring forces overdetermining the Brazilian football industry, I make a critical analysis of the political economy of the sector, and I also use elements of discursive analysis to better contextualise and explore the emergent conflicts that exist in this environment. In the second part, I develop a contemporary cultural analysis that combines digital methods and traditional qualitative strategies to investigate the modes of organisation and expression of football supporters. In this part, I also resort to discursive analysis and close readings to explore online fan conversations, fan texts and in-depth interviews done with football supporters.

Next, I present a summary of the sources and data-analysis strategies used in each part of the thesis (see Table 1.1 for an overview). Following that, I discuss what could be seen as the most critical and innovative part of my methodological design: the particular way I combine digital methods with traditional qualitative strategies. In the second part of this thesis, I adopt a version of Dixon’s (2012) proposal of using computational techniques as a mid-point to plan more qualitative phases in digital humanities projects.

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Table!1.1:!Summary!of!thesis!structure.!

Part!of!the!analysis! Focus!of!analysis! Data!sources! Data3analysis!techniques!Political0economy0 •! Structuring0forces0 •!Regulations0and0

indicators0of0the0sector0•!Emerging0conflicts0(socialbmedia0data)0

•!Critical0analysis0of0the0modes0of0commercialisation0and0power0relations0

•!Contextual/discourse0analysis0of0emerging0conflicts0

Supporter0cultures0 •!Modes0of0organisation0•! Forms0of0expression0

•!Large0Twitter0data0set0•!Interviews0and0fan0texts0•! Orkut0conversations0

•!Digital0methods0(analysis0of0patterns)0

•!Discourse0analysis0and0close0readings0of0the0interviews,0fan0texts0and0fan0conversations0

Description!of!data!sources,!data1collection!strategies!and!data1analysis!techniques!

Data%sources%used%in%this%thesis%

•! Football-related regulations (Chapter 3)

•! Social-context data (such as socio-demographic information and football clubs’ income with TV rights and match attendance; used over the thesis, but especially in Chapters 3 and 4)

•! Football clubs’ social-media metrics (followers on Twitter, likes on Facebook and community memberships on Orkut; Chapter 4)

•! Tweets related to fan-run campaigns and protests (Chapters 3 and 5)

•! Orkut conversations (Chapters 4 and 5)

•! A large collection of football-related tweets (7.4 million tweets related to the 12 top Brazilian clubs posted in a three-month period in 2013; I discuss the details of this in Chapter 5)

•! Transcribed interviews with football supporters (11 interviews, which, when transcribed, totalled around 300 pages; they are used in many parts of the thesis but mostly in Chapter 6)

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•! Fan texts (Chapter 6)

•! Supplementary material: in loco observations of the new stadiums; personal accounts based on my lived experience as a fan; news articles and blog entries; and, of course, bibliographical and documental sources.

Data_collection%strategies%carried%out%especially%for%this%project%

•! Archiving of topical tweets

•! In-depth semi-structured interviews (guide found in Appendix A)

•! Collection of fan texts produced by the interviewees (highly popular projects)

•! Periodic observations of football clubs’ social-media metrics

Data_analysis%techniques%

•! Critical analysis of the football political economy (found in Chapter 3)

•! Digital methods (analysis of patterns, which is explained in more detail below, in Chapter 5 and in Appendix B)

•! Discourse analysis and close readings of the interviews, fan texts and fan conversations

Computational!turn:!taking!advantage!and!mitigating!problems!

At this point, an important element of my methodological design that deserves to be approached in more detail is the combination of digital methods with qualitative strategies, which I adopt in the second part of

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the thesis. This particular strategy is the most critical and innovative technique of the study and is also the skeleton behind most of the empirical analysis developed here. As a way to contextualise this particular methodological choice, in this section, I briefly discuss the recent arrival of the big-data paradigm in media, communication and cultural studies research, its limitations and contributions. After that, I describe the specific ways the computational turn is incorporated into the design of this project.

Compared with hard-science disciplines such as biology, the academic fields of cultural studies and media and communication are witnessing relatively late the methodological, epistemological and ontological implications of the adoption of such computationally based research methods (Burgess & Bruns, 2012). Even disciplines in the social sciences experienced such paradigmatic changes earlier than cultural studies and media and communication, as did humanities areas such as literature and archaeology, which have had their practices and methods transformed more or less already in the first wave of digital humanities (Presner, 2010; Schreibman, Siemens, & Unsworth, 2004). The recent emergence and apparently increased cultural importance of social media was indeed the turning point towards a more significant adoption of computational techniques to collect and process large volumes of data by cultural studies and communication scholars (Burgess & Bruns, 2012; Manovich, 2012). As Burgess and Bruns (2012) put it: “This moment has arrived in media, communication and cultural studies because of the increased scale of social media participation and the textual traces that this participation leaves behind”.

The expression ‘big data’ could give the impression that the most fundamental change that I want to highlight here is the one that would take media and communication research to the realisation of sociology’s old obsession in becoming a quantitative science (Latour, 2010), or, in other words, the dominance of large data sets and quantitative methods in

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the ‘normal’ scientific work of this area. However, I want to particularly focus on the point argued by Berry (2012) that the significant shift being experienced in our field is in fact the increasing mediation of academic research by digital technology or, the ‘computational turn’, as he named it. For Berry (2012), the computational turn is central in the third wave of digital humanities because it transforms both the object of study and the means of studying it.

The first wave of digital humanities was quantitative and mobilised the search and retrieval powers of the database in large-scale digitisation projects (Presner, 2010; Schnapp, Presner, & Lunenfeld, 2009). The second, on the other hand, was qualitative and interpretative, using the humanities’ core methodological strengths to interact with knowledge that was ‘born digital’ (Presner, 2010; Schnapp, et al., 2009). As Berry (2012) explains, the third wave has differently focused on how medial changes also produce epistemic changes. This means to look at the digital component of the digital humanities in the light of its medium specificity, recognising its underlying computationality and how much computer code is infiltrating academy and transforming it. For Berry (2012),

neither! first$! nor! second$wave! digital! humanities! really!

problematized!what!Lakatos!(1980)!would!have!called!the!‘hard$core’!

of! the! humanities,! the! unspoken! assumptions! and! ontological!

foundations! which! support! the! ‘normal’! research! that! humanities!

scholars!undertake!on!an!everyday!basis.!(p.!4)!!

Berry (2012) believes that this third wave should provide a computationally supported way of thinking that encompasses a type of ‘humanistic understanding of technology’. This new humanistic approach challenges traditional ontologies and epistemologies because “computational technology has become the very condition of possibility required in order to think about many of the questions raised in the humanities today” (Berry, 2012, p. 3). In this sense, such shift has shaken the implicit assumptions of ‘normal’ research and, as a result,

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computational analyses in communication and cultural studies, as modes of new humanities scholarship, have not been necessarily implicated in positivist epistemologies as previous data-driven approaches of this discipline. A humanistic understanding of technology could also be able to generate a type of cultural criticism that has been noticeably absent in digital humanities studies (Liu, 2012).

Works that escape the initial extremely optimistic discourses about big data and that deal with critiques like Liu’s (2012) are part of this third moment of digital humanities. Manovich (2012), for instance, offers some objections to such extremely optimistic views. For him, it is important to recognise that the emergence of social-media platforms in the middle of the 2000s created unprecedented opportunities to explore social and cultural processes. However, data-intensive projects also have their limitations, obstacles and are intrinsically related to inequalities in terms of access and necessary abilities to operate in the current research landscape.

In terms of access, Manovich (2012) argues that, in fact, very few people have access to really large social data sets in the new research order. Academics working for Facebook or Google may have, but most researchers can only obtain data through the application programming interfaces (APIs6) provided by social-media services. APIs, as other scholars have discussed, are fundamental for most research that has been done at the academy; however, they are also generally not planned for academic purposes, have operational limitations and often change over time (Burgess & Bruns, 2012). Twitter’s API rules, for instance, changed in the middle of the execution of this project, and cases like this create

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!6“APIs0are0technical0specifications0of0how0one0software0application0should0access0another,0thereby0allowing0the0embedding0or0crossbpublishing0of0social0content0across0Websites0(so0that0your0tweets0can0appear0in0your0Facebook0timeline,0for0example),0or0allowing0thirdbparty0developers0to0build0additional0applications0on0social0media0platforms0(like0the0Twitter0user0ranking0service0Klout),0while0also0allowing0platform0owners0to0impose0de!facto0regulation0on0such0thirdbparty0uses0via0the0same0code.0While0platform0providers0do0not0necessarily0have0scholarship0in0mind,0the0data0access0affordances0of0APIs0are0also0available0for0research0purposes”0(Burgess0&0Bruns,02012).0

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situations in which researchers have to find workarounds and rely on data collections that are always partial.

In terms of proper skills, Manovich (2012) believes that even if APIs are not that complicated, the fact is that so far computer-science researchers are behind all truly large-scale research projects that use data collected via APIs. For Manovich (2012), the emergence of “computational data analysis as the key scientific and economic approach in contemporary societies creates new kinds of divisions” (p. 470). These divisions start, for instance, in the building of the necessary infrastructure to develop data-intensive projects. There is a gap between what a researcher can do with the right software and data but with no advanced knowledge of computer science and statistics, and what may be done if the researcher has such advanced knowledge. Manovich (2012) argues that collaborative processes between researchers from the humanities and computer science are needed in the current phase, but he also stresses that the ways researchers are trained will have to be rethought in this new environment:

I! have! no! doubt! that! eventually! we!will! see!many!more! humanities!

and! social! science! researchers! who! will! be! equally! as! good! at!

implementing!the!latest!data!analysis!algorithms!themselves,!without!

relying! on! computer! scientists,! as! they! are! at! formulating! abstract!

theoretical! arguments.! However,! this! requires! a! big! change! in! how!

students! in! humanities! are! being! educated.! The! model! of! big$data!

humanities!research!that!exists!now!is! that!of!collaboration!between!

humanists!and!computer!scientists.!It!is!the!right!way!to!start!“digging!

into! data.”! However,! if! each! data$intensive! project! done! in! the!

humanities! would! have! to! be! supported! by! a! research! grant,! which!

would! allow! such! collaboration,! our! progress!will! be! very! slow.!We!

want! humanists! to! be! able! to! use! data! analysis! and! visualization!

software! in! their! daily! work,! so! they! can! combine! quantitative! and!

qualitative!approaches!in!all!their!work.!(p.!473)!

In fact, this thesis is part of this context at some level. A great deal of this project involved learning such techniques and finding out how they could

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help me to answer my research questions. As part of this process, the methodological design of this project is highly experimental: I try out a new approach (documented in the second part of this thesis) that introduces innovative forms of thinking about online fandom communities, but also brings about new challenges and paradoxes. One of the greatest challenges was the integration of more quantitative strategies in a cultural analysis.

Importantly, Manovich (2012) also objects to the idea that computers will replace human analysts. For him, this is not the best way of thinking about digital humanities and the computational turn. Digital methods do not solve all our methodological issues, and they cannot offer the same deep knowledge achieved with qualitative techniques such as ethnography. But rather than simply ignoring or undervaluing the usefulness of computational strategies in the humanities, it is possible to incorporate them as part of our methodological designs:

We!can!use!computers!to!quickly!explore!massive!visual!data!sets!and!

then! select! the! objects! for! closer! manual! analysis.! While! computer$

assisted! examination! of! massive! cultural! data! sets! typically! reveals!

new!patterns! in! this! data! that! even! the! best!manual! “close! reading”!

would!miss!—!and!of!course,!even!an!army!of!humanists!will!not!be!

able! to! carefully! close! read!massive! data! sets! in! the! first! place!—! a!

human! is! still! needed! to! make! sense! of! these! patterns.! (Manovich,!

2012,!pp.!468$469)!

Manovich’s idea, which is very similar to what I am proposing in this thesis, is to combine “the human ability to understand and interpret — which computers can’t completely match yet — and the computer’s ability to analyse massive data sets using algorithms we create” (Manovich, 2012, p. 469). Even though Manovich seems to talk more of a combination in terms of data-analysis strategies, I am extrapolating that to data-collection techniques as well. In this sense, a promising way of executing this combination is through the approach proposed by Dixon (2012).

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According to Dixon, the term ‘pattern’ appears repeatedly in the digital humanities literature; however, its meaning is often taken for granted and not specified. He argues that the analysis of patterns may be used in research designs that value, but are not limited to, abductive ways of reasoning. As he asserts, “patterns can be justified as part of the process of enquiry in any type of research, but not by themselves as an end; they are part of the process, not the product” (Dixon, 2012, p. 192).

For Dixon (2012), the recognition of patterns is often a simple solution in the digital humanities to not use the expression ‘structure’. Because ‘structure’ carries all the structuralism baggage and “it is difficult to escape the connotations that go with it” (p. 191), the term pattern has emerged as a wildcard expression that has a more optimistic sense. Nevertheless, such recourse does not solve the epistemological issue behind the concept: after all, what are patterns and which type of knowledge they offer?

The solution Dixon (2012) found is to locate “the digital humanities among the variety of approaches to knowledge generation” and reflexively understand “the forces which push it around” (p. 199). Departing from a simple continuum of knowledge, which includes ‘positivist/empiricist natural sciences’, ‘humanities’ and ‘action research’, Dixon (2012) argues that the pragmatic way that action research sees patterns may be useful, but humanists are often dragged into more generalist interpretations, or, in other words, to the other end of the spectrum. For Dixon (2012), such a tendency may reflect a researcher bias towards these methods, especially because many people who get involved in data-intensive projects are computer scientists, and they are generally more familiar with such methods of inquiry. Apart from that, such bias may also be related to the nature of the tools and results because the production of data and visualisation approaches have more in common with the hard sciences than with the humanities. As Dixon (2012) stresses, it is at some point natural that there is some confusion between the interpretive nature of

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humanities research and the more descriptive and explanatory approaches of hard sciences when computational tools are used to understand society and culture.

For Dixon (2012), a way out of this problem is for humanists resort to how patterns are understood in action research, where they are not a static set of knowledge. In action research, they are a process, a design tool, not a design. In this sense, patterns become a tool, rather than a product of a research and they are useful contextually within such processes. From Peirce’s work and his formalisation of the three types of reasoning, Dixon (2012) argues that the analysis of patterns falls very much into the abductive realm; ideas and inspiration may be found in this realm but the scientific process should not end.

In!deduction!a!premise!is!reached!by!purely!logical,!a!priori!reasoning:!

A!therefore!B,!and!B!therefore!C,!leading!to!A!therefore!C.!Induction!is!

the!principle! of! repeated! testing.! If!B! follows! from!A! in! all! observed!

cases,! then! that! would! be! a! good! theory! for! all! cases! in! the! future.!

Abductive! reasoning! is! different! in! that! no! logical! or! empirical!

connection! is! required,! merely! spotting! patterns! in! the! data.! The!

results! of! abduction,! however,! are! not! necessarily! logically! or!

scientifically! coherent;! they! need! to! be! properly! tested,! either!

deductively! or! inductively,! or! both.! This! three$step! process! of!

abductive! hypothesis! forming,! deductive! theory! construction,! and!

inductive! empirical! testing! was! the! basis! of! Peirce’s! three$part!

iterative!scientific!process.!(pp.!201$202)!

In this sense, argues Dixon (2012) rather than a theory for what patterns are, we may actually need a methodology for using patterns within Peirce’s three-part method. For Dixon (2012), patterns should be used as a formalisation of the abductive part of the scientific process, and deductive and/or inductive phases should follow it. My methodology incorporates Dixon’s proposal through the inclusion of the analysis of patterns (using digital methods) along with qualitative techniques; together they form a mixed-methods design that is appropriate for studying culture and society

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in the digital era. A particularly helpful tactic is actually to adopt a sequential strategy, which in the area of mixed methods involves using one stage of a research project to plan the subsequent ones (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004; Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, & Turner, 2007).

Because my project adopts a highly contextual perspective that seeks to understand football fan culture in a very specific and changing socio-cultural setting, it is the deeper meanings attributed by fans to their practices that interest me. So, I am more interested in using inductive approaches following the analysis of patterns. Therefore, after I analysed some of the dynamics and patterns found in the collection of tweets manipulated in the second part of the thesis, I focused on two things:

•! in-depth interviews with supporters who produce highly popular original content within the supporter base of one Brazilian football club

•! the analysis of a popular and regular practice (an on-site performance organised in a networked fashion) taking place within this very same torcida.

The interviews were particularly important for three main reasons. First, they were the best way I found to historically contextualise such communities. This is because many of these fans have been around for a very long time and were key informants who enabled me to understand the historical developments that led these online groups to their current distributed shape. Second, these fans also provided valuable insights about how such cultures (and the activities encompassed by them) are organised today. And last, but not least, these fans were fundamental to shedding light on the meanings they attribute to the texts and discourses they produce.

The analysis of the performance was an interesting way of showcasing how the everyday conversations between football supporters on diverse

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social-media platforms, and the interpersonal relationships established through these conversations, are called on when fans find themselves in a situation that requires mobilisation/coordination. Football supporter cultures involve a great deal of mobilisation/coordination because they are regularly involved in collective performances. Chants, body movements, adornments, flags and mosaic messages displayed on match-days are not random expressions of their passion. They have always been carefully planned and designed, and now, day-by-day, they have become results of broader collaborative processes of co-creation that take place most of the time on social-media platforms. The performance I analyse in Chapter 5 is a good example of how campaigns and collective actions are currently happening within football supporter cultures in Brazil.

Lastly, Dixon (2012), still grounded on pragmatism, stresses the iterative sense of the research cycle if his perspective is adopted — or a strategy that sounds like it is sequential, but it is rather recursive. Patterns found in large data sets may be used again and again, in cycles of enquiry. Actually, some inspirational ideas I found in my data sets are discussed in the Conclusion of the thesis as future research agendas in this area that I was not able to approach here.

Overview!of!the!thesis!

This thesis produces a conjunctural analysis of modern-day football fandom cultures in Brazil, articulating two axes of analysis that provide, on one hand, a picture of the economic forces structuring an increasingly hypercommodified sector and, on the other, the ways found by supporters to build meaning and identities that challenge such a rationalised environment. Even though I approach both aspects here, I must recognise at this point that the latter (the supporters’ subjectivities and their fandom practices) has a privileged place in this project. As will be noticeable to the reader, this choice is reflected in the thesis structure: if we set aside Chapter 7, the Conclusion, four out of the five remaining

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chapters are dedicated to fandom-related topics, while only one covers the political economy of the sector.

The following chapter, Theoretical Grounds and Perspectives (Chapter 2), sets the scene for the rest of this document, exploring in detail the theoretical approach adopted here. I historically review the international literature about football supporter cultures. As part of this review, I approach some of the pioneer works in the genre, such as the Marxist analyses of Ian Taylor from the 1970s, but also include more recent works, such as those developed by the ‘fan democracy’ line of studies. This review underpins my central argument, that research into football fandom cultures may benefit from being brought closer to cultural studies and more contemporary perspectives in the audience-studies area. Above all, it is necessary to have an approach that encompasses the lateral extension of the field, as Couldry (2012b) called it; this type of approach, in the 1990s, led researchers to start investigating the many things that audiences do besides watching, reading and listening. But such an approximation to cultural studies and audience research takes a particular direction here, through the idea of a conjunctural analysis. The football industry and supporter cultures in Brazil have their own particular histories, and the current socio-political moment is a key to understanding why this environment is undergoing such deep changes now. Adopting a conjunctural perspective is a way to exercise that type of radical contextualism that has characterised cultural studies since its birth and that is fundamental to understanding the reasons that led to the current landscape.

Chapter 3, Inside the Industry: The Political Economy of Football, approaches the economic forces driving the football sector in Brazil to a hypercommodified phase. I start by discussing the historical developments that led football from its early modern version, as practised late in the 19th century inside the English public-education system, to its current industrialised variant. I discuss some of the key initial elements leading

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towards a market-orientation in this sector, such as the changes in the maximum wage, and in the retain and transfer systems in England. After this brief introduction to the British context, I turn to the Brazilian environment, and explore the distinct phases of football there. From the voluntary associations of the early 20th century, passing by the professionalisation of the sector in the 1930s, to a neoliberal model that started to take shape in the late 1980s. Some of the central developments in this trajectory are discussed. One of these developments is the creation (1976) and extinction of passe (1998) — a legal instrument that tied players to clubs in a similar way to the transfer system in England. Another important development discussed is the creation (1941) and extinction (1988) of the National Sporting Committee — a disciplinarian state apparatus that regulated sporting activities in Brazil during the two military regimes that the country experienced in the 20th century. I also discuss the recent changes, which are the core for my argument that Brazilian football (i.e. its domestic league) is starting to show some signs of hypercommodification. The central elements used to understand this new context are: (1) the 2014 FIFA World Cup preparations (and the 12 high-priced seating stadiums renovated or built for the tournament); and (2) the recent renegotiation of broadcasting rights (with an escalation in the top clubs’ media revenues). I finish the chapter by presenting some of the emerging conflicts of this environment, which are rather revealing of what is at stake in such a transitional setting. I discuss briefly the fan-run campaign #ForaRicardoTeixeira (Get out Ricardo Teixeira) and the small protests #VergonhaMinasArena (Shame on you, Minas Arena) as examples of the current imbalances and contentious issues.

In Chapter 4, Collective Football Supporting in Brazil: Organised Groups, New Movements and Online Communities, I develop another highly contextualised discussion, this time about collective forms of supporting in the country. I present the historical developments of such collectivisms over the last decades, particularly relating to the features of distinct formations with each socio-cultural moment witnessed by the country. I

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explore some of the earliest groups of supporters formed there, such as Charanga Rubro-Negra and Torcida Uniformizada do São Paulo (TUSP), both from the 1940s, and explain how they demarcate a period that is known as the ‘symbolic-fan’ phase of collective supporting in Brazil. This period lasted until the 1960s when the organised groups or TOs started to emerge. These groups are legally formalised as non-profit recreational associations, with complex organisational structures, and became associated with violence in the social imaginary especially after the moral panic that followed incidents involving them in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Brazil. On the other hand, they are the ones behind most of the traditional crowd performances and their headquarters are sites of sociability (as defined by Simmel, 1950). Organised supporters experience a distinct type of conviviality in the ordinary meetings at the headquarters or at the associated Samba Schools’ courts and, because of that, they generally distinguish themselves from other types of supporter groups.

After approaching these formations and their traditional practices, I then turn to more contemporary collectivisms, which have arisen recently in the country and have been called elsewhere new supporting movements (de Hollanda, et al., 2014; Teixeira, 2010, 2013). These formations have a distinct ethos from the preceding organised groups and started to come up in the first decade of the 21st century. New supporting movements often originate from dissidents of the TOs and their practices are inspired in the South American barra bravas, especially the Argentinian ones. I finish the chapter by discussing the emergence of online groups in the early 1990s and their developments until today. My argument here is that online football fandom has become a mainstream practice, even though the core members of such communities still display a rather subcultural sense of identity.

Chapter 5, Online Football Fandom: Networked Collectivisms, Opinion Leaders and Convergence Points, continues the discussion started in the previous chapter, particularly analysing the current shape of such online

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formations. I start the chapter by exploring the dynamics of online football fandom from a large data set of football-related Twitter conversations. The patterns found in such exploratory analysis shed light on two aspects that are further discussed: (1) the strong temporal rhythms that dictate online supporter cultures; and (2) the emergence of new opinion leaders within the torcidas in such a networked context. I analyse some of the roles played by these new leaders. For example, they are like the regulars found at Oldenburg’s (1991) third places, setting the tone of conviviality and style of interactions. In addition, the new leaders act as convergence points, which are particularly important for the decentralised coordination of the distributed communities of fans that are found on the Internet today and that Baym (2007, 2010) calls networked collectivisms. I finish this chapter by analysing a regular collective performance of Atlético-MG supporters called Inferno Alvinegro. From conversations posted on a thread at the largest community of Galo fans on Orkut, I examine:

•! how the practice first emerged

•! the ways ordinary fans resort to the convergence points for their organisation and mobilisation efforts

•! how supporters are aware of the new hierarchies of these groups (based mostly on skills) and seek indeed to explore the personal publics (Schmidt, 2014) of key fans within the community in such situations.

In Chapter 6, The Digital Productivity of Football Supporters: Formats, Motivations and Styles, I continue discussing the work of these new leaders. Apart from setting the tone of the interactions and being convergence points, which are particularly important for the coordination efforts of supporting cultures, the new leaders are often behind the popular original fan productions of such communities. I start the chapter by contextualising how football-fandom research is dominated by the resistance paradigm and how the consequent separation between

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production and consumption levels has prevented the consideration of football fans’ textual productivity as an object of academic enquiry. I explore some of the rare studies that approach the amateur productions of sports fans and then analyse some of the most popular fan-run projects within Atlético’s supporter base. This chapter is grounded on in-depth interviews that I did with the fans behind such initiatives and in an analysis of the texts they have produced. I discuss the distinct formats, motivations and styles/approaches adopted by these supporters in their texts, and I conclude the chapter by associating their productions with a postmodern style of football writing. I stress at the end that their enterprises are particularly innovative for:

•! placing ordinary supporters at the centre of the narratives

•! offering unconventional methods of reportage that challenge the dependency of journalism on regular productive routines and that are able to address unusual angles of sport-related stories

•! recreating the passionate and literary style of Brazilian sporting chronicle that was disappearing as a result of the increasing rationalisation of both the football sector and sporting journalism.

Finally, in the Conclusion, I stress the contributions to knowledge of this thesis and its limitations. I also raise some future research agendas for the area and conclude with a brief commentary about the current Brazilian conjuncture.

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2! Fandom:!Theoretical!Grounds!and!Perspectives!

The!Taylor!Report!has,!as!Ian!Taylor!(1992)!has!argued,!been!

one! of! the! determining! factors! in! the! contemporary! regulation! and!

control!of!the!football!industry.!For!the!fans!it!has!proved!a!particular!

focus! for! attempts! to! democratise! the! game:! most! importantly,! the!

implementation!of! all$seater! stadia! is! central! to! the! fans’! belief! that!

they! have! as! little! influence! over! the! industry! as! ever.! Further,! the!

Taylor!Report!has!proved!to!be!the!single!most!important!catalyst!for!

the!modernisation!of!the!English!game,!its!clubs!and!their!commercial!

strategies!which! have! formed! the! basis! of!many! of! the! concerns! of!

supporters.!

—! !Adam!Brown,! in!United%we% stand:% some%problems%with% fan%democracy,!1998!

This chapter explores in detail the theoretical perspective adopted in this research. My argument here is mostly theoretical, with my proposition of a conjunctural analysis of football supporter cultures in Brazil being firmly grounded in a scholarly discussion about football supporter cultures and fandom. However, in fact, this choice was not entirely conceptually oriented. My empirical observations of the environment under analysis here were also fundamental for this project’s developments. So, before I pass to the literature review, I want to briefly explore one example of how such observations deeply influenced my perceptions and understandings about the current dislocations in football supporter cultures in Brazil.

This thesis started as an analysis of football-related controversies and protests. One of the first topics to call my attention was the campaign #ForaRicardoTeixeira (Get Out Ricardo Teixeira), which in 2012 knocked down the then ‘king’ of the Tupiniquim football, the ruler of the Brazilian

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Football Confederation (CBF) for 23 successive years, Ricardo Teixeira. During his time as CBF leader, Teixeira was accused of corruption many times; however, he seemed to be above any criticism and was not affected by power shifts in the organisation. Teixeira was also the Chief Executive of the Local Organising Committee of the 2014 World Cup and, pressured by new allegations and growing concerns with the preparations for the tournament, in an unexpected move, he resigned from both positions. Many football observers highlighted the importance of the online fan-based #ForaRicardoTeixeira campaign in helping to achieve what seemed impossible, especially just two years before the mega-event. Indeed, the campaign’s significance led Brazilian cartoonists to illustrate the situation with drawings of Teixeira running away or hiding from Twitter birds (Caracciolo, 2011; Coala, 2011).

The #ForaRicardoTeixeira campaign originally caught my attention because it was something rather different to the usual football supporters’ initiatives in Brazil. With a clear political agenda, football fans used the available technologies to organise themselves and demand Teixeira’s departure. To a lesser extent, the fans also sought to question the way the national football sector is organised and the upcoming World Cup event (Vimieiro, 2013). The campaign did not emerge in a vacuum; rather, it was part of a context of increasing debate over politics in sport, especially, football, in Brazil. And I was interested in such controversial debates, which were proliferating and taking place in many social networks, including the microblogging website Twitter.

In early 2013, I travelled back to Brazil on holidays and, there, my theoretical framework started to take shape. The football club I supported my whole life, Atlético-MG, was playing the most important tournament in South American football, Copa Libertadores da América, and I was keen to be part of what would become the first time in my club’s history that it would win this competition. I had not been in Brazil for two years and had not attended any match in the renovated World Cup stadiums.

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Mineirão, where Atlético-MG used to play before the preparations for the FIFA World Cup tournament, was closed in 2010 and had just been reopened in February 2013; Independência, another stadium that had at this point become Atlético’s home ground, was being remodelled. The last Atlético’s match I had attended was the melancholic defeat to Fluminense in May 2010, in the second-last match at the ‘old Mineirão’ before it closed its doors to become later the ‘Mineirão Arena’ — a building that now complies with the famous FIFA standards.

The Libertadores’ match I attended in 2013 was played in Independência, and everything was different at this new ‘arena’. To begin with, the tickets were much more expensive for this Atlético-MG vs. Arsenal (from Argentina) match. In 2010, I recall paying R$20 for admission7 and now I was paying R$408. But the most significant changes were in the fan practices surrounding and inside the ‘arena’. In Brazil, there is a law that prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages inside the stadiums. Therefore, it is a rather common practice to drink outside (in pubs and on the streets) and wait until the last minute before the game to get into the stadium. In 2010, I used to buy a popular set of drinks in these ritualistic preparations for the match: three cans of beer for R$10, one for me and one each for the other two members of my regular ‘stadium gang’. In 2013, however, in the ‘new Independência’, I could not easily find the previous ‘standard’ set of drinks at that price nearby, and it had become trendy to buy a type of Brazilian draught beer (called chope) instead. This beer is popular in regular bars, but usually, not near the stadium; now, however, chope was being sold in the stadium’s vicinity for R$7 a schooner.

Inside the ‘arena’, I noticed more changes. It was not a simple gentrification of the public (even though that was also the case), but a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!70And0many0paid0even0less0for0a0geral0ticket,0the0now0almost0extinct0place0where,0for0a0low0price,0fans0stood0up0to0watch0matches0for0decades.0Geral0was0the0Brazilian0equivalent0of0the0English0terraces.080It0has0to0be0considered0here0that0the020130match0was0part0of0an0international0competition,0ergo0more0important0and0expensive.0Further,0the0inflation0rate0(Extended0National0Consumer0Price0Index0or0IPCA)0accumulated0in0the02010–20130period0in0Brazil0was019.22%.0Nevertheless,0the0increase0was0substantial0and0observed0in0smallerbscale0matches0too.0I0discuss0this0further0in0Chapter03.0

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transformation of the old public as well. More women and families were there, people were better dressed and many supporters were carrying expensive mobile phones. From 2010 to 2013, devices were greatly improved in terms of functionalities. But not many of the football supporters attending matches in 2010 would have been able to pay for the most expensive phones available in the market. In 2013, I had tickets for the stands traditionally occupied by the largest Atlético’s torcida organizada, Galoucura. Galoucura is known for its popular formation, with many of its members coming from low-income regions of the Greater Belo Horizonte. Nevertheless, many were carrying some of the most expensive and more functional gadgets, taking pictures and making videos during the whole match. And it is important to take into account how expensive electronic devices are in Brazil, especially because of the high importation rates adopted there. Brazil had, for instance, the most expensive iPhone 5s in the world when it was launched (Fuentes, 2014). In short, it was a more affluent public, in an all-seater stadium, but even those that were part of the old audience were now behaving in a more ‘respectable’ way.

Of course, at that time, some researchers were already discussing the implications of the new arenas for Brazilian football culture (see Barreto and Nascimento (2011), for instance), so, I was aware of such changes. But it was at that moment that I saw, literally on the ground, how the Brazilian socio-economic changes of the last decade (including the growing consumer culture among low-income supporters), along with technological transformations and the recent modifications in the football political economy (including here, the adoption of FIFA standard arenas) were dislocating football fans’ ordinary practices. Those controversies, which I was planning to analyse at first (and are discussed in Chapter 3), had become part of a more complex picture that I had started to see more clearly.

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As I already argued in the Introduction, such changes are similar to what took place in Europe after the publication of the Taylor Report in 1990. The creation of the Premier League in England in 1992 is generally seen as a significant moment in the transformation of football into a huge entertainment industry there. However, Brazil has its own socio-political history and football political economy. The way the Brazilian football supporter cultures came to this particular development is peculiar to this country, to the history of its football industry (which is distinct from the historical developments of other entertainment sectors), and to the interplay between these two (broader context and singular context of football), particularly in this geographic context. For instance, football cultures in Europe experienced deep political-economy transformations in the 1990s, and today, in a different historical period, they are responding more clearly to technological changes in the modes of communication between individual fans, and between them and their clubs. In Brazil, these two processes are happening in a more confluent way and that is one of the reasons that both are analysed here as parts of such a conjuncture.

This chapter discusses how this singular context is examined through the pages of this thesis. In the following sections, I review the literature on football fandom, culminating in an argument that calls for more dialogue between sport and pop-culture fandom studies. My point here is similar to what others have already argued: the study of football supporters, in a media-saturated age, may benefit from more contemporary approaches in the media and communication field. These approaches are already often adopted when it comes to other types of fandom. I then review the literature on popular culture fandom, and I finish the chapter discussing how a conjunctural perspective is an appropriate framework to analyse cultural practices, especially in the context of the Global South countries.

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Football[fandom!approaches!

Football supporters have been studied from a sociological or cultural point of view since late in the 1960s. Especially during the 1970s and 1980s, with the public concern with football hooliganism increasing in the UK, academics found large audiences interested in understanding this type of fan behaviour and sources of research funding, which made this period particularly fertile for this research area (Giulianotti, 1999; Haynes, 1995). Most of the studies developed at that time, for clear reasons, examined violent fan groups. The perspectives were rather distinct, from the Marxism of Ian Taylor (1971a, 1971b) to the figurational approach of the ‘Leicester School’ (Dunning, Murphy, & Williams, 1988). Even though violence is still a frequently investigated theme in this field9, after the creation of the Premier League and the cultural reorganisation of European football in the 1990s, many scholars turned to what Crawford (2003, 2004) has called a ‘resistance’ approach. These studies have focused on the new social movements and groups with a more militant attitude toward clubs, teams, governing bodies and football leaders (Brown, 1998, 2007; Duke, 2002; Nash, 2000, 2001). Below, I explore these two major foci of interest in football-fandom research.

Football!Hooliganism!

For Haynes (1995), football and its culture became objects of serious sociological enquiry with Ian Taylor’s work (1971a, 1971b). Adopting a Marxist and ‘new criminological’ perspective, Taylor sought to comprehend the historical changes in the relationship between supporters and the game since the 1960s. At that time, hooliganism had become a main public concern and Taylor situates the origins of such violence in the transition from a football culture grounded in working-class values to a market-oriented model that started to predominate in England in the post-war period. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!90See,0for0instance,0Spaaij0(2006).0

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For Taylor, football was undergoing a ‘bourgeoisification’ process, with club directors seeking to establish ties with more affluent audiences to turn the game into a profitable business. Traditionally a male working-class sport, football used to occupy a peculiar role in the proletarian life. For workers and their families, football was the dominant sport and the values governing the game were similar to those governing their ordinary lives (such as masculinity, devotion to local clubs, active participation and victory). Football was a space that allowed them to strengthen class-based identities and feel that their opinions mattered. This dynamic provided a type of ‘participatory democracy’ experience for fans within their clubs. However, with the increasing commercialisation, the traditional supporter bases, comprised mostly by the clubs’ surrounding communities, were alienated from club-related decisions. Vandalism, violence between gangs, and the provocation of police and rival supporters were, in this sense, consequences of the ongoing process of gentrification. For Taylor, rather than gratuitous outbursts, hooliganism was a type of resistance act, resulting from a deep rupture in football dynamics, caused in the first place by complex social and economic changes. These changes had deepened football’s commodification, with clubs shifting their “emphasis from satisfying existing ‘supporters’ to attracting modern ‘spectators’ or leisure ‘customers’” (Giulianotti, 1999, p. 40).

For Giulianotti (1999), the major weakness in Taylor’s work was its lack of empirical grounding. Taylor has also been criticised for romanticising the conditions of the past (Dunning, et al., 1988; Giulianotti, 2002; Haynes, 1995; Young, 1991, 2000). According to Giulianotti (1999), it is hard to believe Taylor’s initial argument that working-class fans viewed clubs as ‘participatory democracies’ when football has been a serious business since at least the 1890s: “directors have almost always protected their investments rather than pursue the fans’ interests by over-spending on players or ground facilities” (Giulianotti, 1999, p. 42).

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On the other hand, both Giulianotti (1999) and Haynes (1995) highlight the importance of Taylor’s critical observations regarding the changes in the relationship between supporters and the game. In particular, Taylor’s analysis of football’s commodification, and how spectacularisation, professionalisation and internationalisation were transforming the cultural organisation of football already in the 1960s and 1970s, provides significant evidence of the state of this industry during that period.

In the late 1970s, the social psychologist Peter Marsh and his colleagues from the Contemporary Violence Research Centre at the University of Oxford started to tackle the lack of empirical data in this area (Marsh, Rosser, & Harré, 1978). Adopting participant observation and in-depth interviews, they sought to provide a counterview to the stereotyped way that groups of youths were portrayed in the media. Football supporters were one of these groups, and Marsh and colleagues explored the internal order of this seemingly chaotic environment. They ended up finding out that rival fans would intimidate one another, but that the threats would rarely be translated into action. Even though real violence would take place sometimes, according to Marsh and colleagues, the exchanges between rival fans would often be limited to ritualised threats and insults, especially to the opponent’s masculinity (Giulianotti, 1999; Marsh, et al., 1978).

The Oxford scholars argue that ‘aggro’ (social aggravation) is governed by particular ‘rules of disorder’, and that groups of football supporters have a well-structured internal hierarchy. Graduates, the group at the top of the pyramid, were the most respected members who had accumulated experience and no longer engaged into ‘aggro’ on a regular basis; those that would take care of the action were the Rowdies and they had beneath them the Little Kids or Novices, who would learn the rules and group dynamics with them. Completing this highly structured organisation, there were the Chant Leaders and Nutters. Within these groups, deviant hooligans (those who were interested in harming their opponents) would

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indeed often be considered ‘out of order’ by their own peers (Giulianotti, 1999; Marsh, et al., 1978).

As Giulianotti (1999) argues, Marsh and his colleagues provided through their fieldwork a more complex understanding of how groups of fans involved in violent acts operate. However, the major issue with their work is their explanation of what causes ‘aggro’. Giulianotti (1999) is precise in his critique:

Marsh!argued!that!‘aggro’!is!precipitated!by!human!aggression,!which!

is! deemed! to! be! innate! rather! than! socially! learned,! and! therefore!

common!to!all!men,!women,!societies!and!civilizations.!Aggression! is!

defined! as! a! helpful,! indeed! functional! aspect! of! human! nature;! it! is!

part! of! our! survival! instincts.! If! tolerated! and! given! suitable! social!

outlets!(such!as!through!sports!or!small$scale!battles),!aggression!can!

benefit! any! society! by! enhancing! social! integration.! [...]! This!

‘ethogenic’! portrayal!of! aggression! is! ahistorical! and!asocial.! [...]!The!

explanations!that!young!fans!offer!for!their!activities!are!seen!as!mere!

verbal!symptoms!of!an!innate!aggression.!(p.!43)!

In the early 1980s, another group of scholars, this time based at the University of Leicester, took the leading position in the debates about football hooliganism. Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy, John Williams, Joe Maguire and Ivan Waddington, exponents of the ‘Leicester School’, adopted the ‘figurational’ approach proposed by the German sociologist Norbert Elias to explain football-related violence. Supported by substantial funding from the former Social Science Research Council and the Football Trust, the group shared a common theoretical framework and research methods, and also found the same conclusions (ones that proved Elias’s point of view to be precise in explaining hooliganism). Indeed, the influence of the figurational perspective over their work was so strong that some critics have argued that “the Leicester research was conceived and designed simply to confirm (rather than test) Elias’s standpoint” (Giulianotti, 1999, p. 44).

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Elias’s theory of the civilising process, first published in the namesake book The Civilizing Process (1982[1969]), is one of the founding works of figurational sociology. In this work, Elias establishes a connection between changes in individual discipline and changes in the wider social organisation over recent historical periods. According to Elias, since the middle ages, Western Societies (particularly England and France) have witnessed an increase in self-restraint and in the capacity for calculated action that takes into account the long-term perspective (Krarup, 1983). These changes are related to a complex set of broader socio-political conditions such as economic growth, expanded division of labour, state monopoly of taxation and violence, and social democratisation (Dunning, et al., 1988; Giulianotti, 1999). These developments, above all the rise of the modern state, would have then played a central role in the civilising process, with implications for changes in the structures of personality. A new type of personality emerged within this environment, and this personality is the key to understanding the socio-genesis of the modern middle-class habitus.

In the first volume of The Civilizing Process, The History of Manners, Elias provides a detailed account of shifts in human behaviour since feudal times to the epoch of Louis XV. The increasing rationalisation of man, that is, the civilisation of man, accompanies a growing intolerance towards public acts of violence. This intolerance is interrelated with developments in human conduct “where the more animal activities are progressively thrust behind the scenes of men’s communal life and invested with feelings of shame” (Krarup, 1983, p. 342). In describing this transition, Giulianotti (1999) remarks that

Elias! notes! that! the! civilizing! process! originates! in! court! societies,!

reflecting!the!watchfulness!of!an!elite!figuration!that!was!undergoing!

scissors$like!pressure! from! the!growing!powers!of! the!state!above! it!

and! the! citizenry! below.! Though! the! powers! of! the! court! society!

became!increasingly!ceremonial,!its!civilized!manners!have!percolated!

through! the! social! structure,! into! the! bourgeoisie! (ad% nauseum%with!

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the! Victorians),! and! down! among! the! upper$working! classes! by! the!

early! post$war! period,! rendering! both! of! these! classes! increasingly!

‘respectable’.!(p.!45)!

The basic idea behind ‘figuration’ is that society is the network of active independent human beings forming a dynamic whole where power relations are fluid and in permanent flux. As Krarup (1983) explains, the term ‘figuration’ was used by Elias to characterise his “concept of social systems to the type where human and corporate actors [social systems that have a decisional capacity comparable to humans] are its constitutive units, instead of mindless social functions or levels” (p. 344). This specific way of interpreting the relations between macro and micro levels is reflected in Elias’s point of view concerning the connections between changes in the psychological structures of a historical era and its social organisation.

The civilising process refers then to this dynamic whereby human conduct has been more closely monitored and self-controlled, where there is more intolerance to aggression, and an increase in ‘respectable’ behaviour among distinct social strata. The anomalies along this process, such as violent revolutions, are called ‘decivilising spurts’ by Elias. Such situations may temporarily reverse the civilising process, which remains incomplete, especially among the lower working classes.

According to Giulianotti (1999), the Leicester School used Elias’s conceptual framework to explain football hooliganism in two main aspects: first, they examined how social attitudes towards violence at football matches have changed over time; and second, the researchers attributed fan violence per se to social groups that were not affected by the civilising process. It is particularly suggestive the way they contextualised the peak of violence during the 1960s:

The! researchers! argue! that! violence! declined! during! the! inter$war!

period! and! after! the! Second! World! War.! Football! crowds! became!

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more! ‘respectable’! in! class! composition;! working$class! people!

benefited! from! economic! growth! and!more! inclusive! social! policies.!

Modern! football! hooliganism! dates! from! the! early! 1960s,! during!

which! Britain! entered! a! ‘decivilizing! spurt’,! as! socio$economic!

weaknesses! emerged! and! inequalities! hardened.! Violence! at! football!

matches!emerged!de%novo.!This!time,!rival!gangs!of!young!supporters!

attacked! each! other! more! deliberately,! consistently! and!

‘instrumentally’.! ‘Respectable’! fans! started! to! abandon! the! game! to!

these! ‘rough’! lower! working! classes.! The! ‘moral! panic’! surrounding!

this! hooliganism! served! both! to! reflect! the! wider! society’s! more!

civilized! abhorrence! of! public! violence,! and! inadvertently! to! attract!

more! ‘roughs’! to! football! in! the! hope! of! engaging! in! fighting.!

(Giulianotti,!1999,!p.!45)!

Giulianotti (1999) and Haynes (1995) list a series of critiques that the Leicester School has received over the years. For instance, scholars have pointed out the problematic connections established in the figurationists’ work between lower working classes with ‘rough’ socialization and hooliganism. In this regard, other studies have found results that contradict such a simple association, demonstrating that groups from the lower working classes were not significantly involved in fan violence (Armstrong, 1998). Also, Giulianotti (1993, 1999) observes that many modern Scottish hooligans, called ‘casuals’, come from stable upper-working-class areas rather than poorer regions. Other researchers have stressed the methodological problems found in the work of Dunning’s group, particularly their choice of doing fieldwork with ‘official’ England fans and young supporters in a deprived housing state rather than genuine hooligan groups (Hobbs & Robins, 1991).

On the other hand, Elias’s concept of a civilising process has also attracted strong criticism from being a teleological, ethnocentric and inaccurate point of view that misrepresents even the developments of Europe itself (Goudsblom, 1994). Indeed, this interpretation has been criticised for providing an evolutionist perspective that implies that earlier or non-

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industrial societies are undeveloped and barbaric, which is incompatible with contemporary trends that disprove the very idea of continuing ‘civilisation’ (Giulianotti, 1999; Goudsblom, 1994). Furthermore, Giulianotti (1999) criticises the weakness of Elias’s theory in ethnographic terms. In particular, the author indicates that the Leicester School did not make any attempt to employ the figurational approach at the everyday level.

Next, I explore another major focus of research interest in relation to football fandom that has succeeded the hooliganism studies: ‘fan democracy’ studies have emerged in a particular socio-historic context that I discuss in the next subsection.

Fan!Democracy!

The emergence of what may be called the ‘fan democracy’ line of studies into football fandom is related somehow to the developments of this industry in the 1980s and 1990s. In a nutshell, it is fair to say that the combination of chronic hooliganism and poor administration led English football to reach a critical situation in the public’s eyes in the 1980s (Taylor, 1992). Television companies refused to deal with the game, and the annual match attendances touched rock bottom at around 17 million in 1985, the lowest since 1948 (Taylor, 1992). A series of football disasters, which includes the fire at the Bradford City stadium (1985), the clashes between English and Italian fans in Heysel, Brussels (1985), and the deadliest in the UK history, the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield (1989), corroborated the bad reputation the sport was gaining in England since the end of its golden age in the late 1960s. The disaster in Sheffield, at which 96 fans died and other 400 were injured, resulted in a report, the Taylor Report (1990), which is fundamental to understanding the reformulation of this industry and the rise of a myriad of supporter protest groups at club and national levels in the 1990s (Brown, 1998).

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After the tragedy, Lord Justice Taylor was appointed to conduct an inquiry into the events; his central conclusion was that the failure of police control was the main reason for the disaster. The Taylor Report made recommendations regarding safety in sporting events, the most important of which was that stadiums should be converted so that all supporters had seats. At the time of the disaster, stadiums were designed in such a way that fans, especially in the cheapest areas, would stand during the matches. Such a recommendation, even though ultimately concerned with safety, was highly controversial. The football fan organisations that gave evidence to the Taylor inquiry opposed the model, and supporters and designers of safe standing areas even challenged the safety argument (Brown, 1998).

Despite the opposition to the new model, by the end of the 1994 season, all grounds in England became all-seater stadiums. From the fans’ point of view, the adoption of this new ground design resulted in a feeling of ‘impotence’ because of their lack of control over changes in the industry. As Brown (1998) explains, “both the implementation as well as the lived experience of all-seater grounds [...] made many supporters unhappy due to reduced capacity, increased prices, bond schemes [which financed the new structures], a decline in atmosphere and greater regulation of their activities” (p. 53).

This was the context that led to the formation of over 40 independent supporters’ organisations at club level, two national supporters’ bodies, a vast range of other grassroots protest groups and hundreds of football fanzines from 1985 to the mid-1990s (Brown, 1998; Haynes, 1995). Besides the introduction of the all-seater model, the other main focus of such militant groups was the controversial actions of club chairmen. However, even these initiatives were at some level connected to the modernisation and commercialisation of football in the 1990s. As Brown (1998) contextualises, such an environment led (and continues to lead) clubs to make business-centred decisions in a desire to compete with the richest

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clubs or in battles for survival; however, these decisions also prevented fans from engaging in their traditional supporting expressions and club participation.

According to Brown (1998), even though the safety issue was at the heart of the Taylor Report, the feeling among football supporters was that the clubs were taking advantage of such an opportunity to modernise and revolutionise football, and football supporting. Or in other words:

For! some! it! represented! a! chance! to! change! the! social! make$up! of!

those! attending! (and! thus! provide! a! more! attractive! audience! for!

advertisers);! for! others! it! represented! a! chance! to! charge! more! for!

entrance!and! thus!generate!more!profit.! [...].! It! is! certainly!clear! that!

with! price! increases! of! 350! per! cent! over! five! years! (Crabbe! 1996)!

and!with! the! cost! of! football! spiralling! at! a! rate! of! 16.5! per! cent! in!

1996–7! (Financial% Times! 16! September! 1997),! Taylor’s!wishes! have!

been!conveniently!forgotten!by!most!clubs.!(Brown,!1998,!pp.!53$54)!

Much of the literature on football fandom produced post-1990 turned to ‘fan democracy’ movements or, as Crawford (2003, 2004) argues, to the incorporation/resistance paradigm of Abercrombie and Longhurst’s (1998) typology of audience studies. Brown (1998) is cited as an exponent of such an approach, as well as Haynes (1995) and Jary et al. (1991). The Marxist Ian Taylor is mentioned by Crawford as an early representative of this perspective, which has focused more recently on “debates of the incorporation and/or resistance of supporters to contemporary patterns of commercialization within the sport” (Crawford, 2003, p. 221).

To contextualise Crawford’s observation, it is important to note that this paradigm, in audience research, succeeds the behavioural paradigm, which has strong psychological roots and sees the audience as passive agents who absorb messages directed at them. In the incorporation/resistance paradigm, on the other hand, the audience becomes more active, reinterpreting or even rejecting messages. This position, in audience research, is generally associated with the shift in

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communication and cultural studies led by the emergence of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham in the 1960s.

With a strong ideological frame, this paradigm worked very well in the Western European football environment of the 1990s. With the acceleration of commodification, professionalisation and globalisation processes, much of the debate focused on the incorporation and/or resistance of supporters to patterns of commercialisation. Hegemony and power are two of the most addressed issues in these studies. In addition, these studies often put consumption, entertainment and sanitisation in opposition to the tradition of the terrace culture, in which strong identification with and attendance at matches are fundamental.

As Crawford (2003) points out, in most studies in this field, “this commercialisation is seen as a perversion of the people’s game — leading towards a less dedicated, more fickle supporter base” (p. 221). This resistance approach and its consequence, the overvaluation of authentic fans, is found, for instance, in works such as Nash’s (2000), who establishes a clear distinction between traditionality and new fandom when comparing the consumption and the terrace cultures. ‘Traditionality’ is characterised as participatory and proactive and ‘new fandom’ forms as reactive. Duke (2002) refers to ‘new fandom’ as McDonaldisation and Disneyisation processes, to criticise the more profit-oriented North American model of sport that was dominating Europe.

Crawford (2003) criticises such a paradigm on a range of aspects. Following King (1998), Crawford asserts that as much as the hooligan literature it succeeded, studies grounded on the resistance paradigm are limited in scope, both theoretically and empirically. As the author explains,

This! literature!often!seeks! to!draw!typologies!of! types!of! individuals!

and! patterns! of! behaviour! within! distinct! ‘communities’,! often!

constructing! typologies! and! dichotomies!—!most! noticeably! around!

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issues! of! ‘authenticity’,! and! between! incorporative! ‘new! consumer’!

supporters!and!a!resistive!core!of!‘real!fans’.!(Crawford,!2003,!p.!222)!

According to Crawford (2003), typologies of supporters tend to impose a rigid distinction between ‘types’ of fans, caricaturing and forcing diverse patterns of behaviour into restrictive categories. Using such typologies and dichotomies, one would then not be able to recognise the fluidity and often temporality of supporter ‘communities’. For the author,

typologies!do!not! allow! for! the! consideration!of!how! the!nature!and!

composition!of! a! supporter! ‘community’!may! change!over! time,! and,!

significantly,! how! the! composition! and! redefinition! of! patterns! of!

support!within! this!may! be! in! constant! flux,! particularly! in! a!media!

saturated! society! (such!as! contemporary!Britain)!where! fashion!and!

the! boundaries! of! group! membership! are! constantly! changing! and!

being!renegotiated.!(Crawford,!2003,!p.!222)!

For Crawford, the fact that the vast majority of the empirical research on sport audiences in Britain10 has focused on football fans has also determined the dominance of the incorporation/resistance paradigm over the whole body of literature about sport fandom in general. Further, another potential difficulty is that those analysing football supporters are often members of the communities they are theorising about (Crawford, 2003). Such affiliations may represent a particular issue in ‘fan ethnographies’, with researchers becoming too obsessed with their own subjective positions (Jenkins, 1996). And, in being football supporters themselves, football academics would often over-romanticise the period of the game in which they grew up — many of them in early post-war Britain or the golden age of the sport in the country (Crawford, 2003).

Crawford’s critiques are mostly precise and relevant. For instance, other authors such as King (1995), Williams (2000) and Dunning et al. (1988)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!100It0is0important0to0note0that0only0a0small0portion0of0all0research0on0sport0sociology0and0psychology0has0focused0on0sport0spectators.0Wann0and0Hamlet0(1995),0for0instance,0suggest0that0only04%0of0such0literature0is0dedicated0to0fans.0Further,0British0scholars0have0dominated0footballbsociology0research,0which,0on0the0other0hand,0is0extremely0influential0over0the0sportbsociology0field0as0a0whole.000

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also argue that football academics are too nostalgic about the conditions of the past, conditions that generally lack any empirical evidence to consubstantiate such romantic observations. Yet, studies also indicate that commodification forces can generate responses, from the fans, that are more aligned with oppressive old traditions such as xenophobic and class-based masculinist supporter formations or acts of ‘banal nationalism’ (Ruddock, 2005; Scherer & Jackson, 2010).

Another point perceptively observed by Crawford is that the incorporation/resistance approach has been extensively criticised in the audience research field. Using Abercrombie and Longhurst’s (1998) observations, Crawford (2003) points out weaknesses of this perspective:

First,!they!argue!that!the!creative!and!resistive!powers!of!an!audience!

are!often!overstated!within!this!paradigm,!and!that!‘activism!does!not!

of!itself!give!power!or!even!the!capacity!to!resist’!(1998:!30).!Second,!

that!this!research!revolves!around!grand!theories!of!power!relations,!

but! often! lacks! adequate! empirical! foundation.! Moreover,! that! what!

empirical! research! does! exist! shows! an! increasing! fragmentation!

rather! than! coherence! of! audience! and! consumer! patterns.! Finally,!

that!this!paradigm!employs!a!unitary!and!hierarchical!notion!of!social!

power! relations.! This,! Abercrombie! and! Longhurst! argue,! can! be!

contested! from! two! perspectives.! First,! drawing! on! the! work! of!

Foucault!(1979),!they!argue!that!power!relations!are!in!constant!flux!

and! can! therefore! never! be! resolved.! Second,! that! this! paradigm!

revolves!primarily!around!power!relations!based!upon!class!relations.!

However,! power! relations! are! increasingly! complex,! involving! also!

gender,! age! and! ethnicity! (to! name! but! a! few),! and! hence! it! proves!

increasingly!difficult!to!talk!of!a!central!power!axis!around!which!this!

Incorporation/Resistance!Paradigm!revolves.!(pp.!223$224)!

Furthermore, one central point noted by Crawford (2003) that has particular importance here is the way mediated communication and the increasing mediation of experience are understood in such studies. Regarding this point, he criticises, for instance, the obsession of football

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scholars with a clear distinction between ‘real’ and ‘mediated’ — like Redhead’s (1997) use of ‘real’ in opposition to ‘hyper-real’. Crawford’s (2003) particular issue in this regard is the adoption of Baudrillard’s ideas by football academics that would have led to a romantic presumption that there once existed a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ football culture that is subsuming to a postmodern fandom, appearing in a media-saturated society. Following Kellner’s observations about Baudrillard’s work, Crawford argues that the French sociologist romanticises direct unmediated and reciprocal speech, and fails to recognise that all language is mediated after all. Football scholars would be following such romanticisation, which has been implicated in a lack of comprehension about contemporary sport audiences.

Still regarding the way communication processes and media are approached by football academics, Crawford (2004) is later precise in observing that sports-fandom literature has not yet incorporated into its discussions the recent developments in media/audience research, especially the lateral extension of the field, which started to focus on the many things audiences do besides watching, reading and listening by the 1990s (Couldry, 2012b). Using Abercrombie and Longhurst’s denomination of such a transition, Crawford (2004) explains that the move away from the incorporation/resistance approach to the ‘spectacle/performance’ paradigm was also due “to the changing nature of audiences and the (theoretical) mechanisms by which these need to be viewed” (p. 23). Developing his argument toward sports-fandom research that is able to integrate the consumer culture into considerations about sports fans and their communities, Crawford (2004) states that

As! audiences! become! more! skilled! in! their! use! of! media,! their!

responses/actions!can!no! longer!be!squeezed! into! this!simple!model!

[incorporation/resistance],! while! changes! in! theory! shift! the! debate!

away! from! consumption! as! necessarily! negative,! as! it! is! often!

portrayed!within!this!paradigm.!(p.!23)!

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For Crawford (2004), studies about other types of fandom have adopted a more complex model than sports-fandom studies have, as a way to understand fans and their communities in a media-saturated society. This relative theoretical ‘delay’ has to be contextualised, however. Schimmel and colleagues (2007) are able to help with their comparison between understandings of fans and fandom among sport and pop culture scholars. Schimmel and colleagues argue in such work that sports-fan studies and pop-culture fan studies “have developed on different trajectories and (to some extent) in different areas of the academy” (p. 580). For Schimmel and colleagues, the level of collaboration and dialogue between those two traditions is very low even though they are studying similar phenomena. Schimmel and colleagues (2007) also describe some of the differences between those two types of fandom, which, to some extent, explain why those two fields have developed through distinct pathways:

Sport!might! be! considered! a!distinct! cultural! form!due! in!part! to! its!

unique! industrial! history,! its! reproduction! of! hegemonic! forms! of!

masculinity,! the!obvious!centrality!of!competition!and!uncertainty!of!

outcome! (who!will!win/lose?)! to! the!meanings! that! sport! constructs!

both!macro! and!micro! levels,! the! importance! that! ‘live’! or! in$person!

consumption! has! to! the! production! of! sport! as! a! commodity,! the!

particular! role! of! sport! in!processes!of! globalization! and!because,! to!

many! people,! sport! seems! ‘real’! in! comparison! to! entertainment!

television,! Bollywood! film!productions,! or! songs! on! an! iPod! playlist.!

(Schimmel,!et!al.,!2007,!p.!581)!

One of the aspects that would suggest this disjuncture between these two areas — a central point made by Schimmel and colleagues (2007) — is the fact that pop-culture fandom has been historically more connected to media and cultural studies than sports fandom, which has been often investigated through psychological and sociological lenses. In this sense, sports fandom in general, and football fandom in particular, have developed a partially informed research tradition, but this distance has actually prevented both areas from generating knowledge benefiting from

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the cross-fertilisation of ideas and a reciprocal bridge-building between academics studying similar subjects. Schimmel and colleagues suggest a range of topics related to each type of fandom that could be productive if such crossdisciplinary dialogue took place:

Sport! fan! scholars! might! find! the! recent! psychoanalytic! approaches!

within!pop!culture!fan!studies!helpful! in!offering!innovative!analyses!

of! the!roots!of! fan!pleasures! that!might!extend!the!motivation!scales!

common! in! sport! fan!psychology! and! transcend! the! ‘manic! denial! of!

the! internal! world’! common! within! mainstream! sociology.! [...]!

Abercrombie!and!Longhurst’s!taxonomy!of!fandom,!arguably!the!most!

frequently!cited!within!pop!culture!fan!studies,!might!be!informed!by!

the!psychology$based!sport!fan!typologies!discussed!by!Wann!and!his!

colleagues!or!the!sociologically$based!sport!fan!typology!suggested!by!

Richard!Giulianotti,!and!vice!versa.!(p.!593)!

In the next subsection, I discuss the developments of pop-culture fandom research as a way to promote and benefit from this dialogue. Later, I argue that the incorporation of developments in media-audience research when it comes to sport cultures, particularly in a non-European/US context, has to take into account the singular histories of those countries and industries. That is to say, even though popular-culture fandom studies adopted a performance approach before football-fandom studies, it has to be understood that it is not simply a matter of theoretical delay or just a result of a disjuncture with pop-culture fandom, and ultimately, cultural studies. The football industry has its own historicity. Therefore, applying such a theoretical framework to it before the late 1990s, for instance, would probably have constrained football-culture formations to the logic of the entertainment industry and audience-research scholarship. At this time, the dynamics of the football industry and the relationships between supporters and the game were very different from those found in the pop-culture terrain. That is also true for the Brazilian media environment and aspects that this theoretical approach brings about, such as fluidity of identities, political consumerism and cosmopolitanism.

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Regarding this point, a parallel could be established with observations made by Rajagopal (1996) when analysing TV audiences in India. For him, Western academics studying media reception have often assumed that aspects of capitalist modernity, such as liberal citizenship, apply to any context, although they only exist contradictorily or unevenly in developing nations. This is why I adopt a perspective in this thesis that is useful for understanding fandom as a situated practice, deep-seated into social and cultural orders, and that is sensitive to the particular industry and country I am analysing. I discuss this perspective further in the last section of this chapter.

Pop[culture!fandom!approaches!

Research on pop culture has a longer history than sports-fandom studies (Schimmel, et al., 2007). Early enquiries in this area, some dating back to the late 1920s, focused on theatre audiences, readers of sentimental novels and music listeners (see Allen, 1985). These works were all rather similar and the singular concern was the fans’ ability to distinguish between what was ‘reality’ and the fictional content they were consuming. According to Schimmel and colleagues (2007), “this early research contributed to the ongoing marginalization of pop culture fans through construction of a public image of fans as out-of-touch loners, losers or lunatics” (p. 582).

More recently, a vast range of literature has been produced, and this current era, which started in the 1980s, could be divided into three different generations (Gray, Sandvoss, & Harrington, 2007; Schimmel, et al., 2007). The first wave of enquiries approached the ‘active audiences’ and developed in direct connection with the work of the CCCS. This generation clearly adopted the resistance paradigm discussed earlier, and as Gray and colleagues (2007) assert, scholars such as Fiske (2005[1991]) and Jenkins (1992) took particular inspiration from de Certeau’s distinction between the strategies of the powerful and the tactics of the disempowered. In this regard,

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fandom!was! automatically!more! than! the!mere! act! of! being! a! fan! of!

something:! it! was! a! collective! strategy,! a! communal! effort! to! form!

interpretive! communities! that! in! their! subcultural! cohesion! evaded!

the!preferred!and!intended!meanings!of!the!‘power!bloc’!(Fiske!1989)!

represented!by!popular!media.!(Gray,!et!al.,!2007,!p.!2)!

Somehow, this would be the ‘fandom is beautiful’ phase, in which scholars were trying to defend fan communities from the stereotyped way they were portrayed in the mass media and by non-fans (Gray, et al., 2007). With this concern, researchers turned to the very activities seen as pathological — conventions, fan fiction writing, fanzine editing and collection, letter writing campaigns — making an effort to redeem them as creative and productive.

What accelerated a change in the way pop culture was approached was a historical turn, particularly in the media markets. For Gray and colleagues (2007), the movement from an era of broadcasting to one of narrowcasting, and the subsequent centrepiece occupied by fans in this deregulated media market, transformed the way fans were seen by the public: no longer a caricature and actually a “specialized yet dedicated consumer” (p. 4). As Gary and colleagues (2007) put it, “rather than ridiculed, fan audiences are now wooed and championed by cultural industries” (p. 4). Studies in this area moved then beyond the incorporation/resistance paradigm to a new theoretical framework, particularly grounded in the sociology of consumption of Pierre Bourdieu.

Scholars such as Harris (1998) and Jancovich (2002) analysed how objects and practices of fandom were structured through our habitus, and how they reflected our social, cultural and economic capitals. These studies investigated the ways in which social and cultural hierarchies were replicated within fan cultures, which were no longer spaces of cultural autonomy and resistance. As Gray and colleagues explain (2007), in this second wave,

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Scholars!are!still! concerned!with!questions!of!power,! inequality,!and!

discrimination,! but! rather! than! seeing! fandom! as! a! tool! of!

empowerment! they! suggest! that! the! interpretive! communities! of!

fandom!(as!well!as!individual!acts!of!fan!consumption)!are!embedded!

in!the!existing!economic,!social!and!cultural!status!quo.!These!studies!

are!still!concerned,!for!instance,!with!questions!of!gender,!but!they!no!

longer!portray!fandom!as!an!extraordinary!space!of!emancipation!and!

reformulation! of! gender! relations.! Instead,! the! taste! hierarchies!

among! fans! themselves! are! described! as! the! continuation! of! wider!

social! inequalities! (Thornton! 1995).! Herein! lies! a! significant!

conceptual!shift!that!profoundly!shapes!our!answer!to!the!question!of!

why! we! study! fans:! fans! are! seen! not! as! a! counterforce! to! existing!

social! hierarchies! and! structures! but,! in! sharp! contrast,! as! agents! of!

maintaining! social! and! cultural! systems! of! classification! and! thus!

existing!hierarchies.!(p.!6)!!

The last generation, the current one, has closely followed the Bourdieusian wave, and has reflected the widespread nature of fandom practices to far beyond the tightly organised participants described above all in the first generation and the increasing entrenchment of fan consumption in the structure of our everyday lives. These more recent studies have changed the goalposts of enquiry, broadening the analytic scope to a wide range of different audiences (Gray, et al., 2007). As Gray and colleagues (2007) explain, this is especially an empirical shift, which has turned pop-culture fan studies into an increasingly diverse field in conceptual, theoretical and methodological terms.

Remaining conscious of the teleological risk of creating a single master-narrative of fan research, Gray and colleagues (2007) suggest that if there is a meaningful way to connect the current diverse studies in this area it is by the very idea that “fandom has emerged as an ever more integral aspect of lifeworlds in global capitalism, and an important interface between micro and macro forces of our time” (p. 9). In this sense, we could assume that the singular point of contact of such a contrasting body of literature is that it “focuses on the normalization of media consumption in

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everyday life, and the meaning of fan identities in processes of cultural and economic globalization” (Schimmel, et al., 2007, p. 582).

Even more importantly here is the idea forwarded by Gray and colleagues (2007) that fandom, in this last generation of studies, is less of a transhistorical phenomenon and more of a situated practice, deep-seated into social and cultural orders. Along with the distinct communication model adopted in pop-culture research, this is probably another point that could be translated into the football-fandom field. The way these two aspects are absorbed here is the topic of the last part of this chapter.

Football!fandom,!media!cultures!and!conjunctures!

The separation that has characterised the historical developments of the fandom traditions discussed above has been implicated in two particular constraints for football-fandom research. First is the relative absence of the radical contextuality and conjuncturalism that are singular marks of cultural studies. The second point, which is related to the first point somehow, is the frequent adoption of simplistic models of communication that are not able to apprehend our current media environment or to contextualise the way we communicate today within the conditions of modern life.

Even though pop-culture and football fandom research have developed somehow in a disjunctive way, sport studies (as a broader field where we find works that focus on different issues besides supporters and fan cultures) started to get closer to cultural studies from the late 1980s. Carrington and McDonald (2009) did a brief historical review of Marxist approaches within sport studies and identified a growth of a Marxist-inflected cultural studies of sport from the late 1980s, early 1990s. As they explain, before this, Marxist-influenced approaches to the study of sport and society had been adopted in a more structuralist way in the wake of the cultural and political radicalism of the mid-to late 1960s, and in a neo-

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Marxist fashion, where classical Marxist categories such as the labour process and alienation were applied to analyse the limits and possibilities of resistance and transformation from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. It is in the late 1980s that sport studies shifted away from classical Marxist theory, influenced by an explicitly Gramscian cultural studies, with scholars such as Alan Tomlinson (1999), Garry Whannel (1983, 1992, 2008), Jim McKay (1986) and David Rowe (1995) taking as their point of departure “the need to critique the perceived philosophical determinism and sociological reductionism of neo-Marxism” (Carrington & McDonald, 2009, p. 4) and favouring a non-structuralist and agency-oriented reading of Marx. This strand of work is important because somehow here I take inspiration from the same sources than those scholars to propose a conjunctural analysis that recognises the importance of maintaining a grounded and engaged critique of relations of power in sport at the same time that gives double-attention to the superstructure, i.e. the supporter cultures, as a contested terrain.

When discussing the future of cultural studies, Grossberg (2006) explores the notion of conjuncture. Because of the great importance of this concept for the emergence of cultural studies as a project, I draw on it to some extent in my analysis of the Brazilian context. The notion of conjuncture is significant here because it reveals the particular practice of contextualism adopted in cultural studies and it is not commonly used in football-fandom research. This practice of contextualism often “involves a location within and an effort at the diagnosis of a conjuncture, that is a focus on the social formation as a complexly articulated unity or totality” (Grossberg, 2006, p. 4). Following his argument, Grossberg (2006) states,

A!conjuncture! is!a!description!of!a! social! formation!as! fractured!and!

conflictual,!along!multiple!axes,!planes!and!scales,!constantly!in!search!

of! temporary! balances! or! structural! stabilities! through! a! variety! of!

practices!and!processes!of!struggle!and!negotiation.!(p.!4)!

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Stuart Hall, in a recent conversation with Doreen Massey, also conceptualises what a conjuncture is:

A!conjuncture! is! a!period!during!which! the!different! social,! political,!

economic! and! ideological! contradictions! that! are! at! work! in! society!

come!together!to!give!it!a!specific!and!distinctive!shape.!The!post$war!

period,!dominated!by!the!welfare!state,!public!ownership!and!wealth!

redistribution! through! taxation!was! one! conjuncture;! the! neoliberal,!

market$forces! era! unleashed! by! Thatcher! and! Reagan! was! another.!

These! are! two! distinct! conjunctures,! separated! by! the! crisis! of! the!

1970s.!A!conjuncture!can!be!long!or!short:!it's!not!defined!by!time!or!

by!simple!things!like!a!change!of!regime!$!though!these!have!their!own!

effects.! As! I! see! it,! history! moves! from! one! conjuncture! to! another!

rather!than!being!an!evolutionary!flow.!(Hall!&!Massey,!2010,!p.!57)!

Grossberg (2006) asserts that a conjunctural analysis “looks to the changing configuration of forces that occasionally seeks and sometimes arrives at a balance or temporary settlement” (2006, p. 5). When I mentioned, in the beginning of this chapter, that I had planned to analyse football-related controversies on social network sites, there was no real conjuncture at stake at that point. I was looking at events and analysing them as separate units. But, as Grossberg (2006) highlights: “contextualism dictates that an event is not anything by itself” (Grossberg, 2006, p. 24). As such, all practices are condensations, articulated units, overdetermined realities that are complex and contingent. As I asserted, for me, such overdetermination became clear when I was at a football match in Brazil in 2013 and started realising that there were multiple forces, some contradictory ones indeed, shaping that particular formation, what I am calling here, modern-day Brazilian football fan cultures.

But conjunctural analyses, such as the one developed by Hall and other colleagues from the CCCS in Policing the Crisis (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978), also bring with them a sense of crisis and a Gramscian framework, especially through the concepts of hegemony and ideology. These points must be approached here, particularly the extent to

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which they are used (or not) as critical tools to manage the complexity of the conjuncture under analysis. The first thing is the vocabulary of crisis. As Hall explains, what generally drives a conjuncture forward is a crisis, when the contradictions that are always at play in any historical moment are condensed (Hall & Massey, 2010). Such crises may be profound — organic — and others are characterised by smaller uncertainties and imbalances. It may cause a radical rupture or it may result in a different version of the same thing. Yet, conjunctures differ in terms of temporal scale. In Policing the Crisis, for instance, one of main arguments is that Great Britain was, at least since the 1960s, in the midst of an organic crisis.

Grossberg (2006) observes that there are problems with this crisis approach: for him, it actually seems to imply a normative moment of stability, and somehow, implicitly, an organic unity. However, he also explains how even moments of relative stability are at some level unstable and contingent:

Organic! crises! are! not! easily! settled! once! and! for! all,! nor! is! there! a!

single! settlement! that! continues! to! re$establish! itself.! Rather,! any!

number! of! temporary! and! unstable! settlements! may! be! offered! or!

tried,! until! finally,! the! crisis! is! resolved,! often! through! radical!

reconfigurations!of!the!social!formation!itself.!But!even!if!the!result!is!

a!period!of!relative!structural!stability,!it!is!always!both!unstable!and!

temporary.!(Grossberg,!2006,!p.!14)!!

The sense of crisis is useful when it comes to the Brazilian context, especially after the protests that took place during the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in the country. My interpretation is that such street parades (the largest in the last 20 years or so) are not related to football in an indirect way, as it has been argued elsewhere. From this point of view, the event was used as a stage for demonstrations that ultimately were directed to the Brazilian political system, or, in other words, were not specifically related to football or FIFA. In this thesis, I argue that football,

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as a cultural form, in this particular setting, has emerged not only as a field in which broader struggles are being expressed (the event as a stage) but also as a place where the lived experience of historical change has been constituted (Grossberg, 2006). In this regard, football has occupied a similar position to that occupied by popular culture in post-war Britain. However, I am not arguing here that the size and characteristics of the Brazilian conjuncture are the same as that of the UK in the 1960s, nor that football is the only field playing such role. This conjuncture will be explored in the next chapters, when the specific ways that people have negotiated and renegotiated the configurations of modernity and postmodernity in Latin America, and in Brazil in particular, will become clearer.

Another point to be explored here is the ideological approach that permeates the works of the CCCS. As I asserted above, using Crawford’s (2003, 2004) criticisms of the resistance paradigm, power relations are increasingly complex and it has become difficult to talk of a central power axis, or to use Crawford’s expression, top-down zero-sum notions of power. Here, hegemony, which was one of the concepts that enabled the analysis done by Hall and colleagues in Policing the Crisis, is not of such central importance. Instead, I use the conjunctural framework more in a practical/methodological way; in other words, the conjuncture idea is adopted as a system of analysis for a historical situation.

But still in this regard, the concentrations and accumulations of power are not ignored, especially because they are overexpressed in the football industry. To perform such materialistic analysis, I look at the political economy of this sector and its historical developments as a way to outline some of the economic, political and social conditions of this conjuncture. One of my main concerns here is to explore such a formation in relation to the broader social setting of the Brazilian society, which is largely unknown by scholars outside Latin America and is fundamental to

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understanding how such negotiations with modern and postmodern forces take place there.

A conjunctural approach also substantiates my point, particularly where it opposes Crawford’s argument. Crawford (2003, 2004) assumes, at some level, that any modern-day sports culture will be characterised by aspects that distinguish postmodern forms of sociability. He investigates a group of supporters — ice hockey fans in England — that has a historical specificity, and, therefore, his attempt to generalise such realities ends up losing sight of the context of formation of such communities. As Canclini (2013[1997], p. 159) has argued, “the modern world is not only made of those with modernising projects” and it is necessary to look at these communities without constraining them to shapes and fashions found in other groups, overdetermined by other contexts.

Further to this point, take the notion that the composition of a community of supporters may change over time, with fans showcasing distinct patterns of support over a lifetime and being members of more than one community. This behaviour illustrates the fluidity and temporality, concepts mentioned above, which Crawford (2003) brings from the pop culture and audience research area and that are ultimately related to a postmodern framework of analysis. Regarding this particular point, it is not that such patterns do not apply in some way to football fans, who, certainly, follow their teams at different levels of intensity over time. However, such fluidity is relative in most countries that have football as the dominant sports code. There is, for instance, a popular saying in Brazil that you may change your name, your address, your religion, your wife (it is a male-dominated culture), but you do not change your football club. It is something you have with you forever and, indeed, many people in Brazil are buried in their football jerseys or with club flags. In this sense, Canclini’s concept of hybrid cultures may assist approaching realities that do not exactly obey the changes observed in the so-called transition between modernity and postmodernity. And it is important to note that

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understanding such hybrid cultures involves more than simply thinking about them as a mixture of those who incorporate and those who resist. Here, I am talking more about situating such cultures in their historical developments, because the very same individual that does not switch his/her football club may be a huge fan of many TV shows and music bands. And, for instance, in the developments of football culture in Brazil, you find the socio-genesis of such a strong sense of loyalty in the emergence of the factory clubs in the early 1900s — they are discussed in Chapter 3. And this loyalty was incorporated in the mythology of football fan cultures in such a way that, even today, the worst category that you may fall into, as a football fan, is the vira-folha (the one who changes their club). Or, in other words, it is essential to understand each context and identify in which way our research subjects do not exactly follow the theoretical framework that we bring to the discussion.

So, lastly, I would argue that as much as the scholars that he criticises, Crawford assumes that the types of fans found in his investigation and their activities and patterns of support would be found in any other conjuncture. In this particular sense, he inverts the model, once he adopts a different theoretical framework from most football-fandom scholars, but he ends up disconnecting practice from its context: he does not situate British ice hockey fan culture in its singular socio-historical position. And it is in this particular point that my analysis differs from his. His criticisms concerning the ideological weight adopted in the resistance model and the idea that power does not follow a binary logic are relevant as it is his point about how communication and media, in general, are approached in football-fandom research. Nevertheless, here, I am proposing a perspective that can absorb aspects such as the consumer culture, but does not dissociate practice from its singular conjuncture. This dissociation of practice is evident, for instance, in Crawford’s observations about the ‘fan democracy’ studies. He does not recognise that the adoption of such a framework in the post-Taylor report context was situated in a particular settlement that overdetermined not only the

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practices found within football cultures in Europe but also the academic discussions about them.

Conclusion!

I developed in this chapter a literature review about football fandom. I discussed some of the most significant studies about hooliganism, including the Marxist works of Ian Taylor (Taylor, 1971a, 1971b), the more socio-psychological research of Peter Marsh and colleagues (Marsh, et al., 1978), and the influential figurational analyses of the Leicester School (Dunning, et al., 1988; Elias, 1971). I also explored the fan-democracy studies, associating the empirical turn to social movements and groups of fans with a militant attitude to the developments of the European football industry in the 1980s and 1990s.

After that, I argued, along with Crawford (2003, 2004) and Schimmel and colleagues (2007), that building a bridge between the two streams of fandom studies that focus on sport and pop culture may benefit both areas. In particular, I proposed that an approximation of communication and cultural studies is necessary in the football-fandom studies terrain as a way to incorporate two fruitful points. First is the inclusion of more contemporary approaches to media and communication in our research agendas. Second is the adoption of that radical contextualism and conjuncturalism, singular marks of cultural studies that seem fundamental for an understanding of fandom as a situated practice, deep-seated into social and cultural orders. The next chapter starts to present the conjuncture under analysis here: I explore the political economy of football in historical terms, stressing the conflictual nature of the current way that football is organised in Brazil.

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3! Inside!the!Industry:!!The!Political!Economy!of!Football!

It! is! not! just! a! club,! it’s!mine.! It’s! one! of! the!most! important!

things! in!my! life...and! they! know! that,! they! can! play! on! that! loyalty!

and!get!away!with!anything!because!they!know!that!you’re!still!going!

to!turn!up...I!don’t!care!whether!my!stand’s!got!a!roof!over!it.!I!don’t!

care!if!I’ve!got!a!nice!comfy!seat!to!sit!on.!I!want!to!see!the!game.!

—! ‘Shut!Up!and!Sit!Down’,!Open%Space,!BBC2!TV,!March!1993!(cited!by!Adam!Brown!in!United%we%stand:%some%problems%with%fan%democracy,%1998)!

The football industry involves a variety of actors — such as clubs, sponsors, media companies, governing bodies, players, supporters and government officials — and their distinct types of mutual relations. Football is today a huge entertainment industry, especially in Europe and Latin America, and markets are emerging in the US, Asia and the Middle East. However, this industrialised version is only one face of a sport that originated from medieval games and has changed dramatically, especially since the 1960s, when this market-oriented model started to take shape.

This chapter discusses the historical developments that led football from its early modern version, as practised in the late 19th century inside the English public-education system, to its current industrialised variant. I start by drawing a parallel between the developments of this sport in England and in Brazil, and later in the chapter, I focus on the recent changes in the organisation of the Brazilian domestic sector. This

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chapter’s goal is to approach the way this industry operates, discussing indeed its power-embedded relationships, but also contextualising how football became a business in the first place.

The central argument here is that Brazil is witnessing in 21st century (especially in the second decade) what could be called a hypercommodification period (Giulianotti, 2002). In England, a similar phase is strongly associated with the creation of the Premier League and is implicated in profound changes in the types of identification between supporters and the game. I argue here that two main elements related to the political economy are driving Brazil to this new cultural organisation: (1) the 2014 FIFA World Cup preparations (and the 12 high-priced seating stadiums renovated or built for the tournament); and (2) the recent renegotiation of broadcasting rights (with an escalation in the top clubs’ media revenues). These two aspects — in addition to broader social changes that Brazil has undergone in the last decade or so, and worldwide transformations in the modes and flows of communication — are reinventing the social relations of the game. Now, football fans are more affluent than they used to be, and these new fans are establishing new kinds of ties with their clubs. On the other hand, this process of reinvention of the social relations of the game has not been as smooth as football leaders may have desired: I conclude the chapter exploring the conflicts that have arisen in such a transitional setting.

British!context:!brief!introduction!to!the!early!days!of!modern!football!and!

its!following!industrialisation!process!

From traditional medieval games, modern sports, as we know them today, originated in the 19th century and formed under the influence of a complex set of broader socio-political changes, such as the creation of the modern state and the emergence of modern types of structures of personality (Elias, 1971). Great Britain had a significant role in codifying such old games into regulated, rational versions that replaced violence

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with self-control and self-coercion. It was in this context that football was incorporated into the British school system and later codified by the upper classes, becoming something distinct from its folk popular version. It was at the schools that football (among other sports) became an activity with an end in itself, acquiring new meanings and functions as it was dislocated from medieval popular culture to modern official aristocratic institutions (Bourdieu, 1978; Damo, 1998, 2002).

Later on, by the end of the 19th century, football’s new version spread out from the schools to clubs, associations and leagues at the end of the Victorian era. The popularisation of football that followed in the growing industrial cities in England was related to industrialisation, urbanisation, the increase in access to education, and the emergence of the proletariat as a class. Damo (1998) explains that as more people played sports, the idea of sporting activities as an end in themselves and, for this reason, a privilege of the upper classes, started to lose terrain. In the past, sporting practices played a role in distinguishing people as upper class, but now they were a space for the collective identification of ordinary individuals with equivalent status. It is in this context that another significant change took place: professionalism, which was formally legalised in 1885 in England and in 1933 in Brazil.

This first stage in the professional era of football was very ‘amateur’ compared with current standards, but it was fundamental for its historical developments. Before that, players from poor backgrounds struggled to live double lives: one as footballers and another as workers of some kind to pay their living expenses. When it became possible to make a living as a full-time football player, this opened up football even more to players from the lower social stratum. In the growing industrial urban settings, football clubs started to attract crowds of workers and the sport quickly became the space of the lower classes par excellence. Both players and spectators were recruited from the very same social grouping, and as such, “football’s integral position in working-class culture gave it a peculiar strength. It

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meant that the particular values of the game were based in, and circumscribed by, a larger set of values generated by the class culture as a whole” (Critcher, 1974, p. 1).

This close connection remained more or less intact until the 1960s in England, when both football and working-class cultures in general started to collapse under the influence of mass-media communication and the emergence of a consumer society in post-war Europe. This was when professionalism achieved a new level, and alongside it, commodification and globalisation processes started to change the social relations that characterised football up to that point. As with other popular-culture domains, the type of cultural analysis being articulated at that time by scholars at the CCCS also influenced the way the initial processes of football commodification were explored, particularly in Critcher’s work (mentioned above). Critcher saw a gradual transformation of the players’ statuses from folk heroes (the footballer from this initial professional stage) to celebrities already in the 1970s.

To understand such a passage, it is important to briefly explain the changes that started to take place in the 1960s and extended to the 1980s concerning the maximum wage, and the retain and transfer systems. In England, the retain system, the maximum-wage policy and the transfer system were interconnected and were designed to keep a certain stability/parity in the Football League. According to King (1995), since the creation of the Football League, in 1888, the contracts between clubs and players were regulated by these three rules. The maximum wage increased over time as a way to keep some parity with other types of employment. The retain system, in turn, determined that clubs had to register with the League all the squad’s players in the closing day of the season. At the same time, clubs would also submit a list of athletes available to be transferred. Such a list was sent to other clubs, which could then ask for additional information if they were interested in hiring any of the players made available to the market.

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As King (1995) explains, the rules made it difficult to have a regular exchange of players between clubs, which guaranteed that the teams would not be dismantled in the course of the season. The maximum wage reduced football clubs’ costs and maintained a certain parity between the big clubs of the capital (financially privileged by the public that they attracted) and the small town clubs. As King (1995) states, the combination of the three rules guaranteed an equity that enhanced the competition because teams from diverse places were in a position to win tournaments.

However, a series of important changes disrupted the clubs’ equivalence: the first change was the abolition of the maximum wage in 1961 and the last change was the complete reform of the retain and transfer systems in 1978. These changes are fundamental to understanding the abyss created between big and small clubs, the financial crisis of the 1980s and the split of the big clubs away from the existing system to create a new model of organisation, one grounded in a post-Fordist conception. Later, this very same transfer system was transformed once more because of the Bosman Case, in this context, particularly answering to globalisation processes and the European integration.

According to King (1995), already in the 1950s, under-the-table payments above the maximum wage had become current practice as a means to stimulate the performance of the best players and hold them at the clubs. In 1957, six Sunderland players had been accused of receiving illegal payments that broke the rule 60 of the League — concerning the maximum wage. In an attempt to avoid a possible banishment of the athletes from professional football, the newly elected president of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Jimmy Hill, promoted a campaign in which he travelled around the country collecting signatures of athletes who assumed that they had received payments above the maximum wage. Hill collected 250 signatures in only one week and the case ended up demonstrating how inconsistent the system was.

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Furthermore, King (1995) asserts, the maximum-wage rule was also under pressure because of the development of a European transfer market. As he explains, above all, Italian clubs were looking for new athletes among the players of the English league. These Italian clubs had more favourable financial conditions than the English teams and were able to offer substantially higher wages than their British rivals. Therefore, from the 1950s, Italian clubs became a serious threat to the retention of good players by English clubs.

Along with the external pressure and the exposition of the contradictions of the system, the wages of the Football League’s players started to not match the British post-war social conditions. With the increasing influence of the Keynesian welfare state and the organic changes that British society had undergone in the post-war years, the maximum wage had become anomalous, an anachronism (King, 1995). As King (1995) explains,

By! the! mid$1950s,! the! professional! players’! earnings! began! to! slip!

below! those! of! the! average! worker.! The! average! player! in! the! pre$

abolition! era! earned! £8! a!week!which!was! £2! less! than! the! average!

industrial!wage!(Harding!1991:256).!The! long!boom!of! the!post!War!

period! and! the! growth! of! the!markets! for! American!mass! produced!

consumer! goods,! combined! with! the! Keynesian! commonsense! that!

workers!had!to!be!encouraged!to!consume,!had!brought!about!a!rise!

in! workers’! wages,! which! had,! in! turn,! dramatically! increased! the!

affluence!of!the!working!class!from!the!late!1950s.!This!new!affluence!

of! the! workers! left! professional! footballers! anachronistically!

underpaid.!(p.!52)!!

This was the context that pushed the end of the maximum wage in 1961, which alongside other modifications transformed the folk heroes into celebrities. Most important were the implications of the wage rises to the everyday lives of players and supporters. As Critcher (1974) explains,

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It! was! not! just! a! question! of! footballers! having! gained! the! right! to!

more! money! and! more! bargaining! power! in! relation! to! their!

employing!club.!What!became!gradually!clear!was!that!the!‘New!Deal’!

had!fractured!the!set!of!social!and!cultural!relationships!by!which!the!

player’s!identity!had!previously!been!structured.!His!relationship!with!

management!were!strained!by!the!constant!demands!for!performance!

returns!on!the!investment!in!him;!his!attitudes!towards!fellow!players!

become!more!neurotically! competitive!and! the!search! for!a! common!

footballing!code!found!only!an!uneasy!justification!of!cynicism!in!the!

ethos! of! ‘professionalism’;! his! relationship! with! the! spectators,!

increasingly! mediated! by! heightened! expectations! of! the! successful!

and! the! spectacular,! came! more! and! more! to! resemble! that! of! the!

highly! acclaimed! entertainer! required! to! produce! the! ‘goods’! for!

public!consumption.!(p.!3)!

According to King (1995), the maximum-wage controversy revealed a strategy that went beyond this particular matter. A type of pro-change discourse was headed by Jimmy Hill, who argued that the maximum wage should be abolished, not only to increase the salaries, but also because football had become a commodity as any other. For Hill, in post-war England, the football player was nothing more than part of the entertainment industry. As such, the rules governing their earnings should be reviewed and aligned to the logic of this industry. As King (1995) asserts, Hill’s discourse sought a relationship between clubs and players that resembled the conditions of employment for the professional classes, not the working classes. Thus, King (1995) argues, “Hill and the players did want better pay but they wanted better pay as recognition of the fact that they were no longer workers but professional entertainers, who both produced and were commodities” (King, 1995, p. 54).

The maximum wage was extinct in January 1961, as was formally recorded in the Football League handbook in June of the same year. This change was, however, only one of the changes demanded by Hill “in order to bring the labour relations in professional football into line with those in

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other industries in affluent post-War Britain” (King, 1995, p. 58). The other change concerned the retain system, which basically put in the hands of the clubs any definition about the players’ future, similar in some sense to the Brazilian passe (see below). This reform would only be achieved later, in 1964, when the PFA used the opportunity of the George Eastham case. Eastham was a Newcastle United player who wanted to transfer to another club; however, when his club prevented this, he sought to change the system through the courts. In the end, the case was considered an illegal restraint of trade and it culminated in new rules that gave a few more liberties and agency to players themselves regarding the transfers. Nevertheless, these changes were still very specific and the complete reform of the transfer system would only come to existence in 1978, when the retain system was abolished, making way for a policy of compensatory fees (King, 1995).

As stated by King (1995), the creation of a free-market system of transfer fees, along with the abolition of the maximum wage, intensified substantially the costs of football and stimulated a rapid and debilitating inflationary spiral. Notwithstanding, this increase in the expenses did not similarly affect the clubs of the League. The smaller teams were the ones that suffered the most because, proportionally, the new rules had a greater effect on their financial balance. According to King (1995), this is demonstrated by statistics of the time:

Chester’s! Report! of! the! Committee! of! Enquiry! into! Structure! and!

Finance!(1983)!recorded!that!whereas!the!wages!of!the!First!Division!

clubs!amounted!to!56.4!per!cent!of!those!top!clubs’!gate!receipts,!the!

wage!bill!of! the!Third!and!Fourth!Division!clubs!exceeded! their!gate!

receipts.!(p.!63)!

The following fundamental change in the cultural organisation of the ‘beautiful game’ took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is the hypercommodification period. Giulianotti (2002) conceptualises commodification as a “process by which an object or social practice

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requires an exchange value or market-centered meaning” (p. 26). As he makes clear, commodification is not a single process but rather an ongoing one, often involving the gradual entry of market logic to the elements that constitute an object. According to Giulianotti (1999), if the type of commodification experimented with by football in the 1960s could be classified as modern, the one taking place since the late 1980s is of a postmodern order. The difference, he argues, is that the transformations associated with the latter period are symptomatic of the conditions of “disorganised capitalism”, which is “postindustrial, postmodern, and post-Fordist in its structural and cultural forms, and highly reflexive in its social manifestations” (Giulianotti, 2002, p. 29). In more concrete terms, hypercommodification in the football domain concerns the significant increase in relation to the sources and volumes of capital involved in the game. For example, those coming from satellite and pay-per-view television networks; Internet and telecommunications corporations; transnational sports-equipment manufacturers; other major transnational companies involved in sponsoring teams and stadiums; and the major stock market through the sale of club equity.

In Brazil, the football industry developed in a similar way as the industry in England. One difference, however, was that in England the sport was first practised much earlier; therefore, there was often a delay in when the corresponding developmental changes took place in Brazil. Besides this, the major distinction between the two countries concerns the stronger influence of the state in sport affairs in Brazil, especially between 1941 and 1988, when the country lived two different military dictatorship periods (1930–1945 and 1964–1985). In the next section, I briefly discuss some of the changes in the political economy of football since the sport was introduced in Brazil.

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Brazilian!context:!origins!and!developments!until!the!late!1990s!

Brazilian scholars have created distinct temporal periodisations of football in the country. One of the first to classify each development phase according to general characteristics was Levine (1980), who stated that football in Brazil fell into four broad periods:

1894–1904,!when!it!remained!largely!restricted!to!the!private!urban!

clubs!of! the! foreign$born;!1905–1933,! its!amateur!phase,!marked!by!

great! strides! in! popularity! and! rising! pressures! to! raise! the! playing!

level! by! subsidizing! athletes;! 1933–1950,! the! initial! period! of!

professionalism;!and! the!post$1950!phase!of!world$class! recognition!

accompanied! by! elaborate! commercialism! and! maturity! as! an!

unchallenged!national!asset.!(p.!234)!

Later, Ouriques (1999) proposed a new division, this one incorporating “current elements, such as the distinct relationships that football developed with the state and the market” (p. 39). He then suggested a more generalisable typology:

The! first! is! the!phase!of! establishment!of! football! through!voluntary!

associations! (1890–1940);! the! second! is! characterised! by! a! strong!

political!presence!of!the!state!in!football’s!development!(1941–1988),!

and! the! third,! started! in! the! 1980s,! reflects! the! approach! and! the!

following! consolidation! of! the! market! presence! determining! the!

directions!for!football’s!development.!(p.!39)!

A third periodisation, which seems to incorporate these preceding ones at the same time as reflecting more properly the differences of each phase is that articulated by Rodrigues (2007). He synthesises in this way his five-period history of Brazilian football:

(1)! the! introduction!of! football! in!Brazil! (1894–1904):! the! first!kicks!

—!urban!and!English!clubs;!!

(2)! the!amateur!phase!of! football! in!Brazil! (1905–1933):!elitism!and!

football!as!a!symbol!of!social!distinction;!!

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(3)! the! phase! of! professionalism! in! Brazil! (1933–

1950):!popularisation!and!professionalism;!

(4)! the! phase! of! international! recognition! and! commercialisation! of!

Brazilian! football! (1950–1970):! the! consecration! of! the! ‘Brazilian!

style’!of!playing!football;![…]![and]!!

(5)! the! phase! of! the! conservative! modernisation! of! football! as! a!

business!in!Brazil!(1970–2006).!(p.!108)!

Periodisations are arbitrary classifications that serve the particular goals of specific research, which is why these three systematisations are all correct in historical terms, even though they are slightly different. In this section, I discuss some elements considered in this previous literature, but not all of them (it is a long history, and other scholars have dedicated full-length studies to it). I focus on those points that are the most important for understanding the forms of commercialisation and power relations embedded in the cultural organisation of each phase. I argue that there is a fundamental difference between the type of commodification found in the 1990s in the Brazilian context and the current processes that characterise this industry. The TV rights renegotiation (2011) and the all-seater stadium model (2013) represent a significant increase in terms of the sources and volumes of capital in this market. It is a type of hypercommodification phase, even though other components identified by Giulianotti (2002) are not present, such as the sale of club equity on the stock market. On the other hand, old hierarchies of power in this sector are still rather strong — which was the reason that Rodrigues (2007) called the entrance of market logic in the football sector in Brazil a conservative modernisation. This means that the professionalisation processes are deeper in some instances than others. Yet, the lack of regulation sets the scene for a paradoxical environment in which unprecedented revenues co-exist with high levels of debt for the clubs, not to mention the abusive practices adopted by companies operating in this industry. I start by briefly exploring the genesis of Brazilian football clubs.

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Elitist!clubs,!team!clubs!and!factory!clubs!!

For some Brazilian scholars, the first phase of football in the country extends from the end of the 19th century to 1940, and was characterised by voluntary associations (Manhães, 1986; Ouriques, 1999). As Damo (1998, 2002) asserts, most of the popular clubs of today were created at that point, even though they emerged as distinct structures. Their origins can be divided into three categories: elitist clubs, team clubs, and factory clubs (Damo, 1998, 2002).

The elitist clubs, mostly created in the big urban cities, were the ones formed by immigrants, descendants of immigrants or Brazilians from the upper classes. Sometimes football was incorporated into a pre-existing club dedicated to another sport, and other times clubs were properly founded as football clubs. These clubs predominated between 1894 (when Charles Miller supposedly brought football to Brazil) and 1904 (Levine, 1980; Ouriques, 1999). As Damo (1998) explains, football at that point symbolised, for the upper classes, the European modernity and Miller not only brought a sporting practice but also a sociality model; this model presupposed basic requirements such as following the rules of the game, the organisation and publicity of matches, and the creation of clubs and leagues. For those involved into this type of club, football was associated with a healthy body, the formation of the character, the youth, eugenics and free association (Damo, 1998). Exploring the remnants of such a period in the contemporary forms of club identification in Brazil, Damo (1998) explains that the broad notion that football clubs are a type of secular family — a traditional and still strong value in Brazil — comes from this period. This association between clubs and the concept of family also manifests itself in one’s favourite team, which in general follows the choice of someone’s closest relatives, such as the father or the mother.

On the other hand, team clubs originated in a more organic way among people living in the same neighbourhood, street, students from the same school or even workers from the same workers’ village. Fundamentally,

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they were teams that became clubs in a competitive boost to create alternative leagues. The difference in this case was that there was no need for the creation of a formal association with headquarters and its own ground (the lack of such things was unthinkable for members of the elitist clubs). Improvised grounds were taken by the football frenzy that started to spread to the middle and lower classes at that point. And, in the case of the team clubs, there was another fundamental distinction regarding the acceptance of new members when compared with the elitist clubs. The latter opted for rigorous selection, as a way to preserve the identity of the institution or group; the former adopted the opposite approach, with the ‘club ideal’ being inverted: diversity and popularity overlapped homogeneity and selectivity (Damo, 1998).

The last category was the factory club, which, together with team clubs, were behind the fast popularisation of the sport in the Tupiniquim lands. As Damo (1998) explains, factory clubs formed in a different way from the other ones. If the elitist and team versions were created by the free enterprise of their members, factory clubs were mostly encouraged by industrialists, at first English men, and later, big businessmen in general. The example of Bangu, a club founded in 1904 by employees of a prosperous factory in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, is often cited in the literature about football in Brazil as the point of departure for the history of factory clubs (Caldas, 1990; Damo, 1998; Toledo, 1996). The Bangu Athletic Club, its very British full name, was created by the company’s high-level staff (most of them of English or Scottish origins), and at some point, had to accept low-level Brazilian workers to complete two teams so they could play against each other (Caldas, 1990). Soon enough, according to (Damo, 1998), the industrialists realised that football could play strategic functions in such a context:

•! increasing the prestige of the company with its employees and the residents of the workers’ villages

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•! motivating the workers and controlling the main causes for unjustified absences and production breaks (such as alcoholism)

•! occupying the workers’ leisure times so they would not get so much involved with union activities.

In this context, many factories such as Companhia Progresso Industrial do Brasil (Bangu’s company) started to encourage workers to get involved in football, providing the ground, clothes and other necessary material.

However, the formation of these clubs was not solely a strategic action by the companies. From the workers’ perspective, they fulfilled some more important social roles. As Damo (1998) explains, for the workers and the community formed around and because of the factories, the offer of leisure activities, and of football practice in particular, was highly valued. The factory clubs played an important role in the cohesion and constitution of social identities in these new urban settings, particularly because these communities mostly comprised rural migrants (Damo, 1998, p. 55).

These factory teams lasted until the early 1960s when the players’ wages started to increase substantially, followed by the introduction of passe (more details below), which made football incompatible with the companies’ budgets. As Damo (1998) discusses, when these factory teams started to disappear, many supporters were left supporting a club that no longer existed. They became ‘fatherless’ supporters — those who had such a strong identification with their team that losing it felt like losing a parent. The situation was only extenuated because many supporters had already ‘transferred’ their support to the big clubs together with their idols. The beloved Garrincha is probably the best example of an era when most big talents started to move to the big clubs. That was in the 1950s, the very early days of what has been called the golden age of Brazilian football. For Damo (1998), the factory clubs greatly contributed to the type of identification of supporters with their clubs in Brazil. A series of moral values, including the notion of loyalty to the ‘club of the heart’, were

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marked characteristics of the type of belonging found in the relationship between factory workers and their teams. These clubs, at that point, represented more than just the factory or the employers; for the workers themselves, the clubs symbolised the rise of the proletariat, the source for most of the big names of Brazilian football from the early days of professionalism (1933) to the late 1960s.

It is also in this more incipient period that supporters started to be charged for attending the matches. This initial commercialisation, which was adopted in 1917 in Rio and São Paulo, is, for Rodrigues (2007), already a signal of the transition of the sport from its amateur phase to its professionalised period. The money collected financed the purchase of footballs, uniforms and boots, and later, it would pay for the athletes’ wages.

The passage of football players from amateurs to professionals was indeed a troubled process in Brazil (Caldas, 1990; Rodrigues, 2007; Yamandu & Junior, 2012). For a couple of years (from 1923 to 1933, according to Caldas, 1990), players would be unofficially paid, in a semi-professionalised fashion or what others have called profissionalismo marrom (‘yellow professionalism’), in Portuguese. The dispute between the amateur ethos and the discourse of professionalism played out in a similar way to what Dunning (2001[1999]) explores when it comes to other sports. In the end, the threat of an exodus of the top players to other markets —

such as the already professionalised markets in Europe, Argentina and Uruguay — and the search for more competitive squads led to the institutionalisation of professionalism in 1933 (Rodrigues, 2007; Yamandu & Junior, 2012). Also, such professionalisation “was inserted in the scope of new labour legislation that would be effective in practically all sectors of the economy during Getúlio Vargas’ term” (Silva & Amorim Filho, 2012, p. 1). In the following section, I discuss the so-called ‘golden age’ of Brazilian football.

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State!intervention!and!the!redemocratisation!

The golden age of football in the country is generally understood as that period between 1950 to 1970, when Brazil won its triple world championship, with the 1970s team being considered by many football insiders the best World Cup team ever. This period overlaps with the phase of intense intervention of the state into sport in general, which started in 1941 with the proclamation of the Decree 3.199. This Act was promulgated in the first presidential tenure of the populist Getúlio Vargas and “created a large apparatus to regulate and discipline the national sporting activities; this apparatus sought to solve the political issues that came about because of the inordinate increase in the number of people playing sports” (Ouriques, 1999, p. 40). This apparatus was especially concentrated in the National Sporting Committee (Conselho Nacional de Desportos – CND), created with the aim of orientating, policing and promoting sporting practices in the country.

The golden age of fooball in Brazil has some important features described by Levine (1980) and Ouriques (1999):

•! its ordering and disciplinarian tone

•! the international recognition of the national team (three times world champion), clubs and Brazil’s particular style of play (futebol arte or jogo bonito)

•! the beginning of the industrialisation, with the levels of professionalism (players), internationalisation and commercialisation achieving a remarkable threshold for the period

•! the strong association of the sport with the constitution of a national identity.

This period has been explored in-depth in the literature, especially because of this strong attachment of football in Brazil to an imagined and

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cohesive national identity. Moreover, the state intervention that Getúlio Vargas started in 1941 was taken up by the military regime of the second half of the century (1964-1985), with similar features characterising the sector at that point. Actually, the sport became even more central in the nationalist discourse of the government due to the success of seleção inside the pitch.

By the 1980s, when this second dictatorship was progressively ending, a series of conjunctural factors influenced the directions of the football industry in Brazil. A long and gradual process of redemocratisation started to take place, until it culminated with the creation of a new Constitution (1988) and the first democratically elected president in 29 years (1989). According to Ouriques (1999), the inclusion of Article 217 in the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 was fundamental for the upcoming changes, such as those introduced by the Zico Act (1993) and the Pelé Act (1998). Article 217 sets in its first paragraph that it was the state’s duty to promote formal and informal sporting practices, but also to observe the autonomy of the sporting bodies, associations and sporting leaders regarding their organisation and operation. Such an addition was a result of the national sporting bodies’ struggles to achieve greater autonomy and it represented the necessary step towards a market-oriented approach to football. In addition, with the new Constitution, the National Sporting Committee created by Vargas back in 1941 was extinguished.

In this context, it is important to highlight how the market-opening discourse took a radical tone: the state was demonised along the lines of the Brazilian triumphalist economism extensively discussed by Souza (2003, 2004, 2009). As Helal and Gordon (2002) put it:

With! the! end! of! the! military! regime! and! the! beginning! of! the!

redemocratisation! in!1985,! the!country!started! to! repudiate!some!of!

the! ideas! that! defined! the! previous! period,! such! as! ‘planning’,!

‘centralisation’! and! ‘national! will’! (Lessa,! 2000),! as! if! the!

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developmentalist!and!nationalist!experience!had!failed!because!of! its!

ends! rather! than! its!means.! But! the! country! had! just! got! out! of! the!

dictatorship,! traumatised! by! the! immensurable! power! of! the! state,!

yearning! for! liberty.! Thus,! in! the! absence! of! a! unified! project! of! the!

democratic! forces,! the! possible! political! strategy! was! to! reject! the!

previous! project! as! a! whole.! In! this! sense,! for! some! experts,! it! was!

necessary! to! apply! the! same! anti$statist! reasoning! in! the! sports!

domain,!reformulating!the!sports!legislation!that!had!its!origins!in!the!

Vargas! Era! and! was! reinforced! during! the! military! regime! (1964–

1985).!(p.!48)!

Along with these broader changes, a massive exodus of athletes to Europe started to take place from the 1980s (Helal & Gordon, 2002; Proni, 1998). In 1982, the use of advertising on club uniforms was approved (Rodrigues, 2007) and, in 1987, football matches of the domestic league started to be televised live. In this very same year, and in direct connection with the TV transmissions, Clube dos 13 (‘Club of the 13’) was founded.

Club of the 13 was an association formed by the most traditional clubs in Brazil. Its name related to the 13 teams that originally launched it back in 1987. The clubs’ association proposed to organise the 1987 Brazilian Football Championship because, just a couple of weeks before the tournament was supposed to get started, CBF announced that it was not financially able to run it. The 13 most popular clubs then got together and proposed a championship that was organised in a more market-oriented way, naming this particular competition Copa União (‘Union Cup’). Club of the 13 signed sponsoring contracts with Coca-Cola, Varig (at the time, Brazil’s leading airline) and Rede Globo (the major media network in the country), which brought unprecedented revenues to football clubs, especially because of the broadcasting rights.

During the 1990s, many other changes took place, increasing the levels of commodification, professionalisation and internationalisation of the Brazilian industry. The structural changes that the reform of the labour

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relations brought about in the football context deserve a more detailed discussion. One of the most significant changes was the abolition of passe, which came about with the Pelé Act in 1998. The next subsection is dedicated to this topic.

Labour!relations:!‘passe’!abolition!and!the!search!for!new!sources!of!revenue!

Since the 1990s, Brazilian football has witnessed a series of changes that created the historical conditions for the emergence of the current hypercommodified phase of the sport. Among these transformations is the modification of the labour relations between players and clubs. In this context, the central element is the abolition of passe in 1998 and the implications for the football industry:

•! more flexible labour relations

•! an increase of external agents’ investments in the athletes’ negotiations with clubs

•! the necessary search for alternative sources of revenue, especially by those clubs that specialise in providing the basic training for young players.

Passe (‘pass’) was created in 1976 — Law n. 6,354 of September 2, 1976, also known as Lei do Passe (‘Pass Act’) — and was a type of financial compensation paid to the initial training club by the time of the player’s first transfer. A contractual term, passe prevented the release of players in the middle of the season and was one of the main sources of the clubs’ revenue, especially the minor clubs, which were traditionally responsible for the initial training of athletes. The central issue with passe was that it did not extinguish with the end of the employment contract. The club kept the economic rights over the players, which were seen as an asset, a property owned by the institution that could be used as any other property to honour payments or remedy debts. The athlete was then a type of

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commodity that the club possessed even after the end of the contract period. ‘Freedom’ could only be achieved by the time the player was 32 years old (provided by law), when the athlete had a reduced physical ability, or in case the athlete himself bought his passe.

It is important to note that the Pass Act did more than establish passe as a contractual term; this was the first legislation to specifically regulate the work relationship between football players and clubs, and it was promulgated five years after the beginning of the modern period of the Brazilian Football Championship11, in 197112. According to Boudens (2002), the Pass Act:

•! addressed the form, content and obligations with the employer club

•! reserved four years for the initial technical and physical training of the player

•! regulated the temporary and permanent concession of athletes to other clubs

•! ordered about penalties that could be applied to athletes by the Sports Law

•! addressed the rights of players, such as wage guarantee, annual leave, period of work and conditions of employment

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!110In0Portuguese,0Campeonato!Brasileiro!de!Futebol.0120The0first0national0tournament0in0the0country0was0Taça!Brasil,0contested0from019590to01968.0A0short0competition,0Taça!Brasil0was0organised0as0a0cup,0with0the0elimination0of0clubs0in0every0match0(Santos,02013a).0In01967,0the0Torneio!Roberto!Gomes!Pedrosa0or0Torneio!RioBSão!Paulo,0which0was0disputed0by0teams0from0Rio0and0São0Paulo,0started0to0invite0clubs0from0other0states0to0join0the0competition.0‘Robertão’,0as0it0was0popularly0known,0was0already0organised0in0a0similar0fashion0to0the0current0championship.0In01971,0the0Brazilian0Football0Championship0was0created0with0the0support0of0the0military0regime0and0with0the0momentum0created0by0the0Brazilian0triple0championship0at0the019700World0Cup.0This0tournament0started0the0modern0period0of0the0Brazilian0Championship.0Rodrigues0(2007)0sums0it0up0very0well:0“In01967,0in0the0peak0of0the0repressive0forces,0with0the0wide0manipulation0of0patriotic0feelings0in0Brazil,0the0government0financed0the0construction0of0big0stadiums0and0promoted0a0tournament0that0would0be0the0embryo0for0the0future0national0championship.0Initially,0150clubs0from0five0cities0in0the0southbcentral0region,0the0most0developed0in0the0country,0are0gathered.0In0the0following0year,0two0champion0clubs0that0represent0the0most0important0cities0in0the0northbnortheast0are0incorporated.0Finally,0in01971,0at0the0peak0of0the0military0dictatorship0(and0financed0by0it,0with0its0high0operational0costs0due0to0the0huge0physical0distances0to0be0travelled0by0the0clubs)0and0with0the0momentum0created0by0the0conquest0of0the0Jules0Rimet0Trophy,0the0National0Championship0is0created,0replacing0Taça0Brasil0in0defining0annually0the0Brazilian0participants0at0the0Copa0Libertadores”0(p.0126).0

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•! determined penalties for sports organisations that did not comply with their athletes’ rights

•! defined the jurisdiction and coverage of the Sports Law in matters of labour disputes.

The problem, however, was that under such a system, the player was put in a subordinated position in which he could not freely choose his employer.

The football environment in Brazil started to change in the 1980s, as I explored above, and a series of modifications created the historical conditions for the emergence of a model grounded on neoliberal values, similar at some level to the Premier League phase in England. As with Europe, in Brazil, this historical context embraced broader transformations, such as the end of the communist project and the Soviet Union, symbolically demarcated by the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as other national transitions, such as the end of the military regime and the associated degradation of the state image.

It was the neoliberal-oriented governments of the 1990s in Brazil that created the conditions for the implementations of the Zico and Pelé Acts. As a result of troubled processes and power struggles between the football oligarchies and the private interests of groups that sought to explore the market potential of the football industry in the country, the Zico and Pelé Acts were both connected to this post-redemocratisation context, when the obstacles previously placed by the state to bring football and market together were redefined (Rodrigues, 2007).

The Law n. 8,672/1993 — popularly known as Lei Zico (‘Zico Act’) — was an initiative of the then Secretary of Sports of the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic, Arthur Antunes Coimbra (popularly known as Zico), and its bill intended to:

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i)!regulate!the!presence!of!corporations!and!the!commercialisation!of!

professional!football,!ii)!review!the!participation!into!the!revenues!of!

the!Sporting!Lottery,! iii)!extinguish! the!Pass!Act!and!establish!a!new!

set!of! rules! for! the!employment! relations!of! the!professional!athlete,!

iv)! redefine! the! mechanisms! to! supervise! and! ensure! the! statutory!

autonomy!of!the!clubs!and!v)!seek!more!democratic!and!transparent!

mechanisms!of!representation!and!administration!for!the!federations!

and!CBF.!(Proni,!as!cited!in!Rodrigues,!2007,!p.!129)!

For Rodrigues (2007), the proposal was related to the Brazilian socio-political moment, aligning rather well with other shifts that the country was experiencing. In economic terms, Brazil witnessed in the 1990s a set of changes, such as the plan to fight inflation, the appreciation and creation of a new currency (Brazilian Real, since 1994), the opening of the domestic economy to the international market, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and more flexible employment relations. As Rodrigues (2007) asserts, “in fact, the country adopted the globalisation and liberalism discourses, replacing the national-developmentalist model with the efficiency-oriented discourse of the market” (p. 129). At that point, the former actually seemed out-dated, while the latter represented modernity.

The sports sector developed in this environment and, in turn, the measures adopted in this field revolved around improving the services offered to consumers (supporters) and encouraging the participation of private enterprises. The intention was to take away part of the public financial support and, at some level, release football from the state control. These measures in general were also meant to create opportunities for advancing sports marketing, one of the facets of the business-oriented type of football that was forming (Rodrigues, 2007).

The Zico Bill resulted in a strong resistance on the part of the Bancada da Bola (Football Coalition), a football-related interest group active in the National Congress of Brazil. In the two houses that form the Brazilian Congress, the Federal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, there exists

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the formation of caucuses (formed by congressional representatives who are not necessarily from the same party) seeking to lobby or promote particular agendas. These groups first emerged in an informal way during the National Constituent Assembly (1987–88) — the body that prepared the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 — and they have proliferated since then. These coalitions are today formally registered as Frentes Parlamentares (Parliamentary Fronts), and some of the most influential are:

•! the Ruralist Coalition: its members are advocates for landowners and agribusiness and are an obstacle for the Congress passing any bill related to land reform

•! the Pentecostal Coalition: it is formed by congressional representatives associated with Protestant churches, especially neo-charismatic ones, and is particularly obstructive of progressive agendas like Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) causes and abortion

•! the Ammunition Coalition: its members are former policemen, military, law enforcement agents and politicians linked to arms industries.

The Football Coalition comprises those congressional representatives who have close connections with the football power oligarchies (i.e. leaders of state federations, CBF and football clubs). The lobby activities of such politicians became clear when the Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry13 about Football (established in the Senate in 2000) and about the CBF–Nike relations (formed in the Chamber of Deputies in 2001) concluded that CBF financially supported the election campaigns of many deputies and senators, at least since 1998 (Azevedo & Rebelo, 2001). Acting over many legislative sessions, the Football Coalition opposed many items of the Zico Bill, intervening particularly to override: (1) the clubs’ obligation !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!130Comissão!Parlamentar!de!Inquérito0or0CPI,0in0Portuguese.0

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to adopt more transparent and professional models of management; (2) the requirement of transforming the clubs into commercial enterprises of a sporting nature; and (3) the abolition of passe. Item 3 was excluded from the Zico Act’s final text and, according to Rodrigues (2007), the pressure applied by the Football Coalition resulted in points 1 and 2 no longer being compulsory.

For Helal (1997), the adoption of the football-business model allowed by the Zico Act, without the transformation of the power structures, did not represent a radical change in the organisation of the sector in Brazil. Such small reform actually reinforced the policy of exchanging favours in the organisation of the tournaments. With non-profitable matches, the championship still gave financial losses to the clubs, limiting the marketing and commercialisation potential of the event. As Helal (1997) argues, “the administrative modernisation, meaning the commercialisation of the spectacle, should have followed a path of political modernisation, understood here as meaning that the clubs had the autonomy and independence to organise the championships” (p. 111).

In the end, because of the conflicts of interest in the Brazilian political environment, the Zico Act became a suggestive legislation, failing in most of its initial aims. The Pelé Act also revoked most of the Zico Act’s articles. However, even though the Zico Act was not approved by the Congress in the way expected by those who were advocating for a greater level of professionalisation and transparency in the sector, the dominant discourse in the football, academic and journalistic environments in the 1990s was that Brazilian football needed a profound transformation (Rodrigues, 2007). This discourse was grounded, above all, by the following arguments:

(1)!The!modernisation!of!Brazilian! football!was!an! imperative!of! the!

capitalist!competition,!the!reason!that!it!was!urgent!to!restructure!the!

means!of!production!for!the!spectacle!and!the!management!of!clubs;!!

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(2)! International! tendencies! showcased! that! the! state!was! supposed!

to!create!the!conditions!to!install!business!practices!governed!by!the!

market!laws!in!Brazilian!football;!!

(3)!The!modernisation!was!necessary!and!urgent!because! it!was! the!

only! option! to! eradicate! the! main! problems! with! our! football! [...].!

(Rodrigues,!2007,!p.!132)!

These arguments came from a general feeling of crisis that dominated the public sphere and was related to multiple problems: financial, social, political, administrative and technical. As Cury and colleagues (2008) explain, evidence of such a crisis was found in:

•! the bankruptcy faced by some clubs and the deficient championships following the impoverishment of the population

•! the recurring violence and lack of safety measures at the stadiums

•! the huge amount of political interference in football, often in the football federations, where some politicians’ personal interests prevailed

•! the absence of great players, a result of the exodus of footballers to more attractive markets.

All these factors contributed to a decline in supporters’ interest in going to stadiums, which decreased the clubs’ revenues and resulted in a vicious circle (Cury, et al., 2008; Helal & Gordon, 2001).

It is in this context that a new bill was introduced to the Congress: the one that became the Pelé Act (Law n. 9,615/1998). Édson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pelé, is a retired Brazilian professional footballer who was the Brazilian Federal Minister of Sports from 1995 to 1998. In 1997, Pelé presented a law proposal, inspired by similar Spanish legislation, which sought to increase control measures within the sport sector and guarantee autonomy of organisation to the clubs. The intention of the proposal was to regulate football through the market laws, the

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gradual extinction of passe, and to transform clubs into commercial enterprises (Rodrigues, 2007). As Rodrigues (2003) explains,

The!bill!was!introduced!in!the!National!Congress!with!no!inquiry!into!

the!sporting!institutions,!what!led!leaders!of!the!clubs,!CBF!and!state!

federations!to!classify!it!as!stupid,!statist!and!authoritarian.!The!main!

Brazilian! clubs! opposed! the! extinction! of! passe,! established! by! the!

Pelé!Bill,!arguing!that!the!passe!was!a!way!for!them!to!be!reimbursed!

for!their!investment!in!athlete!development.!The!Pelé!Bill!intended!to!

move!Brazilian!football!into!modernity.!(p.!92)!

In this context, the political articulation of the Football Coalition was once more successful in removing the mandatory nature of the transformation of football clubs into commercial enterprises, replacing it as an optional choice. The main reason that football clubs in Brazil are so skeptical about this idea is that the adoption of such a model “would eliminate many of the tax advantages that they still have” (Silva & Amorim Filho, 2012, p. 2). Passe, however, was extinct and, in the subsequent years, provisional measures (n. 2,141/2001 and n. 2,142-2/2001) amended the Pelé Act, including the ‘compensation for training’, which intends to reduce the financial losses caused to football clubs by the abolition of passe and to encourage the preparation and training of young athletes at the junior level.

Brazil!of!the!2000s:!hypercommodification!and!the!reinvention!of!the!

game’s!social!relations!

In the 2000s, the country started another wave of transformations with the election of Lula, the first left-wing president since João Goulart — who was deposed with the 1964 military coup. I discuss in more detail the general policies of Lula and Dilma (his successor, also from the Workers’ Party) in Chapter 4. However, it is important to note here how some of the practices associated with a market-oriented model in the organisation of the football sector, such as measures to control violence and to modernise

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the stadiums, gained even more strength with the preparations of the country to host both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Lula adopted a political orientation that has been called a post-neoliberal approach elsewhere (Grugel & Riggirozzi, 2012; Sader, 2013; Yates & Bakker, 2014) (this is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4). Mascarenhas and colleagues (2014) summarise the concrete face of such an agenda:

Luiz!Inácio!Lula!da!Silva!was!still!enormously!popular!when!he!left!the!

Presidency! of! the! Republic.! His! success! and! approval! rates! were!

justified! for! two! reasons.! On! the! one! hand,! was! the! adoption! of! a!

program! that,!with!no!direct! confrontation! to! the!order!and!with!no!

drastic! ruptures! to! the! macro$economic! policies! of! his! predecessor,!

radicalised! even! more! the! tax! and! monetary! orthodoxy! of!

neoliberalism.! And,! on! the! other! hand,!was! the! implementation! of! a!

policy!to!mitigate!poverty!with!measures!that!promoted!the!domestic!

market! and! protected! the! socially! least$privileged! part! of! the!

population.! As! a! result,! he! seems! to! have! governed! for! everybody,!

ensuring!the!privileges!and!profits!of!the!most!powerful!and!bringing!

up!dozens!of!millions!of!Brazilians!to!the!consumer!sphere.!(pp.!495$

496)!

From the 14th-largest economy in the world in 2003 with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$552 billion, with PT policies, Brazil became the 7th-largest in 2013 with a GDP of US$2.24 trillion (The World Bank, 2014). Furthermore, the level of extreme poverty dropped 75% from 2001 to 2012 and the country was not included for the first time ever on the 2014 Hunger Map of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO/United Nations). At the same time, the processes of football commodification deepened, led by a ‘modernising’/‘developing’ agenda of preparations for the mega-events and also supported by a growing consumer culture (Yaccoub, 2011).

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This hypercommodification is in fact observable in the increase of revenues from the operations of Brazil’s top football clubs. Different institutions and consultants in the football sector release reports in Brazil that are similar to the European Deloitte Football Money League. Somoggi (2014), for instance, estimates that the revenues of the top-20 Brazilian clubs increased 375% from 2003 to 2013, rising from R$652 million to R$3.1 billion. Another evaluation from the Credit Sector of Itaú-BBA, a Brazilian bank institution, points out a growth of 130% from 2009 (beginning of their studies) to 2013: from R$1.4 to R$3.2 billion (Grafietti et al., 2014). A report from BDO Brazil, reveals that the total income of the top-24 clubs expanded from R$1.6 to R$3.3 billion, an increase of 99% from 2009 to 2013 (BDO, 2014).

In addition, in 2003, the top division of the Brazilian Football Championship began to adopt a double round-robin system, which requires each club to play all other contestants twice every season. Before that, the championship had final play-offs. The new schedule, adopted in most European national leagues, supposedly optimised the capacity of each club to generate income over the season because all teams from the main divisions would have matches and competitions all year long (Reis, 2012). According to Damo (2011), the new system was also adopted because of the interference of Rede Globo, the broadcaster rights holder, which saw an advantage in this type of competition. With the round-robin system, the entire schedule of the season is defined early on, easing the programming planning and also the sale of pay-per-view packages to supporters.

Concomitantly, a new federal legislation came into play, which strengthened once more the market logic of the sector. The Law n. 10,671/2003, popularly known as Estatuto de Defesa do Torcedor14 (Sports Fans Statute), reflects this inclination to approach football as a business and supporters as consumers (Cury, et al., 2008; Santos, 2000). As Cury !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!140For0a0reference0in0English0about0the0Statute,0see0Fortes0(2013).0

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and colleagues (2008) explain, both the institution organising the competition and the club hosting the match became ‘providers’ of a service in this new Statute, and the relationships established between them and the fans began to be regulated by the Law n. 8,078/1990 (the Consumer Protection Act in Brazil). In this sense, this new legislation determined that there was a relationship between the entity offering a sport event and the consumer. In addition, because this is a particular type of service, the Sports Fans Statute was fundamental to defining the rights and guarantees that supporters (as consumers) have when acquiring that service, such as fairness of the competition, transparency, personal safety, sanitation and food pricing. Lastly, in 2003, the Law n. 10,672, known as Lei de Moralização do Futebol (Football Moralisation Act), was approved. Since then, clubs have been compelled to approve their accounts in a general meeting of members, and to publish their financial statements after they are properly approved by independent auditors (Silva & Amorim Filho, 2012).

Still about the clubs’ operations, the main revenues in Brazil come from: (1) publicity and sponsorship, (2) box-office/match-day tickets, (3) season ticket holders, (4) transference of athletes, (5) broadcasting rights and (6) stadium naming rights (Silva & Amorim Filho, 2012). All these components have increased in the last seven seasons, but especially items 1, 2, 3 and 5 (Ferreira, 2014). The income from publicity and sponsorship grew 378% overall during this period: income from match-day tickets grew 386%, season-package holders grew 367% and broadcasting rights grew 371% (Ferreira, 2014) — other reports suggest similar growth (BDO, 2014; Grafietti, et al., 2014; Somoggi, 2014).

The importance of the broadcasting rights comes from the fact that this is the main source of revenue for Brazilian clubs, being responsible on average for 34% of the capital injected into the sector in the last five years (Ferreira, 2014). The growths of items b and c (match-day tickets and season packages) is partially related to the opening of the new stadiums,

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through the substantial increase of ticket prices and the extension of the volume coming from the season packages. In 2010, R$306 million of the sector’s R$1.7 billion in revenues came from match-day and season tickets (Grafietti, et al., 2014). In 2011 and 2012, with most stadiums closed for the World Cup renovations, this amount remained more or less steady (R$332 million in 2011 and R$397 million in 2012). With the opening of the new and renovated arenas and the extension of the season packages of clubs such as Cruzeiro and Flamengo (both successful in that season), the revenues jumped to R$539 million in 2013 (Grafietti, et al., 2014). Today, match-day and season tickets comprise around 17% of the revenues of Brazilian clubs (Grafietti, et al., 2014). Below, I further discuss the central elements in this cultural reorganisation of Brazilian football.

New!stadiums!

The stadiums were one of the main items on the agenda of preparations for the World Cup in Brazil. Due to political reasons, the country had more host venues than the previous events (Soffredi, 2011). Generally, the competition is organised around six to eight cities, but the Brazilian tournament had 12, covering the main regions in the country and also accommodating the political ambitions of the 18 candidate states that applied to host matches of the competition. All arenas were either new (seven) or renovated (five) and the main change introduced because of the event was the adoption of FIFA standards, which include, for instance, seats in all sections of the stadiums.

Besides the arenas renovated or built for the FIFA tournament, recently, other stadiums in Brazil with similar designs were (re)inaugurated, such as Independência (Belo Horizonte, 2012), Arena do Grêmio (Porto Alegre, 2012) and Allianz Parque (São Paulo, 2014). With these new venues, Brazil would have become, for an economist specialised in the sector, “the country with the most expensive [football] tickets in the world” (Ferreira, 2013, p. 2). Ferreira (2013) estimated how many football tickets could be

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bought with the per capita income of different countries: in Brazil it would be 645, in Spain it would be 804, in Italy, 865, in the UK, 911, and in Germany, 1,868. According to the same economist, the prices of the most affordable tickets in Brazil increased 300% from 2003 to 2013, while the accumulated inflation rate in the period was 73% (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 2014).

In addition to the considerable increase in the ticket prices, the introduction of seats in all sectors of the stadiums significantly changed the dynamics of the torcidas. These changes were noticeable, for instance, in the recent incident involving Grêmio’s torcida in the second match of the team in the new venue, Arena do Grêmio, in January 2013 (Santos, 2013c). Unlike other complexes, at Arena do Grêmio, one sector of the stadium has no seats, as a way to preserve some of the practices of Geral do Grêmio, a group of supporters that fits into what has been identified as a new supporting movements (more on that in Chapter 4). In the traditional ‘avalanche’ performance, the torcida comes down the stands en bloc during the goal celebrations. On this occasion, however, the avalanche by Geral do Grêmio ended up breaking the perimeter fence and leaving some supporters with minor injuries. In this case, even though the stands did not have seats, the structure that was built to prevent access to the pitch did not support the pressure of the momentary agglomeration of fans (as it used to).

In the press, it was said that “the ‘avalanche’ and the wellbeing of the public in the new stadium may end up being incompatible” (Por que a 'avalanche' não tem espaço na Arena do Grêmio, 2013). This case, on the other hand, also exemplifies how many of the movements of the torcidas are hampered by the new spatiality of the arenas. From the more effusive celebration to the choreographies of the torcidas, the all-seater model ends up imposing restrictions on the moves and traditional practices of Brazilian supporters. Even the sonority of the crowd has changed with the new stadiums: the torcidas sound less loud and agitated, and more

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uncoordinated (Marra, 2014). As Marra (2014) observes, the new model forces the supporters to be seated most of the time because of the distribution of space and because they are trying to avoid affecting the visibility of other attendees. As a result, the fact that the seated position became the regular body posture influences the dynamics of sound production. Even the traditional Mexican wave (La Ola) has been jeopardised, with many attempts being sometimes necessary so the wave can travel the whole arena (Marra, 2014).

Renegotiation!of!TV!rights!

Football is one of the central products in the free-to-air and pay channels of Rede Globo, the largest Brazilian media network and the second worldwide in annual revenue just behind the US-based American Broadcasting Company (ABC). The relationship between Rede Globo and the most popular sport in Brazil started in 1987, when the matches of the domestic league were first televised live (discussed above). That season, Rede Globo signed a five-year contract with Club of the 13 in which it pledged to pay US$3.4 million per season (Santos, 2013a).

With TV joining the sector, Santos (2013a) asserts, broadcasting rights took the central position of the box-office earnings, which, until then, had been the main source of the clubs’ income. A calculation made at the time by Revista Placar, the main football magazine in Brazil in the 1980s, was that “taking into account the money received from Globo and Coca-Cola, [...] each club that participated in the Union Cup came to the pitch with an ‘invisible crowd of 20,000 people’” (Santos, 2013a, p. 140).

The Brazilian Football Championship is the main sporting product in the country in terms of TV broadcasting, matches and money paid to the clubs (Santos, 2013a). Brazil still has state championships, the Copa do Brasil (Brazil Cup) and continental tournaments. However, the amount that Globo paid, for instance, for the broadcasting rights of the 2005 edition of

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Brasileirão was 3.5 times the combined amount of the same season broadcasting rights for the Campeonato Paulista (São Paulo’s Championship), the Brazil Cup and the Copa Sul-Americana (South American Cup) (Mattos, as cited in Santos, 2013a). Moreover, football has virtually no rival sport in Brazil: according to the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (Ibope), among Brazilians who follow any type of sport via TV, 92% watch football-related content, with volleyball coming in second with mere 24% (Esporte Clube Ibope Media, 2011).

This data, Santos (2013a) asserts, demonstrates the importance of the TV audience for football (strongly dependent on the TV rights) and of football as a product that centralises all sporting attention in Brazil (therefore, generating high audience rates both for free and pay television). This strong interplay between media and football systems justifies the large amounts of money paid for the broadcasting rights of football-related events in comparison, for instance, with the Olympic Games (Santos, 2013a). Santos explains:

To!give!an!example,!take!the!FIFA!World!Cup,!an!event!for!which!there!

is! no! dispute! [for! TV! rights]:! Rede! Globo! enforced! its! political! and!

institutional! restraints! and! paid! US$85! million! for! the! rights! to!

broadcast! the! last! football! tournament! [2010!World! Cup].! However,!

Rede!Globo!offered!US$30!million!for!the!Olympic!Games!cycle,!which!

includes!the!Summer!and!Winter!competitions!until!2015,!and!lost!to!

Rede!Record,!which!offered!twice!this!value.!(p.!146)!

Indeed, the highest audience concentration in the history of Brazilian television (98% of the TVs on) was registered for a football match (Gastaldo, 2014). During the 2002 FIFA World Cup, in the quarter-finals between Brazil and England, at 3.30 a.m. on a Friday, around 110 million people tuned in to the free TV channel of Rede Globo, the exclusive broadcaster of that year’s World Cup, to watch the Brazilian victory (Santos, 2013a).

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In 1997, Rede Globo made a new deal with Club of the 13 in a contract that remained practically the same until 2011. In this period, the network held the rights of all media, including the pay-per-view services, which started to be commercialised in 1997. Over the years, Rede Globo sublicensed its rights to different stations — Rede Bandeirantes (1997–1999 and 2007–2010) and Record (2002–2006) — but always with the decision-making power on whether it would be the exclusive broadcaster and what the other networks could broadcast (Santos, 2013a).

Recently, however, Rede Globo’s monopoly was threatened when the media rights for the 2012–2014 period were being negotiated. In 2010, after 13 years being processed at the Sistema Brasileiro de Defesa da Concorrência (Brazilian System for the Protection of Competition) — a Brazilian antitrust agency — a complaint recorded by Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão (another media company popularly known as SBT) in 1997 against Rede Globo, Club of the 13 and other institutions resulted in a decision. For committing economic violations that breached the antitrust legislation, the Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (Administrative Council for Economic Defence, often referred to as CADE) required the involved parties to sign a Termo de Cessação de Conduta (Settlement of Cessation of Conduct).

According to Santos (2013a), “the complaints were: concentration in the broadcasting rights negotiations; Globo’s and Band’s [Rede Bandeirantes] anti-competitive practices to win the competition against SBT; and exclusivity in the right to broadcast football matches” (p. 170). SBT’s accusations were centred on offences to Articles 20 and 21 of the Law n. 8,884/1994, which deals with the prevention and repression of unfair trade practices. As Santos (2013a) elucidates, in 1997, SBT made a higher bid than Rede Globo, but Club of the 13 rejected the bid because it did not offer a proposal that took into consideration the pay-TV service. At that particular negotiation, SBT’s intention was to pass the pay-TV rights later

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to another company because SBT did not want to sell the service through an intermediary; however, Club of the 13 did not accept this proposal.

The hope of football and media critics, in that situation, was that finally there would be a real competition for the TV rights because there is an understanding that the rights to broadcast football matches in Brazil have been converted into diverse forms of power for the owner of the Brazilian media oligopoly (Santos, 2013a). For Santos (2013a), who grounds his observations on Brittos’s work, the truth is that Globo still possesses overwhelming market powers, imposed on the other networks, with precedence advantages that are translated into access to audiences, political power and privileged relationships with publicity agencies and advertisers. Such powers are asymmetric par excellence and are not only the outcome of media-ownership concentration, but also result in technological, productive, commercial and distributive privileges.

This close and mutual dependency relationship between Rede Globo and the football industry is a public issue insofar as the struggle for power between them does not benefit either the sport or society. The conflicts between Rede Globo and the football industry indeed take into account most of the time the individual, financial or political interests of each party. Santos (2013a) exemplifies:

During! the! 2011! Brazilian! Football! Championship,! CBF! decided! to!

change!the!starting!time!of! the!Saturday!matches!to!9!p.m.15!without!

consulting!with!Rede!Globo.!The!new!schedule!was!defined!as!a!test!to!

increase!the!pay$per$view!revenues!because!the!match!would!have!an!

isolated! airing.! As! ‘payback’,! in! August,! Jornal% Nacional! [Globo’s!

nightly! newscast]! reported! a! brief! note! about! the! suspicions!

concerning! the! friendly! game!between!Brazil! and!Portugal,! disputed!

in! Brasília! in! 2008,! which! was! under! investigation! by! the! Federal!

Police.! Globo! had! not! broadcast! complaints! against! CBF! since! 2001,!

when!it!dedicated!a!whole!episode!of!Globo%Repórter![Globo’s!weekly!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!150The0starting0time0of0Globo’s0flagship0telenovelas!was0also090p.m.,!which,0therefore,0made0it0the0worst0timeslot0(financially0and0in0terms0of0programming)0for0any0change.0

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documentary! television! show]! to! talking! about! the! corruption!

accusations! against! the! institution.! Again,! as! payback,! CBF! changed!

the!schedule!of!a!Brazil!vs!Argentina!match!to!9!p.m.!and!the!network!

was!forced!to!change! its!programming.!These!examples!demonstrate!

how! the! power! relations! between! the! parties! involved! in! the!

broadcasting!of!football!in!Brazil!play!out.!(p.!148)!

In fact, the central issue with the settlement was the exclusion of any preference given to Rede Globo during the procurement processes; since 1997, Rede Globo had access to other competitors’ proposals and could decide whether to match them or not. CADE required the removal of the preference clause in the next contracts because Club of the 13 itself had acknowledged the negative impact of the practice on the Brazilian market of communication and even to the clubs. During the process at the antitrust agency, Club of the 13 argued that the preference clause was acting as an inhibiting factor for the participation of other television stations in the competition for the contractual renewals. This is because, to win new contracts, Rede Globo only needed to restate the price as appeared in its previously accepted contracts. Therefore, the other companies were not encouraged to present proposals that could really beat the competition because they knew that it was enough for Globo to just match the values to continue with the TV rights for another period. Club of the 13 claimed that, in recent years, other TV companies had not been interested in taking part in the competition, but if Rede Globo was not the preferred TV station, and all of the stations competed fairly, Club of the 13 could actually sell their products in much better conditions (Santos, 2013a).

Nevertheless, instead of respecting CADE’s decision concerning the joint negotiation with Club of the 13, Rede Globo decided to deal with each club in a decentralised way in 2011. At that time, Rede Globo offered seductive amounts of money to the clubs in the hope that they would give up trading en bloc. Rede Globo effectively achieved its aim when it closed a deal with Corinthians, the second most popular club in Brazil, which was soon

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followed by all other top clubs. The decentralisation, Santos (2013a, 2013b) asserts, has created a gap between small and big clubs in terms of revenues, which is similar to the situation faced in Spain, for instance, with Real Madrid and Barcelona. According to Santos (2013a), it is clear, from the amounts offered to the clubs by Rede Globo in 2011 and the following deal to extend the contracts (until 2018) with even larger figures in the succeeding year (2012), that Rede Globo was already positioning itself for the entry of Fox Sports to the Brazilian market in 2012. Rede Globo would have got ahead of the situation and sought to extend the contracts due to the intensification that will likely take place soon with the competition of other companies. Convergence processes may generate even higher bids from “partnerships between national and transnational companies, as a way to break the restraints established until now by Globo in the market” (Santos, 2013a, p. 240).

In practical terms, Rede Globo’s strategy also caused the virtual extinction of Club of the 13, with the network strengthening even more the political and institutional power that it already possessed. The clubs lost even more bargaining power because now they are dealing separately with Globo. The centralisation of decision-making power in the sector is such that for Alex, a former footballer with appearances in the Brazilian national team and a key articulator of the movement Bom Senso F.C. (Good Judgement F.C.), “CBF is a mere meeting room” in Brazil (Andrade, 2013). For Alex, “Globo is the one who really takes care of everything”.

In this context, despite the increase of capital coming from other sources of revenue, the dependency of the clubs on the TV income (and on Globo, consequently) is disproportionate. This subordination is even more overpowering because the teams’ debts grew at a rate as accelerated as the revenues in recent years. For example, it has been estimated that in the last five years the net debt of the top-24 clubs in Brazil increased 74%, reaching the threshold of R$4.7 billion in 2012; of this amount, R$2.5 billion are debts with taxes (As propostas do Bom Senso F.C, 2013).

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This state of things is discursively legitimised by the demonisation of the state in the public imaginary, which was a result of the troubled redemocratisation process that Brazil went through, and of a dominant neoliberal idea that sporting institutions must have total autonomy. In addition, the Football Coalition’s efforts have contributed to a situation of deregulation in a sector that has high levels of power centralisation and is economically significant today. That is why many dissenting voices have emerged among supporters (as I explore below) and even among players, which is something unprecedented in the country.

In 2013, a diverse group of players (among them the above-mentioned Alex) launched Bom Senso F.C., a movement that has organised protests (on the pitch) and has articulated some more formal ways to influence both the public opinion and the political system. The movement has some proposals and the one that has gained most visibility is the ‘Financial Fair Play’ program, which seeks to fight the default and debt rates through a system that forces the clubs to spend less than they earn (As propostas do Bom Senso F.C, 2013). Because the Football Coalition is a highly articulated group and because of the Constitutional article that guarantees autonomy to the sporting institutions, there exists some difficulty in adopting control and regulatory measures in professional sports in Brazil.

However, with the Provisional Measure n. 620/2013, sports that depend on public support are now required to adopt policies that guarantee administrative transparency, rotation of leadership and inclusion of athletes in technical committees and governing bodies. This legislation is also the result of the mobilisation efforts of another group of athletes, the Atletas pelo Brasil (Athletes for Brazil), whose president is the former volleyball player Ana Moser. Football, on the other hand, does not depend on public support and, because of that, it was not embraced by this new regulation. Notwithstanding, the strategy of Bom Senso F.C. is to include the Financial Fair Play program as a requirement for the refinancing of

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the clubs’ debts with the state. This agenda is of great interest to the football clubs and leaders and is currently being considered by the Brazilian Congress as the Projeto de Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal do Esporte (Sports’ Tax Responsibility Bill). In turn, the Football Coalition is also working to remove from the bill the articles that predicate better management and transparency practices as quid pro quos to refinance the debts (Jungblut, 2014). Before passing to the discussion of the conflicts involving fans in such an environment, I summarise in Table 3.1 the forms of commercialisation and power relations of each period of Brazilian football discussed above.

Conflicts!in!a!transforming!environment!

The deepening of football commodification processes has resulted in many controversies and conflicts recently in Brazil. Fans have criticised this consumption-driven approach for many reasons, including for squeezing football’s traditional low-class supporter base out of the game — which also happened in Europe after the cultural reorganisation of the industry in the 1990s (Brown, 2007; Nash, 2000, 2001). The campaign O Maraca é Nosso (Maracanã is Ours), for instance, had 11 claims, including points against the gentrification, the Europeanisation, and the ‘shrinkage’ of the most famous Brazilian stadium, Maracanã (A escalação dos 11 pontos da campanha, 2012). Conflicts have also emerged involving strong regional traditions, such as the recent attempts to replace regional food with processed products inside some of the new arenas (Maia, 2013).

Football’s governing bodies have also been criticised for their market orthodoxy, especially because such orthodoxy in an environment that lacks regulatory and control practices has often led to cases of corruption and embezzlement. The government has been targeted for privatising the previous state-owned stadiums, which are now generating high profits for newcoming corporations. And, yet, these corporations themselves are also

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Table&3.1:&Modes& of& commercialisation,& power& relations& and&dominant& values& in&Brazilian& football& 1894& to& the&present.& Periodisation& reworked& from&Levine& (1980),&Ouriques&(1999)&and&Rodrigues&(2007),&with&the&addtition&of&a&further&phase:&Hypercommodification&and&growing&consumer&culture.&

Phase& Introduction&of&football&and&amateur&status&

Professionalism&and&state&intervention& Economic&liberalisation&and&flexible&labour&relations&

Hypercommodification&and&growing&consumer&culture&

Period'' 1894–1933' 1933–1988' 1988–2002' 2003–'

Features' •!Voluntary'associations:'elitist'clubs,'team'clubs'and'factory'clubs'

•!Football'symbolising'the'‘European'modernity’'for'the'upper'classes'

•!Clubs'as'secular'families'•!Factory'clubs'as'a'strategy'for'the'companies'

•!Factory'clubs'and'the'notion'of'loyalty'to'the'‘club'of'the'heart’'

•!Factory'clubs'symbolising'the'uprising'of'the'proletariat'

•!Early'commercialisation:'supporters'started'to'be'charged'for'matches'in'1917'in'Rio'and'São'Paulo'

•!UnderKtheKtable'payments'from'clubs'to'players'(semiKprofessionalism)'

•!Threat'of'an'exodus'to'professional'markets'and'search'for'competitive'squads'pressed'for'professionalism'

'

•!Creation'of'the'National'Sporting'Committee'(1941):'ordering'and'disciplinarian'tone'

•!Golden'age:'international'recognition'(three'times'world'champions)'and'consecration'of'the'‘Brazilian'style’'of'play'

•!Industrialisation'and'commercialisation'(supported'by'the'Military'Regime)'

•!Strong'attachment'to'an'imagined'and'cohesive'national'identity'

•!'Creation'of'the'modern'version'of'the'Brazilian'Football'Championship,'in'1971'

•!Creation'of'passe:&contractual'term'that'prevented'the'release'of'players'in'the'middle'of'the'season'and'one'of'the'main'revenue'sources'for'the'clubs'

'

•!Redemocratisation'and'new'Constitution'

•!Extinction'of'the'National'Sporting'Committee'

•!AntiKstatist'approach,'grounded'on'a'demonisation'of'the'state'

•!Massive'exodus'of'athletes'to'Europe'•!Advertising'on'the'uniforms'(1982)'•!Domestic'football'matches'started'to'be'televised'live'(1987)'

•!Creation'of'Club'of'the'13'(1987)'•!Union'Cup:'more'marketKoriented'championship'(sponsoring'contracts'with'CocaKCola,'Varig'and'Rede'Globo)'

•!Beginning'of'the'payKperKview'services'(1997)'

•!Zico'and'Pelé'Acts'•!Passe'abolition'•!Initial'formation'of'the'Football'Coalition'in'the'Congress;'

•!Feelings'of'a'crisis,'which'led'to'a'‘modernisation’'discourse''

•!PostKneoliberal'government'•!‘Modernising’'agenda'in'preparations'for'the'2014'World'Cup'and'2016'Olympic'Games'

•!Increase'of'revenues'of'the'top'clubs'(375%'from'2003'to'2013)'

•!New'Brasileirão:'with'a'double'roundKrobin'system'

•!Sports'Fans'Statute:'football'as'a'business'and'supporters'as'consumers'

•!Football'Moralisation'Act:'financial'statements'must'be'approved'by'independent'auditors'and'members'and'properly'published'

•!Revenue'sources'that'increased'the'most:'publicity'and'sponsorship,'matchKday'tickets,'season'packages'and'broadcasting'rights'

•!AllKseater'model'adopted'because'of'the'World'Cup'

•!Most'expensive'football'tickets'in'the'world'•!Decentralisation'of'the'broadcasting'negotiations'(2011):'gap'between'big'and'small'clubs'

•!Increase'of'the'clubs’'debts'(74%'from'2009'to'2013)'

•!Deregulation,'centralisation'of'power,'and'abusive'practices'in'the'sector'

•!Appearance'of'many'dissenting'voices:'among'players'(Bom'Senso'F.C.)'and'among'supporters'(#ForaRicardoTeixeira,'Maracanã&is&Ours,'#VergonhaMinasArena'and'so'on)'

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under attack for abusive practices and for not having any expertise whatsoever in managing sports arenas, leading to a model in which football fans are charged high prices for tickets, without finding the expected quality inside the stadiums. Not to mention that all these football-related issues played a significant role in triggering the protests that gripped Brazil during the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup — which were, by the way, the largest political demonstrations in the country in the last 20 years or so.

This section explores two fan-organised campaigns to discuss more properly some controversies that have come up in such a context. The first to be approached is the #ForaRicardoTeixeira campaign, which lasted from 2011 to 2012, and intended to knock down the then president of CBF, Ricardo Teixeira, from his position (Vimieiro, 2013). And the second one is #VergonhaMinasArena, a small-scale protest that lasted around one week in 2013, and sought to make a stadium management company, Minas Arena, accountable for the bad services provided to football supporters.

#ForaRicardoTeixeira-

The #ForaRicardoTeixeira campaign, mentioned earlier in Chapter 2, followed allegations of corruption and bribery involving the then president of CBF, Ricardo Teixeira. These allegations were first reported by the BBC television program Panorama, in November 2010, and were referred to as the International Sports and Leisure (ISL) case. This case gained attention around May/June 2011 because of the FIFA elections, which occurred on June 1. FIFA was criticised at that time for trying to prevent the release of ISL case documents, which were being held in secrecy in a Swiss Court and would prove FIFA members’ involvement (including Teixeira) in embezzlement and omission (Conn, 2012).!Yet, in May 2011, the former Football Association chairman, Lord Triesman, claimed that four FIFA members had sought bribes in return for a vote in England in

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the 2018 World Cup bid — one of them was Teixeira (Bond, 2011). Teixeira’s controversial interview with the Brazilian magazine Piauí, published in July 2011, was the last straw that triggered a huge popular uprising against him in the country (Pinheiro, 2011).

Most TV channels and online multimedia portals covered those stories16 at that time, but TV Globo17, the free TV channel of Rede Globo, ignored them, and its lack of action was significant in triggering the protests. In the interview with Piauí, Teixeira himself stressed the importance of Globo’s nightly TV newscast, Jornal Nacional, in the country. In an obnoxious tone, Teixeira stated that he “couldn’t give a shit” about the corruption allegations being covered by other channels and that he would “only start sweating” when he saw the accusations on Globo’s nightly news (Pinheiro, 2011). Globo was criticised at this point (as well as in other cases involving Teixeira) because of its tight relationship with CBF due to the TV rights to broadcast football matches in Brazil. Even though the case did not receive attention from Globo, the hashtag and the coverage by other media companies kept the case alive, with other bribery allegations emerging some months later from an investigation made by Folha de São Paulo, a traditional Brazilian newspaper. !

The #ForaRicardoTeixeira campaign was launched on July 21, 2011, shortly after the controversial interview that Teixeira gave to Piauí. The first ‘twitterstorm’ was organised soon after, on July 27. According to information from the organisers of the action, their website had 117,000 visits in the first 10 days of the campaign, including users in more than 87 countries. The distinct hashtags used were tweeted 180,000 times in the beginning and the profiles assigned on Twitter and Facebook accumulated 3,699 followers and 9,775 friends, respectively. On Facebook, the posts !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!16#The#allegations#were#covered#by#the#free7to7air#TV#Record#(Globo’s#main#rival),#RedeTV#and#by#the#pay7for7view#channel#ESPN#Brasil.#Other#media#channels#including#web#portals,#online#news,#newspapers#and#magazines#such#as#Universo)Online)(Uol),#Terra,#Folha)de)São)Paulo,#Estadão,#Lance,#Piauí,)Carta)Capital#and#Placar)also#covered#the#story#at#that#time.#17#The#ISL#case#was#not#covered#by#TV)Globo,#which#a#search#in#the#company’s#online#platform,#G1#(http://g1.globo.com/),#is#able#to#reveal.#From#May#1,#2011#to#July#31,#2011,#the#case#was#not#approached#in#any#of#Globo’s#free7to7air#or#pay7for7view#channels#(in#the#TV#newscasts).#

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had a total of 887,885 views in this first period. Just on the day of the first ‘twitterstorm’, the hashtag #ForaRicardoTeixeira was tweeted 50,839 times (Os primeiros 10 dias, 2011). The campaign also gained an ‘offline’ expression, with street parades and stadium demonstrations being organised through collaborations between the creators of the online campaign and associations of sports fans, such as the Supporters National Front and the Popular Committee for the World Cup and Olympic Games.

The distinct hashtags related to the protest made the Trending Topics list in Brazil, Portugal and worldwide multiple times. Mainstream-media outlets covered the online campaign as well as the street and stadium demonstrations (Leal, 2011; Manifestação "#ForaRicardoTeixeira" ganha força no Twitter, 2011; O Rio vai às ruas contra Teixeira, 2011; Zmoginski, 2011). On the website of the campaign18, there is a meter that registers the two hashtags most widely used by the protesters. On July 25, 2012, the counter had registered 229,350 mentions of #ForaRicardoTeixeira and 94,467 of #CaiForaRicardoTeixeira.

Notwithstanding the imperative tone of the hashtags, on the website, the campaign adopted a more comic approach, saying that the initiative “did not intend for Mr. Ricardo Terra Teixeira […] to be sacked from his leadership position in the Brazilian Football Confederation”; that was not the case because

he! has! dedicated! himself! to! the! institution! for! a! long! period! of! 22!years.! That! is! it:! five! tenures! of! lots! of! transparency! and! hard!work!leading!CBF.!And!this!story!will!not!end!before! the!2014!World!Cup,!when! this! trustworthy! man! will! return! the! trust! of! the! Brazilian!people!with!the!most!organised!World!Cup!ever!seen!in!the!history!of!this!country.!(Os!primeiros!10!dias,!2011)!

According to the campaign organisers, they created “a website of public utility for all of us, fans of Mr Teixeira, to get to know everything that this

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!18#http://www.foraricardoteixeira.com.br/#(accessed#July#25,#2012).##

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exemplary manager is preparing for the big worldwide sports party”. They finished the message making a joke out of the word fora, which in Portuguese means ‘out’ or ‘get out’. They dissociated it from the idea of ‘out’ in such a way that the whole text could make sense (and also, make the joke). As they summarised it: “FORA is only an inoffensive acronym for Feed Otimizado Relacionado a Alguém [optimised feed related to someone]. And, in this case, that someone is Ricardo Teixeira, lord of the Tupiniquim football.” Eight months into the campaign, on March12 , 2012, after 23 years leading CBF, Teixeira resigned from his position for medical reasons (official version). In spite of Teixeira’s departure not having caused major political changes at the confederation, the campaign demonstrated the invigoration in the public agenda of a discourse that advocates for transparency and leadership rotation in the Brazilian sports institutions (Vimieiro, 2013). His departure also gave expression to a conflict that went beyond the struggles between the football oligarchies (associated with the Football Coalition and that Teixeira represents so well) and the defenders of a neoliberal/modernising discourse that usually assumes a very uncritical tone. That is, the supporters themselves started to get involved, arguing for a greater level of democratisation inside the federations and CBF.

#VergonhaMinasArena-

The other campaign that I want to briefly discuss here, #VergonhaMinasArena, is also related to the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the controversies that it triggered in Brazil since FIFA confirmed in 2007 that the country would host the tournament. Even though the arenas were not the only item in the long list of issues that came up19, they definitely had an outstanding position, with many related subproblems that go from the number of stadiums to be built or renovated !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!19#The#Articulação)Nacional)dos)Comitês)Populares)da)Copa)(National#Articulation#of#Popular#Committees#for#the#World#Cup)#prepared#an#extensive#report#about#the#problematic#issues#surrounding#the#preparations#for#the#event#in#Brazil.#The#dossier#is#available#at#http://www.apublica.org/wp7content/uploads/2012/01/DossieViolacoesCopa.pdf.##

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(as I stated above, 12, a record in World Cup history) to the use of these structures afterwards. Surely, the delay observed in most construction sites and the high costs, especially of public capital through the federal government and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), were at the top of the list of concerns. The campaign discussed here tackled, in particular, the problems related to the privatisation of Mineirão20 — the venue of the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany.

Most Brazilian stadiums before the event were state-owned, but the plan for the new arenas was to set concessions so they could be privately managed. The key point — not only with Mineirão, but also with all state-owned stadiums that were renovated — was that after all the government spending with the renovation of such structures, if privatised, they would generate most of their profits to private companies. #VergonhaMinasArena (Shame on you, Minas Arena) came up in the week before Mineirão was reopened, in February 2013. This campaign had an organic emergence, with no formal group behind it, and a strong presence on Twitter. The main trigger in the case of Mineirão was the series of issues and problems that supporters had to deal with concerning the reopening match. Long lines for admission, expensive tickets, no water in the toilets, and inadequate food in the bars were some of the complaints. At that point, Mineirão had been already conceded to a corporation and the reopening match was the first event managed by Minas Arena, a company with no previous expertise in the sport sector.

After two years closed to the public, the stadium was reopened with a derby between Atlético-MG and Cruzeiro, the two most important clubs in the state — and historical rivals. The match created frenzy once supporters found out that the city derby would be played for the first time in two years on its traditional stage. On the other hand, the reopening game would also be a big test for Minas Arena, which was under pressure !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!20#Mineirão#is#an#historic#stadium#originally#opened#in#the#1960s.#The#arena#was#built#to#replace#Independência,#a#smaller#stadium#that#was#no#longer#offering#good#work#conditions#for#the#press#and#was#becoming#uncomfortable#for#the#growing#audiences#that#clubs#from#Belo#Horizonte#city#were#attracting#to#its#stands.#

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because of the controversial terms of the concession contract and because of its inexperience in the sports sector. Since early 2012, journalists, fans, politicians and other football insiders were discussing the deal between the state government and the company (Augusto, 2012). The stadium renovations cost R$691 million, paid by the company in exchange for a 25-year management deal. Among the many debatable items of the contract, a special focus of concern was the guarantee given by the state government that it would compensate the company if the stadium did not generate as much profit as it expected. One term established that if the EBITDA (earnings of a company before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) of Minas Arena did not reach R$3.7 million per month, the state government would make up the difference. Because of this and other terms, some observers asserted that the deal, which was a public–private partnership, offered only bonuses to the private party and burdens to the state. Suspicions of embezzlement were also raised.

These issues formed a chaotic background that influenced how the fans reacted to the reopening match. Many fans had slept on the streets for days to get their tickets as soon as the sale commenced on January 31, and when it was supposed to get started, the managing system shut down, delaying the process for another three hours (Empresa explica atrasos em venda de ingressos para clássico de domingo, 2013). Those who opted for purchasing their passes online, on the other hand, struggled to collect them, with many club members, who were supposed to have priority in the sales phase, missing the match. Yet, in the preceding days, a thunderstorm ended up flooding the pitch and destroying parts of the brand new roofing, sparking concerns about the drainage system and the structure of the arena (Fuscaldi & Dias, 2013). On match-day, journalists and media producers endured a vast range of problems, such as inefficient telecommunication systems and a lack of adequate workspace, to cover the game (Henrique, 2013). The stadium also showed signs of being unfinished, with toilets and taps without water, shortages of food and beverages at the bars, and an inoperative parking system.

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On Twitter, supporters expressed their dissatisfaction with the new stadium, arguing that the money the government paid on their behalf was not well spent. From January 31 to February 4 (the match was on February 3), around 6,368 messages were posted containing the name of the company (‘Minas Arena’). Another 1,198 messages specifically used the hashtag #VergonhaMinasArena, in addition to 66,510 tweets including the name of the stadium (‘Mineirão’). Among the many supporters complaining about the situation, one asserted that the company’s attitude was a “Lack of respect. Everybody sacrificing themselves for days in the lines for such expensive tickets and no organisation at all #VergonhaMinasArena” (@hugocordeiro13, January 31, 13:02). Another supporter associated some of the issues I discussed over this chapter in a message that was retweeted by many fans: “VergonhaMinasArena, shame on you, football leaders, who never fight for the supporters, and shame on you government that gave the stadium to this company” (@PaixaoBlog, January 31, 13:18). Indeed, the incident was so outrageous that the previous conditions of the stadium were considered better for some fans: “Not even when the ticket was R$5, did supporters have to face such a situation. #VergonhaMinasArena” (@Thiago13BH, January 31, 13:24). Another supporter complained about the imposition of ‘European behaviour’ with such a terrible organisation: “They force you to behave inside the stadium like people in Europe do, but do this during the ticket sales!!!! #vergonhaminasarena” (@mtulioct, January 31, 13:37). In sum, the feeling among the protesters was that of rage, even though some people also demonstrated sadness with what “they were doing with Mineirão”. Much of the rancour with the company came indeed from an emotional relationship that the supporters had with the place.

#VergonhaMinasArena lasted only a couple of days and resulted in a fine (R$1 million), applied by the state government to the managing company (Lacerda, 2013; Prêta, 2013). Although the corporation addressed many of the above-mentioned complaints in the following months, recently Minas Arena got involved in another controversial incident. In November 2014,

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in the highly anticipated second-leg match of the finals of the Brazil Cup, the striking image of empty seats, dominating most of the visible portion of stadium stands continually showcased by TV broadcasting, made the news headlines (Stein, 2014b). In a game that was named by many ‘the biggest derby ever’ between two historical city rivals, Atlético-MG and Cruzeiro (Laignier & de Castro, 2014; Leal, 2014a; Stein, 2014a), the stadium received fewer than 40,000 supporters, not reaching even 70% of its capacity (around 58,000). Charging exorbitant prices for the closest seats to the pitch (up to R$1,000 each), Minas Arena’s practices ended up resulting in a relatively empty stadium in a highly sought-after match.

Even so, the case was not a clear financial backfire against the company. The revenues from the game were astonishing: almost R$8 million, making it the third highest ever in terms of income for a single match in the history of Brazilian football (De Laurentiis & Mattoso, 2014). A key issue here, therefore, is the deregulatory situation in the sector. In this scenario, the current legislation is often disrespected (especially the Sports Fans Statute), and there is a kind of ‘terror’ against any type of state intervention into sport affairs — a notion that emerged with the redemocratisation. Nevertheless, the deregulation has been supported in the centre stage of the formal political system by the articulated Football Coalition.

Conclusion)

Over this chapter, I explored the way the Brazilian football industry operates, approaching in historical terms some of the sector’s existing power-embedded relationships. I started by discussing how modern football was codified inside the public schools in England, and later became a professionalised sport, which, in the early 1960s, showed strong signs of commodification. I addressed some of the changes behind the transformation of players from folk heroes to celebrities, focusing particularly on the maximum-wage policy, and the transfer and retain

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systems. I then introduced the idea of hypercommodification and briefly explained how its processes differ from previous modes of operation of this industry.

After that, I reviewed football in Brazil in terms of types of commercialisation, labour relations and dominant values over the 20th and 21st centuries. Most of my discussion followed the sports regulations of each period, establishing links between them and the significant socio-political and cultural moments in Brazil. I discussed the origins of most football clubs there, how the sport started to be commercialised and the instutionalisation of professionalism. I analysed the golden age and the characteristic ordering and disciplinarian tone of that time, and explained how the sector ceased to be controlled by the state (and financed by it as well) in the late 1980s. The redemocratisation process created the historical conditions for the economic liberatisation of the 1990s, with the football sector following the anti-statist discourse of the time. Broadcasting rights became the main source of revenues for the clubs and the labour relations between footballers and clubs shifted to a more flexible model with the extinction of passe. There was a massive exodus of players to Europe because, at that time, it was already in its hypercommodified phase and had wages that Brazilian clubs could not match. Along with other elements, this exodus generated a feeling of crisis in the 1990s, which also strengthened the ‘modernising’ discourse. The football oligarchies and the groups interested in exploring the economic potential of football fought over terms of the Zico and Pelé Bills, with most of the articles that would bring some type of political/administrative reform to sports institutions being removed from the final Acts.

In the 2000s, Brazil started a new wave of changes, this time led by a leftist president. During Lula’s terms, the processes of commodification of the Brazilian industry got deeper, supported by the preparations to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. In addition, the increase of the population’s purchasing power enabled football fans to spend more on

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leisure-related products. The Brazilian Football Championship began to be contested like most national leagues in Europe and most legislation since then has framed clubs and football-related companies as providers and supporters as consumers. Both the income and debt levels of the clubs have increased substantially. Deregulation — promoted throughout the 1990s and still very much supported by a discourse of demonisation of the state — in addition to the centralisation of power, abusive practices and hypercommodification have led to the appearance of many dissenting voices among players and supporters. Bom Senso F.C. has worked to implement the Financial Fair Play program, which has been strongly opposed by the Football Coalition. Fans have mobilised in many campaigns and protests, from small ones such as #VergonhaMinasArena to the big demonstrations against FIFA during the 2013 Confederations Cup. My point with this chapter was to stress this new phase of Brazilian football, showing its modes of commercialisation, its regulations (or lack thereof) and its controversial side.

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4! Collective)Football)Supporting)in)Brazil:))Organised)Groups,)New)Movements)and)Online)

Communities))

Football!and!fan!behaviour!are!part!of,!and!should!be!analysed!together!with,!society.!The!supporter! is! the!worker,! the!student,! the!housewife,! the! vagabond,! the! policemen,! the! leader,! the! politician.!The! condition! of! football! supporter! is! only! one! among!many! other!social!roles!played!by!individuals!in!society.!

—! Luiz! Henrique! de! Toledo,! in! Torcidas) Organizadas) de)Futebol,!1996!

In previous chapters, I outlined the approach I am adopting to analyse football fan cultures in Brazil, especially highlighting how fandom is a situated phenomenon, deep-seated into cultural and social orders. To start contextualising the implications for football cultures of the transformations the country has witnessed in the last decade, I approached the political economy of football, focusing particularly on the historical developments of this industry. This revealed how factors such as the renovation of the main stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the escalation of the top clubs’ media revenues are central in the process that elsewhere has been called a hypercommodification phase of the ‘people’s game’. A more market-oriented model has attracted a more affluent audience to football, which is changing the bonds between supporters and clubs, fandom practices and also the modes of sociability characterising what I am calling here collective modes of football supporting.

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In this chapter, I focus on these groups of fans over time, using broader political and social developments in Brazil to contextualise changes in the way supporters have come together because of their shared passion for a club. My main aim is to explore the practices and sociality modes found in these groups, which will be compared later with the online communities. Pop-culture fandom changed from a subcultural activity in the 1980s to a mainstream practice today, and I argue that, although the features of each type of fandom differ, football fandom has some similar processes at play. One key difference between the two is that, in Brazil, football fandom was never a marginal activity (except in the very early days of the sport in the country) like pop-culture fandom was in the pre-Internet era, as described by Henry Jenkins in Textual Poachers (1992).

What was subcultural in Brazil was the participation in organised supporters’ groups, which were rather marginalised, especially after the moral panic that followed incidents in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with such groups in the country (de Hollanda, et al., 2014; Toledo, 1996). But, for an understanding of such associations that go beyond the law and order discourse that dominated the media coverage and the political debate around them since the 1990s, it is necessary to go back a bit further and contextualise their emergence in the late 1960s. Also, I discuss what other scholars have called new supporting movements in Brazil, which are formations that seem to have a distinct ethos from these preceding organised groups and started to come up in the first decade of the 21st century (de Hollanda, et al., 2014; Teixeira, 2010, 2013). This discussion is used as a means to put the online communities in perspective, contextualising their rise with both global techno-cultural changes and particular socio-political transformations in Brazil.

The last part of the chapter is then dedicated to historically investigating the emergence of the first online football communities in Brazil, their popularisation after Orkut was launched, and their current shape. This discussion is grounded on bibliographical and document analyses, and

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interviews with football fans that experienced diverse moments of such computer-mediated communities.

Traditional)organised)groups)

In Brazil, groups of more dedicated football supporters have been known since the 1940s (Toledo, 1996). Two of the first to be created were Charanga21 Rubro-Negra, founded in 1942 by Jaime Rodrigues Carvalho, a supporter of Flamengo, and Torcida Uniformizada do São Paulo (TUSP), founded in 1940 by Manoel Porfírio da Paz and Laudo Natel, supporters of São Paulo. At that time, as Toledo (1996) explains, the groups of supporters were attached to the clubs, generally created by someone involved with the institutional organisation of the sport (politician, club chiefs, employees of the leagues or federations) or sometimes they were the result of the personal effort of an individual. Such supporters’ leaders had some status within the press and among other fans, and they became symbols of the fan bases they were part of.

Charanga Rubro-Negra, whose founder Jaime22 was a public servant (a renowned position at that time), had jerseys and its members played musical instruments to cheer up the team. Such a strategy worked rather well, and later on, the club started to pay for the members’ travel expenses so they could follow the team on away matches. On the other hand, one of the TUSP founders, Laudo Natel, was later the governor of the state of São Paulo and president of the club. TUSP used to gather money among club leaders and members to finance travel expenses, and the torcida was identifiable on the stands by the uniforms they wore. That is why Toledo

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!21#The#term#‘Charanga’#is#used#in#Brazil#to#name#the#small#bands#that#liven#up#football#matches#at#the#stadiums.#They#situate#themselves#on#the#stands,#are#comprised#by#fans,#and#generally#perform#sambas,#the#club#anthem#and#marchinhas)(a#typical#Brazilian#genre#of#music).##22#In#‘Nos#tempos#da#Charanga’#(In#the#Charanga#Times),#Bernardo#B.#B.#de#Hollanda#and#Melba#F.#da#Silva#tell#details#of#Jaime’s#biography,#revealing#how#he#arrived#in#Rio#(coming#from#Salvador,#in#the#northeastern#part#of#Brazil)#and#later#how#he#created#the#group.#In#the#very#early#days,#many#did#not#appreciate#the#inclusion#of#music#in#such#an#environment.#Charanga#was#even#expelled#from#the#stadium#once#for#bothering#the#rival#goalkeeper.#Later,#what#was#a#peculiar#practice,#the#mix#of#football#and#music,#became#the#rule#(de#Hollanda#&#da#Silva,#2006).##

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(1996) describes this first phase of Brazilian supporters’ culture as a time when such groups were subordinated to the clubs23, and supporting was associated with such symbolic fans. The only aim of such groups was rooting for the team, and the spontaneity and lack of ulterior motives were demonstrated by the symbolic supporters who became attached in the popular imaginary with the golden age of Brazilian football.

The ‘symbolic-fan’ phase lasted until the 1960s, when the organised groups, the TOs, emerged. The roots of such associations are rather controversial. But some of the first ones to be created were:

•! Torcida Jovem do Flamengo24, which originated from dissidents of Charanga Rubro-Negra, in December 1967

•! Dragões FAO/Força Atleticana de Ocupação, comprised by Atlético-MG’s supporters, in January 1969

•! Grêmio Gaviões da Fiel, by Corinthians’ supporters, in July 1969

•! Torcida Jovem do Botafogo, of Botafogo fans in September 1969

•! Torcida Jovem do Santos, dedicated to Santos, also in September 1969

•! Torcida Organizada Camisa 12, formed by Internacional fans in October 196925.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!23#Taylor#(1992)#also#identified#such#a#relationship#in#the#first#supporter#groups#formed#in#Great#Britain#even#though#it#was#for#different#reasons.#According#to#him,#such#groups#emerged#in#a#transitory#moment#in#the#British#society,#which#was#also#a#changing#time#for#football#itself.#Coming#from#aristocratic#roots,#football#was#becoming#a#popular#game.#With#the#intensification#of#industrialisation#and#urbanisation#processes,#it#did#not#take#long#for#the#new#urban#population,#formed#by#middle7class#and#low7middle7class#workers,#to#get#interested,#and,#subsequently,#to#take#control#of#the#game.#And#this#control#was#partially#due#to#their#interest#for#the#sport,#but#was#also#because#the#aristocracy#was#not#satisfied#with#the#popular#appeal#of#the#sport.#These#first#associations#emerged#in#this#context#and#were#initiated#indeed#by#supporters#from#the#workers’#class.#Then,#as#Taylor#(1992)#asserts,#these#fans#were#low7middle7class#workers,#although#they#wanted#to#behave#like#‘Victorian#lords’#to#prove#their#value#to#the#game.#This#is#why#these#first#groups#focused#most#of#their#efforts#on#fund7raising#activities.#When#their#first#federation#was#created,#the#National#Federation#of#Football#Supporters’#Clubs#(referred#as#both#NFFSC#and#NatFed#in#Taylor’s#work)#in#1927,#it#had#as#its#slogan#the#suggestive#‘To#help#and#not#to#hinder’.#The#first#organisations#of#supporters#with#a#more#political#approach#only#came#up#in#the#1980s#in#the#United#Kingdom,#following#the#chronic#hooliganism,#infrastructure#decline#and#the#general#crisis#that#took#over#the#English#football#in#the#previous#years#(Nash,#2000,#2001).##24#Torcida)Jovem)do)Flamengo#was#created#with#the#name#Poder)Jovem)(Youth#Power),#which#was#inspired#by#the#‘Black#Power’#slogan#from#the#American#Black#Power#Movement.#

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In Portuguese, there is a difference between torcidas uniformizadas and torcidas organizadas. The former means a group of fans that wears a uniform; the latter means an organised group of fans. Torcidas uniformizadas are mostly from the ‘symbolic-fan’ phase. The term torcidas organizadas is used to characterise associations from the 1960s onwards that are legally formalised as non-profit recreational associations, with complex organisational structures, with actual positions, such as president and director, and a deliberative body. These associations are also registered with the clubs.

All these associations have similar features: they are formed by young fans — in contrast to the previous personalised phase, when the groups of supporters were formed mostly by middle-age adults; and also, they are more autonomous and impersonal, with supporters assuming an active position and exerting pressure over club leaders (Teixeira, 2010). As Toledo (1996) asserts, these groups were often not welcomed by the clubs, which were used to the passivity of the previous supporters when these more active organisations emerged.

Such formations arose in the very early days of the military dictatorship government that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. On one hand, some see such groups as part of the mobilising of opposition forces against the dictatorship system. Political meetings were illegal in Brazil from 1968 — determined by the Institutional Act Number Five (AI-5) — and people were using other civil organisations, such as neighbourhood associations, as political venues. On the other hand, the sports press in general has associated the creation of these formations either to the political ambitions of football leaders and politicians (who used them as armed forces to control others) or to juvenile gangs whose main form of expression was gratuitous violence (Toledo, 1996). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!25#In#the#early#1970s,#other#groups#were#created:#Força)Jovem)do)Vasco,#with#Vasco’s#supporters#in#February#1970;#Torcida)Jovem)Cruzeiro,#dedicated#to#Cruzeiro,#in#September#1970;#Uniformizada)do)Palmeiras,#with#Palmeiras#lads#in#November#1970;#and#Young)Flu,#of#Fluminense#supporters#in#December#1970.#Later,#towards#the#end#of#the#1970s,#and#in#the#1980s#and#1990s,#such#groups#proliferated,#with#each#professional#club#having#multiple#organised#supporter#bases.##

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The last perspective is a simplistic view about a much more complex phenomenon, focusing only on the violent part of their actions and not even discussing this part in its complexity (which was earlier approached in Chapter 2, particularly through the discussion of the works of the Leicester School). The first perspective, however, may be too romantic because the structure, organisation and objectives of such groups were not similar to those found in popular neighbourhood associations that were politically important in Brazil during this time. As Toledo (1996) explains, the emergence of the organised groups, despite being contextualised within the effervescence of the popular grassroots organisations of the 1970s, can not be directly linked to such institutions. Organisations such as undercover leftist political parties and the Catholic Church influenced in significant ways the formation of neighbourhood associations and basic ecclesial communities (or CEBS, in Portuguese) — movements originated from the church that in Latin America were inspired by the Liberation Theology. However, leisure and sporting groups created in popular suburbs in Rio, for instance, were not formed in the same way. Besides that, the organised supporters’ groups did not have a local character, as was the case with the grassroots groups. Yet, the foremost motivations for football fans to gather in these groups were not immediate needs, such as the pressing claims of low-income suburbs: sanitation, education and housing. The fan groups were also more fluid and dynamic arrangements than the residents’ associations (Toledo, 1996).

The best way to contextualise the emergence of such football fan groups is to take into account the broader scenario, but not linking these groups directly to other types of groups found in the same period. These football fan groups were created during a time of transition. Between 1950 and 1964, Brazil experienced a period of relative euphoria, with economic policies being more favourable to the popular classes. For instance, in the late 1950s, the real basic wage was at its peak (Saboia, 2007). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the country witnessed a time of sadness, violence and suffering, generated by the intensification of the government’s

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economic exploration and political oppression (Lopes & Maresca, 1992). Also, violence has some relevance here, although it was not the reason behind the fan groups’ creation. Violence is better understood when localised in the urban settings that football supporters inhabit, in its objectivity in the actions of the repressive divisions of the state, in its presence in supporters’ ordinary relations, in the media images, in the authoritarian conduct that pervades institutions in general, and among them, particularly those directly related to football (federations, clubs). In this sense, the organised supporters’ groups and the individuals who converged in them were not dislocated from their reality (Toledo, 1996).

In terms of bureaucratic organisation, participation and visibility in the football environment, such groups consolidated in the 1980s. Toledo (1996) describes Gaviões da Fiel’s (formed by Corinthians’ supporters) organisational structure early in the 1990s:

A! deliberative! body,! formed! by! 40! associates! and! three! boards! of!directors,!constitutes!Gaviões’!organisational!structure:!the!executive!director,!the!financial!director!and!the!Carnival’s!director.!One!former!president,! Luiz! Antonio! Mezher,! a! 33VyearVold! businessman! in! the!printing!sector,!said!that!to!be!an!adviser,!the!associate!must!be!in!the!‘torcida’!for!two!years.!Mezher!said!that!to!have!the!right!to!vote,!it!is!necessary! to!be! in! the!organisation! for! three!months;! to!assume!any!director!position,!it!is!mandatory!to!have!held!the!adviser!position!for!at!least!one!term.!(Toledo,!1996,!pp.!32V33)!

In 1993, for instance, Gaviões da Fiel had 23,000 associates; Torcida Tricolor Independente (São Paulo fans), 15,000; and Palmeiras’ Mancha Verde, 8,000. These groups, for Toledo (1996), are responsible for the mediation between the anonymity of an individual fan and the indifference of belonging to the supporting crowd. Organised supporters have the possibility of occupying stadiums, streets, their headquarters and their aggregated Samba Schools in a collective way, seeking a distinct pattern of sociability.

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This distinction is materialised in the routes taken by ordinary fans and organised fans to the stadium on match-days, for instance. The former adopts the home-stadium route, while the latter takes the path from home to the torcida headquarters to the stadium. For Toledo (1996), “far from trivial, this difference is evidence of the existence of a fundamental space in the identification and constitution of these supporter groups” (p. 43). The spatiality of the headquarters sites creates a distinct behavioural pattern among organised supporters, which differentiates them from the ordinary fan. The sociability established in the head office, through their parties, celebrations and everyday conviviality, builds ties between individuals from diverse regions in the city, social origins, worldviews and expectations.

In their headquarters, which may differ tremendously depending on the resources and properties owned by each TO, organised supporters generally have remembrance shrines, mostly walls, where fans hang images and photos of memorable matches and victories, conquered titles, beloved players and historic teams. Also, in the headquarters, symbols of the club and of the torcida (all of them have their own logos and emblems) are all over the place, and those supporters who work there, or are passing by, generally wear pieces of clothing and accessories adorned with such signals.

These spaces are not always near the suburbs in which most of the associates live. However, such places are recognised and appropriated as if they were private spaces, differing from the supporters’ homes and public spaces. In this sense, they are intermediary places (Toledo, 1996). Serving as sociability sites, the headquarters are, at first, a space in which friendships and loyalty bonds develop around the passion for the club; later, they become a space of support for the torcida itself, as a distinct organisation from the club.

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Toledo (1996) sums up the significance of the headquarters for the forms of sociability and practices surrounding the organised groups, arguing that

The! headquarters! are! spaces! where! the! levels! of! solidarity! and!identification!are!reset!and!where!organised!supporters!daily!glimpse!the! possibility! of! meeting! and! keeping! up!with! diverse! activities!—!parties,! ‘várzea26’! matches,! futsal,! commentaries! about! the! games,!tours,! the! situation! of! the! clubs! on! the! tournament,! or! even! issues!related! to! politics,! life,! or! whatever.! The! conservation! and!organisation! of! these! special! spaces! is! fundamental! because! they!delimit! and! inscribe! in! the! urban! space! a! particular! place! for! these!groups! inside! the! cosmology! of! football.! These! spaces! grant! them! a!status! within! the! social! imaginary,! built! on! aspects! that! limit! and!compose!the!professional!football!practice!in!the!city.!The!supporters’!groups! organise! themselves! from! these! spaces.! In! the! headquarters,!there!exists!a!concrete!possibility!of!people!recognising!themselves!in!the! sharing! of! values,! worldviews! and! congruent! aspirations.!Headquarters!are!spaces!that!are!alive!and!carry!a!sense!of!belonging!to!these!groups!and!recognition!in!front!of!others.!(p.!51,!emphasis!in!original)!

It is because of the importance of the headquarters for the ties between associates that many organised supporters differentiate themselves from the ‘Flag groups’ (Torcidas só de faixas), which are visually represented in the stadiums through flags on the stands, but that are small or sporadic groups, with low representativeness and organisation. The names of such flag groups very often carry the names of the towns from where the supporters are from: for example, Fiel Bragança comprises supporters of Corinthians from Brangança Paulista.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!26#Várzea#football#(‘futebol#de#várzea’,#in#Portuguese)#is#the#name#given#to#a#particular#way#of#playing#the#sport#that#emerged#in#the#very#early#days#of#football#in#Brazil.#At#that#time,#the#big#cities#in#Brazil#were#not#living#property#bubbles#as#they#are#today#and#there#were#many#vacant#grounds#where#people#started#to#get#together#to#play#football,#particularly#in#the#low7class#suburbs#that#did#not#have#country#clubs#and#other#spaces#especially#dedicated#to#football#practice.#These#places#—#which#are#disappearing,#above#all#because#of#property#speculation#—#work#as#venues#for#informal#organisations#and#meeting#points#for#friends#to#catch#up#during#weekends.#The#várzea#fields#were#one#of#the#reasons#for#the#fast#popularisation#of#football#in#Brazil#early#in#the#20th#century.##

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Inside the stadiums, the organised supporter groups are also easily recognised. In Brazil (and in other places as well), they position themselves in the cheapest stands, generally those behind the goals. In stadiums that are used by rivals, such as Mineirão, in Belo Horizonte (BH), the place that is occupied by the largest organised groups from each club never changes. For instance, members of Galoucura, Atlético’s largest TO, position themselves behind the goal on the left of the press cabins, commonly known as the ‘lagoon goal’. Members of Máfia Azul, Cruzeiro’s largest TO, stay behind the goal on the right, the ‘city goal’. These groups wear their own customised clothes (not the clubs’ branded apparel), they exhibit flags and banners, and they chant anthems, battle cries and songs especially developed by them for their stadium performances. Also, they have a particular physical expressivity that differentiates them from the supporting masses: intense choreographies cadenced by their bateria — a kind of simple orchestra of percussion instruments.

The jersey of a TO expresses a belonging to the group. It reveals affection for both the team and the torcida. According to Toledo (1996), it demarcates differences, delimits spaces, and reiterates identities, solidarities and oppositions. It works on the streets, routes to the stadium and inside it. It is a collectively established aesthetic.

The flags, on the other hand, are exposed in the stadiums, where the aesthetic representations of the group reach another amplitude:

Jerseys!become!more!visible!on!the!streets!and!routes!the!supporters!pass! through,! revealing! a! stronger! faceVtoVface! identification;!however,! flags! are! better! noted! than! jerseys! from! the! stands.!Organised! supporters! always! reiterate! this! aesthetic! concern.! The!more!flags!and!the!bigger!the!bandeirões27,!the!greater!the!prestige!of!an!organised!group.!(Toledo,!1996,!p.!58)!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!27#Bandeirões,#or#the#big#flags,#are#those#that#are#unfolded#above#the#crowd.#They#do#not#have#poles,#like#the#regular#flags#do,#because#they#are#open#above#the#supporters#at#the#stands.#Such#big#flags#are#generally#displayed#when#the#team#enters#the#field#or#during#the#break.#Organised#supporter#groups#always#publicise#the#size#of#their#bandeirões#because#it#gives#the#organisation#some#status#within#football#culture.##

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As Toledo (1996) explains, all these aspects represent particular practices and behaviours, determined aesthetics and forms of conduct that differentiate the activities performed by organised fans from the ones performed by supporters that occupy other sectors of the stadium. Uniforms, flags and banners are all also in harmony with the chants and their rhythms, dictated by the beats of the drums. And the participation of organised supporters during the matches is not limited to inciting their own teams to improve their performance or booing the opposing teams. A specific form of bodily expressivity has developed, which comes from being in a state continuous ecstasy: the percussionists rarely stop during a match, requiring from the members such a will that they definitively cannot be seen as mere spectators of the game (Toledo, 1996).

Yet, organised supporters’ chants and battle cries could be classified in four categories: those that seek to encourage the team and players; those of protest; others that are chanted to intimidate opponents, referees and players; and lastly, those self-affirming of the torcidas themselves (Toledo, 1996). All of them are used in verbal duels, settled between supporters, which are better understood as part of ritual strategies of symbolic meanings. The chants are filtered and codified in songs and verses that are related to society and its recurring issues. In this sense, all the bad language adopted in the stands goes beyond the gratuity and obviousness of their aggressive meaning; they are social recourses, codes of expression that characterise the ambiguities of joking relationships, and classify who is part of the group and who is not (Duarte, 1981; Toledo, 1996).

These practices discussed above are some of the traditional activities performed by organised supporters. They are part of their routines and characterise a rather specific type of sociability that constitutes, and is constituted in, such environments. Some of these activities are generally called the ‘social’ side of these organisations, which include parties, celebrations, the conviviality in the headquarters, campaigns that they get involved (such as for blood donations), and the Carnival preparations in

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some cases. On the other hand, you have the ‘field’ work, which includes all the performances planned for the stadium and also the routes to home matches and tours to away matches. Now, I turn to the discussion of the new supporting movements, which are a very recent phenomenon that has close connections with the online communities.

New)supporting)movements)

Since the early 2000s, Brazilian football culture has witnessed the emergence of new associations of supporters, which some scholars very recently started to call new supporting movements (de Hollanda, et al., 2014; Teixeira, 2010, 2013). These new groups are inspired by the South American barra bravas, especially the Argentinean ones, and were first formed in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, which borders both Uruguay and Argentina. The first Brazilian barra to get wider visibility was Geral do Grêmio, which was created in 2001 (Rodrigues, 2012). And since then, barras have spread to other places — for instance, Teixeira (2010, 2013) has been studying new supporting movements formed around clubs in Rio de Janeiro.

These groups often originate from dissidents of TOs, explicitly manifesting a desire to differentiate themselves from the previous organised groups’ ethos and modes of supporting (Teixeira, 2010). According to Teixeira (2013), who interviewed founders of four new movements, such groups define themselves as:

•! coming from the stands, with no rivalries (with other groups of fans)

•! intending to create a new concept of torcida, which aims to unify the supporting base (with no subdivisions)

•! encouraging the team

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•! valuing the supporter as an asset of the club (whose physical integrity must be preserved)

•! making a party in the stadium through their unconditional support.

Such absolute devotion is expressed through chants — which affirm the club identification over the passion for the torcida itself — and via the support along the whole match (as they say, ‘always standing and chanting, no matter the scoreboard’). As Teixeira (2013) describes:

What! stands! out! in! the! narratives! of! members! is! the! desire! to!distinguish! themselves! from! the! organised! groups! in! terms! of! how!they! show! their! support.! The! members! manifest! the! aim! of!introducing!a!distinct!sociability!in!relation!to!football,!where!passion!appears! to! be! associated! with! notions! of! madness! and! devotion,!instead! of! danger,! in! a! clear! demonstration! of! avoidance! and!detachment! from! the! stigma! of! the! ‘violent! supporter’! that! they![organised!fans]!represent.!(p.!7)!!

In previous research, Teixeira (2003) had investigated the meanings attributed by organised supporters to their passion for football and for the torcida itself, in addition to the role of conflict in the constitution of their identities. Through this investigation, Teixeira identified how the discourses articulated by organised fans were built on two central ideas: passion and danger. The latter, according to Teixeira, is represented by the physical encounters whose results cannot be foreseen and, as such, allows a characterisation of this type of sociability as a risky experience, where conflict is constituted in the vast range of possibilities of alliances/rivalries relationships held by supporter groups. Teixeira (2013) continues:

The! passion! reflected! in! the! language! of! danger! reveals! the!underground! and! unpredictable! side! of! the! experience! of! being! a!supporter.! Some! supporters! assert! that! they! have! faced! death,! lost!friends! and! got! physically! hurt,! and! that! these! experiences! granted!them! power! over! those! who! have! not! had! such! experiences.!

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Overcoming! challenges! makes! you! stronger.! This! reveals! a! virility!ethos! among! these! individuals! that,! as! such,! converts! these!experiences! into! something! emblematic,! a! reason! to! be! proud! and!vain,!reassuring!their!loyalty!to!the!group.!(p.!6)!

As I mentioned above, the new movements seem to articulate passion, not with danger, but with the ideas of madness and devotion in their discourses, which differentiates these movements from the traditional organised groups. In many of her interviews, Teixeira (2013) identified a type of disenchantment and disappointment experienced by fans that were previously part of organised groups and then became members of new movements. She describes a crisis translated into a feeling of exhaustion with the model represented by the traditional organised formations. In an excerpt of one of her interviews, a supporter mentions that he “started to realise that things were deteriorating in terms of violence as well as in the rigging of torcidas by football leaders and politicians” (p. 10). For these dissidents and for the newcomers who reject the traditional organised groups’ model, the new movements represent the possibility of collectively living the supporting experience without dangers and risks.

Another difference that Teixeira (2010) points out between the new movements and the organised groups concerns their chants. Even though they also position themselves on the stands with flags and musical instruments and at first do not seem that distinct from the previous groups, the new movements’ lyrics seek to encourage the club, while the organised groups often adopt a more provocative approach, in which rivalries (with other associations) and instigating conflicts are recurring elements. Also, for the new movements, the match is not the time when supporters should protest against players, coaches or club leaders. As a result, protest chants are generally not part of their repertoire; however, this does not mean that there is any less dedication in such groups. As Teixeira describes, the chants may seem spontaneous, but they are carefully created according to set rules and techniques: “chanting the

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whole time is a mandatory expression of this new model and requires dedication and discipline” (Teixeira, 2013, p. 8).

Still, Teixeira (2013) also perceptively indicates that even though such groups self-declare their inspirations in the Argentinean barra bravas, they also make appropriations and new meaning attributions that dislocate such practices from their original contexts, reframing them, and as such, creating original formations that reinvent a particular type of supporting experience. They also borrow elements from the organised groups’ universe, particularly because some of the founding members were part of these traditional associations. As she further explains,

Contrary!to!what!is!imaginable!at!first,!organised!groups!and!popular!movements![the!new!movements]!do!not!constitute!radically!distinct!groups,!clearly!demarcated!and!with!antagonistic!identities.![...]!Many!former! organised! supporters! participated! in! the! process! of! forming!these!movements,!and!as!such,!practices!have!been!incorporated!and!rejected,! previous! experiences! have! provided! references! in! their!constitution.!(Teixeira,!2013,!p.!10)!!!

In an indicative excerpt, one of the supporters interviewed by Teixeira explains how the violent aspect, also associated with the barra bravas’ supporting mode, has been removed from the features that the new movements seek to represent:

Barra) brava! is! what! inspires! us,! and! barra) brava! is! a! synonym! for!unconditional! support.! They! [barra) bravas]! are! the! South! American!supporters’! groups! because! only! in! Brazil! we! call! them! torcida.! In!South!America,!they!are!barra)bravas;!in!Europe,!they!are!Ultras;!it!is!a!differentiated! thing,! do! you! understand?! Here,! in! Rio,! barra) bravas!have! this! ideology! of! supporting! the! team,! with! the! club’s! jersey,!chanting!all! the!time,!standing!all! the!time,!no!matter! if! it! is!rainy!or!sunny,! or! the! team! is! being! beaten! three–nil,! four–nil,! five–nil.! I! am!going! to! tell! you! what! barra) brava) is.! The! barra) bravas! in! South!America! are! movements,! even! more! violent! than! the! Brazilian!organised! groups,! because! there! they! control! even! the! drug!

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trafficking;! all! these!movements! have! their! bad! and! good! sides.!We!only! took! the! good! side,! which! is! supporting! the! team! as! they! do.!Then,!barra)brava! comes! from!fighting,!but! this!brava! truly!does!not!exist! [here].!This!definition!has!to!be!reviewed!and!changed!because!we! do! not! have! any! braveness;! we! are! all! good! people:! everybody!here!is!studying,!working,!we!have!got!parents,!families.!We!go!to!the!stadium!first!and!foremost!to!support![our!team].!Then,!we!are!hardly!barra) bravas.! (supporter! of! Loucos) pelo) Botafogo! or! ‘Crazy! for!Botafogo’,!cited!in!Teixeira,!2013,!p.!9)!

On the other hand, the new movements also bring inspiration from practices related to organised groups, such as the use of the big flags, an element not so much adopted by the South American barra bravas. The new movements seek to keep their independence from the clubs, acting more freely, criticising vicious relations that, for them, characterise many of the traditional associations. This independent attitude, which was actually one of the organised groups’ features when they were first formed, has its contradictions as well. Even though the new movements wanted to keep their groups less institutionalised, some new movements have recently found complicating situations that have led them to more professionalised structures.

Urubuzada, a new movement formed by Flamengo supporters, for instance, became an organised group because of regulations and financial issues. The police asked the group for a registration with the club (to authorise their entry as a group into the stadium) and Urubuzada members also realised that this was the only way to have a better control over the membership fees, which is the only resource for producing flags and financing instruments and other decoration elements. Besides that, other founding members reported that they needed to be more professional in the handling of everything in the sense that they had to organise themselves without necessarily turning into TOs. Urubuzada members want to keep their amateur aspect (in the sense that nobody should make

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a living out of it, like some of the organised supporters), but they also believe in improving how they are managed.

For de Hollanda and colleagues (2014), the discourses of the new movements converge to what has been advocated by sports reporters, columnists and other football industry insiders since early in the 2000s in Brazil. For these authors, there has been an intensification of the repression and surveillance mechanisms inside the sporting arenas in this period. These measures have led, for example, to an observable tendency for conflicts to take place, not inside the stadiums as they used to, but in the stadiums’ surroundings or even in remote areas of the urban perimeter. Yet, the Brazilian winning bid to host the 2014 World Cup unfolded into an even stronger mobilisation for restraining these football-related conflicts, and the mega-events agenda led the public debate to a sense of urgency concerning both the complete renovation of the sporting structures and the end of the fights, street riots and provocations. According to de Hollanda and colleagues (2014), furthermore, modifications introduced in the Sports Fans Statute in 2010 reinforced these policies because it defined more severe punishments to leaders of organised groups involved in conflicts.

Along with these measures, Rede Globo, the media company that holds the TV rights to broadcast Brasileirão, has adopted a moralising and pedagogic discourse, encouraging and suggesting a less provocative musical repertoire inside the stadiums. With the commodification processes further deepening in Brazilian football, Rede Globo has accumulated more power over the decision-making processes regarding the football industry (as discussed in Chapter 3) and, at the same time, has tried to get closer to the previously stigmatised organised groups in an attempt to incorporate them in the new model being established in the country. For de Hollanda and colleagues (2014), Rede Globo has made timely ‘concessions’ to these groups in terms of media visibility (during the broadcasting of football matches): with the new arenas’ infrastructure and

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the resulting gradual transformation of the socio-economic profile of the attending audience, supporter groups have had more space in Globo’s visual narratives. However, the recurring suggestion about what is ‘desirable’ in this new model (and worthwhile to give media visibility) is not always aligned with supporters’ values and beliefs. As a result, explains de Hollanda and colleagues, such disagreements, especially among fans, have been implicated in an internal rearrangement of supporter bases. Dissidents of TOs have created new movements and these new groups are more aligned with the new hypercommodified model than with the traditional practices of past formations.

New movements are related to these broader processes, but may also be particularly associated with two factors. The first is the external influences, with the installation of modes of supporting that are similar to the barra bravas’ style, initially in the southern portion of the country and later also in the southeast region, the richest in Brazil and home to the biggest professional football clubs (in terms of supporting base and revenues). The second factor is the processes of dissidence installed within supporter bases, which are expressed, for example, in the fans adopting differentiation strategies and attempting to recover a discourse of forgotten traditions and lost roots. In this direction, supporters have revived old mottos, slogans and traditional banners. Football supporters and insiders have celebrated the return of a festive and familiar environment through the recuperation of chants, uniforms and old-fashioned flags, mimicking supporters from the ‘symbolic-fan’ phase. These two factors, assert de Hollanda and colleagues (2014),

[...]! allowed! certain! hegemonic! mass! media! and! sporting!commentators!of!the!big!press!to!leave!the!straitjacket!that!they!were!in! since! the! 1980s.! The! support! given! to! these! new! groups! of! fans!constitutes!a!convenient!way!out! in!the!attempt!to!win!the! ‘symbolic!dispute!for!the!meaning!of!supporting’.!(p.!19)!

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For these scholars, these new movements fit rather well in the spectator profile expected by industry insiders and media sectors. As they explain,

To! this! point,! the! routine! discourse! that! proclaimed! the! return! of!families! to! the! stadiums! turned! the! organised! groups! into! an!unavoidable!obstacle,!something!that!should!be!eradicated!at!all!costs,!the!way!it!happened!in!the!aseptic!and!gentrified!sporting!centres! in!Europe.! At! that! point,! when! fatal! tragedies! also! happened! in! Brazil,!the! exclusion! and! banishment! of! these! groups! was! defended! as! the!only! way! of! being! redeemed! from! the! crisis! that! was! destroying!football.! It! is! known,!however,! that! far!beyond! the!moral! aspect,! the!most! important! solution! sought! for! football! was! actually! financial.!After!a!couple!of!years!of!unsuccessful!attempts!to!ban!and!criminalise!these!organisations,!now!there!seems!to!be!an!understanding!that!the!incapacity!to!extinguish!or!undermine!them!through!isolation!should!instead!be!converted!into!a!capacity!to!incorporate!them.!This!seems!to! be! the! case! for! the! ‘movements’,! whose! principles! converge!with!the!ones!defended!in!the!pedagogical!discourses!of!football!specialists,!announcers,!commentators!and!sporting!chroniclers.!These!principles!are! also! expected! by! the! new! football! managers,! who! understand!sports!as!an!unlimited!frontier!for!business!within!a!consuming!chain!opened!up!by!the!arenas!renovated!for!the!sporting!megaVevents.!(de!Hollanda,!et!al.,!2014,!pp.!21V22)!

De Hollanda and colleagues (2014) developed a type of conjunctural analysis by unveiling how the non-violent, festive and family-oriented approach of the new movements converges with hegemonic media discourses and the hypercommodified phase of Brazilian football. However, their analysis tends to frame such groups of supporters in a rather passive way, as if they had fallen perfectly into a domination plot led by Brazilian elites (hegemonic media and other authorities) to make football conform to a hypercommodified model. Nevertheless, the authors themselves assert that for years these same elites were already trying through a law and order discourse — and I would add also through measures such as the Pelé and Zico Acts (discussed in Chapter 3) — to

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find a financial solution for Brazilian football. But, in fact, the social reality in the country did not conform to their expectations, which limited the penetration of a more market-oriented approach into the football sector. With a limited consumer culture, it was only in the 2000s that the social mobility provided by the more leftist tenures of Lula and Dilma created the social and economic conditions for deeper changes than the ones we saw during the 1990s (discussed in Chapter 3).

This point needs further exploration because it involves a great deal of knowledge about the recent Brazilian political history to be precisely understood. This history is important for supporting my argument, which is that it was indeed measures adopted by a leftist government that strengthened, at some level, the penetration of postmodern features into Brazilian football fan culture.

Recent-Brazilian-political-history-and-its-implications-for-modern=day-football-fan-

culture-

The 1980s, which many call the ‘lost decade’ in Brazil, witnessed the country sink into inflation and workers’ wages deteriorate. The end of the military period (1985) was followed by a slow process of political and economic liberalisation, led by elite groups and characterised by political instability. Elected president Tancredo Neves, who enjoyed a great degree of public prestige, collapsed the night before his inauguration; he died a couple of weeks later, leading José Sarney, his vice and long-time supporter of the military regime, to the presidency. With the political transition period, which includes the restoration of civil and public rights, economic freedom and the implementation of direct and free elections with the new Constitution (1988), the economy suffered with hyperinflation. Brazil had three different currencies during Sarney’s term.

The 1989 presidential election, the first direct one since the military coup in 1964 (Neves was elected by the Parliament), was no less problematic. It

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had 22 contenders and ended with a controversial result after the broadcast of Rede Globo’s clearly biased debate between the two candidates that made to the second round28: Fernando Collor de Melo and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Melo was the former governor of the small northeastern state of Alagoas and came from a powerful family, both in financial and political terms (his father and grandfather had held important political positions). Silva, popularly known as Lula, was a renowned union leader, who had led the historic metalworkers strikes of the 1970s. Melo became the first elected president of a redemocratised country, and Lula would run for president another two unsuccessful times until being elected in 2002. For many, the controversial edition of the above-mentioned debate was decisive for this result.

So, one of Melo’s first measures was to create Plano Collor (‘Collor Plan’), an economic act that froze all savings accounts and financial investments in the country and replaced the national currency once more. Being relatively successful in the first months, Plano Collor later on failed in controlling inflation and also started to erode Melo’s prestige. Other economic policies adopted in his term also led to increasing unemployment rates and even less support to the government, which, as a result, was not able to reach a reliable base in the Parliamentary elections of 1991.

Yet, later, Melo was accused of corruption by his own brother, which pointed out the existence of an influence-peddling scheme run by Melo’s campaign treasurer, Paulo César Farias. After an investigation led by the Federal Police and the Congress, and the huge street protests (in what became known as the Caras-pintadas movement in 1992), Melo was impeached and removed from office. His vice, Itamar Franco, assumed the presidency and nominated Fernando Henrique Cardoso — a renowned sociologist and academic, who had indeed presided over the International !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!28#This#case#was#widely#discussed#by#both#the#academy#and#the#general#public#in#Brazil#and#elsewhere.#In#1993,#the#British#documentary#Beyond)Citizen)Kane#showed#how#the#debate#was#edited#in#a#way#to#favour#Fernando#Collor#de#Mello,#with#Collor’s#best#moments#and#Lula’s#worst#ones#making#it#to#the#final#and#broadcast#version.#This#election#was#also#widely#discussed#in#the#Brazilian#academy.#See,#for#instance,#Miguel#(1999),#Rubim#(2004)#and#do#Nascimento#(2006).#

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Sociological Association in the 1980s — as the Minister of Treasury. FHC, how he is popularly known, launched a successful stabilisation program, Plano Real (‘Real Plan’); this program created another new currency, which this time brought annual inflation rates (IPCA) from 916% in 1994 to 5.2% in 1997 (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 2014). In the 1994 presidential elections, FHC was elected president in the first round.

FHC’s term was largely responsible for the stabilisation of the economy in Brazil. With a neoliberal approach, his policies included the opening of the economy to greater foreign investment and the reduction of excessive public spending. It was during his government that many state-owned companies, such as Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (mining sector) and Telebrás (telecommunications), were privatised. FHC was re-elected in 1998, but was unable to secure the continuation of his party at the presidency in 2002, above all due to a decrease in his prestige in his second term. The total debts of the national government grew substantially during his tenure and when the Real devaluated, the country lost a great deal of its foreign reserves and the government had to raise its interest rates very high in an attempt to stabilise it again. As a result, even though the inflation was controlled, his popularity deteriorated because the austerity policies had a negative impact on the social development of the country. The growth of unemployment rates undermined the reduction of poverty and slowed down the possibility of significantly decreasing inequality levels (Cohn, 2000).

In 2003, Lula assumed the presidency as the first left-wing politician in such a position since João Goulart, who was deposed by the 1964 military coup. The terms of Lula (2003–2010) and his successor Dilma Rousseff (2011–present) have composed the formal skeleton for what has been analysed elsewhere as a post-neoliberal society (Grugel & Riggirozzi, 2012; Sader, 2013; Yates & Bakker, 2014). Post-neoliberalism has been characterised as an utopian project as well as a “set of emancipatory

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political projects aimed at overcoming the ideological and institutional heritage of neoliberalism” (Yates & Bakker, 2014, p. 3). Post-neoliberalism is intrinsically related to the political-ideological project of neoliberalism; however, it re-founds economic principles on social values, which for Yates and Bakker (2014) challenge the core market values of neoliberalism orthodoxy.

This re-founding of the economy takes place through two processes: (1) a re-socialisation through redistributive policy and practice; and (2) the deepening of democracy by establishing greater autonomy and self-governance through processes of cultural self-determination. The re-socialisation principle includes the resurgence of the state and the socialisation of the market economy; and the deepened democracy principle embraces the re-politicisation of civil society and regional integration (through a new regional political economy). In Brazil, post-neoliberalism has assumed a specific political-economic ideology that Calderón (2008) has called “practical reformism and neostructuralism”. This post-neoliberal regime type includes the renewal and re-creation of the party system; building economic alliances; an institutional management that combines economic growth with inclusionary policies; and a pragmatic relationship with the US. Other examples of this particular model are Chile and Peru, where “economic stability and growth is prioritized, but places alongside experiments in institutionalizing participatory forms of decision-making” (Yates & Bakker, 2014, p. 13).

As Sader (2013) asserts, post-neoliberalism does not entail a wholesale break from neoliberalism; in addition, it does not create its binary other because the concrete possibilities for this are filtered out by the historical institutional conditions. Yet, Yates and Bakker (2014) highlight the ambiguity that exists in such a model that relies on traditional neoliberal practices and procedures to build its solidarity component. They cite the Brazilian redistributive programs Bolsa Família and Fome Zero and their

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intrinsically deep-seated commitment to agribusiness and export-oriented growth to exemplify it. They explain that

Lula’s! cautious! macroVeconomic! approach! [strongly! tied! to! the!production!and!exportation!of!food]!provided!the!financial!foundation!for! Bolsa! Família! and! opened! up! space! for! experimentation! in! the!political! arena! (e.g.! participatory! budgets! and! health! councils! […]).!The! progressive! experiments! that! have! emerged! in! Brazil! since! the!rise! of! the! PT! [The! Workers’! Party]! cannot,! therefore,! be! detached!from! the! fact! that! Lula!may! have! been! a! ‘supreme! administrator! of!neoliberalism’! (Sader,! 2011:! 43)! whose! brand! of! Leftism! lacked! a!discernible! leftism! project! (Wylde,! 2012)! —! a! mantle! that! his!successor,!Dilma!Rousseff,! appears!keen! to!uphold.! (Yates!&!Bakker,!2014,!p.!11)!

In practical terms, Lula’s and Dilma’s policies had three key effects. They decreased the levels of poverty from 41% at the beginning of the 1990s to 21.4% in 2009 (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / World Bank, 2013) and reduced unemployment rates from 12.9% in 2002 to 4.7% in 2011 (Ministério da Fazenda, 2012). And most importantly, the Workers’ Party policies led to an enlargement of the middle class, which was formed by 38% of the population in 2002, and in 2012, represented 53% (Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégicos da Presidência da República, 2012).

This enlargement of the middle class has brought about the concept of a ‘new Brazilian middle class’, which has gained momentum and reverberated through the media and academy in the last few years (Yaccoub, 2011). The expression, which represents a new term to frame a particular social stratum, drew attention especially from the study A Nova Classe Média (‘The New Middle Class’), published in August 2008 by the Brazilian economist Marcelo Neri. The new middle class was the name given by Neri (2008) to what is called ‘class C’ in a traditional classification scheme used by Brazilian research institutes that goes from A to E, with the class A demarcating the most wealthy level and E the

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poorest in the country. Neri’s work showed in quantitative terms how a large portion of the population in Brazil had increased its purchasing power in the last few years, consequently, raising themselves up in the socio-economic hierarchy. As a result, they were not classified as ‘poor’ anymore (classes D and E), but were part of the ‘middle class’ they had dreamed of being for so long.

This study received massive media coverage in Brazil and has been used by the government to represent PT achievements in tackling the country’s inequality. It was PT policies — which include some of the above-mentioned ones, together with the gradual increase of the national minimum wage (Singer, 2009) — that were behind the ease of social mobility in Brazil in the last decade. But as much as Neri’s report was celebrated, it was also criticised, especially for its narrow view of the concept of ‘class’ (Yaccoub, 2011).

Yaccoub (2011), for instance, asserts that the expression ‘new middle class’ links the notion of class straight to income and consumption, when “social strata are classified using much more than possession and purchasing power” (Yaccoub, 2011, p. 201). Yaccoub grounds part of her analysis in Souza’s (2009) work, a scholar who has continually criticised the dominant economism in Brazil. Souza makes two important points about the dominance of such approach. First, this economism, which is the result of a type of triumphalist liberalism, sustains at some level the invisibility of Brazil’s social inequality. And second, the lowest classes, even when their lives improve financially — as they did in the last decade or so — have not been able to provide to their offspring the same type of middle-class ‘moral economy’ that has been the key for achieving social status in a competitive rationalising society. The moral economy that he describes is similar to the Bourdieuian notion of habitus and it is generally not taken into account when it comes to the analysis of social class as a concept in Brazil. According to Souza, both in the common sense and in the Brazilian academy, the concept of ‘class’ is not explored as a source of symbolic,

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moral and existential grammars that define a group, and the dominance of this economistic notion has blurred Brazil’s real social conflicts.

Even though the idea of a middle-class country can generate a false image of what Brazil is right now, it still provides an important perspective in terms of consumption patterns there. As Yaccoub (2011) puts it, Neri’s work “evoked a paradigm shift for many sectors of the economy in terms of how the lower classes in Brazil and their consumption behaviour were represented” (p. 203). The model up to that point was the one that focused on the shortage, in the ‘non-consumer’ role of these individuals. And now this status has changed.

Although football is the favourite sport of Brazilians of any class, it is those in the urban lower strata that have historically made football such a cultural institution in the country. All this discussion about the recent Brazilian political history is therefore significant here as a means to contextualise the idea of a gentrification process taking place in Brazilian football culture. It is important to note that this is not only the result of the will of industry insiders (who definitely are interested in attracting a more affluent audience for the sport), but is also related to broader social, economic and cultural changes that have been actually implemented by a leftist government. And here, the contradictions of post-neoliberalism are rather perceptible.

The increase in the purchasing power of the population in Brazil is behind an enlargement of the consumer culture, which is converging with other changes to transform football fan culture into a more postmodern, industry-led phenomenon. In this sense, it is significant to understand not only that more-affluent fans are turning to football as a pastime, but also that traditional supporters (those who, for instance, have been attending football matches since before the stadium renovations) have gone through all these changes in the country. As a result, these dislocations in terms of how supporting is defined by fans, how they believe they should behave

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and so on are becoming more visible than ever. As I argued in Chapter 2, supported by Gray and colleagues’ work (2007), modern-day football fandom in Brazil should not be understood as a transhistorical phenomenon; instead, it is a situated practice, deep-seated into cultural and social orders. Football fandom has become an ever more integral part of lifeworlds in global capitalism — and particularly since the early 2000s, it has been constituted in the interface between micro and macro forces currently playing out in Brazil.

In the next section, I discuss the online communities and this mainstreaming process, which is rather closely associated to Orkut’s emergence in 2004. Before that, in Table 4.1, I systematise the previously discussed modes of collective supporting. Online communities do not replace these other forms of organisation and, indeed, they are closely linked to some of the new movements, for instance. They emerged in the same period and some of those movements were also created through computer-mediated communication. In addition, some of what I will from now call new supporting leaders — fans who are hubs in social-network interactions — are part of these movements, or were at some point.

Online)communities)

The history of online football fan communities in Brazil merges with the history of networked digital systems and the implementation of the Internet in the country. In the early 1990s, before the beginning of the commercial operation of the Internet, which occurred in 1995, football supporters used BBSs to talk to other football enthusiasts in the same geographical area. In Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, for instance, fans of the two big-city rivals, Atlético-MG and Cruzeiro, exchanged messages with other supporters via BBSs. NetG@lo, which later became an Atlético organised supporters’

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Table&4.1:&&Modes&of&collective&supporting&in&Brazil&over&history.&Systematised&from&characteristics&discussed&by&de&Toledo&(1996),&Teixeira&(2010,&2013)&and&de&Hollanda&and&colleagues&(2014).&

Phase& Symbolic/fan& Organised&groups& New&movements&

Emergence( 1940s( 1960s((consolidation:(1980s)( 2000s(

Features( •(Formed(by(middle?age(adults!•(Led(by(supporters(with(some(type(of(relationship(with(the(institutional(organisation(of(the(sport(or(supporters(that(put(a(personal(effort(into(this(type(of(fan(activity!•(Fans(had(a(more(passive(attitude,(being(subordinated(to(clubs,(which(often(paid(for(their(travel(expenses!•(Supporters(wore(similar(clothes(to(each(other((not(necessarily(customised)(and(the(bands(used(to(perform(either(more(festive(songs,(such(as(marchinhas(and(sambas,(or(the(clubs’(anthems!

•(Formed(by(young(adults!•(Hierarchical,(autonomous(and(impersonal(organisations!•(Active(position,(exerting(pressure(over(club(leaders!•(Activities(are(broadly(divided(between(the(‘social’(side(and(the(‘field’(work!•(The(spatiality(of(the(headquarters(has(a(significant(position(in(the(sociability(modes(established(between(members!•(Chants(are(divided(into:(encouraging;(protesting;(intimidating;(and(self?affirming(ones!•(Supporters(use(customised(clothes(that(declare(their(affiliation(to(the(organisation(rather(than(to(the(club!•(They(adopt(instruments(more(connected(to(Brazilian(music(culture,(with(many(chants(indeed(being(samplings(of(famous(sambas(and(pagodes!((

•(Formed(by(dissidents(from(organised(groups(and(newcomers(who(rejected(the(TOs’(model!•(Less(institutionalised(and(hierarchical;(they(actually(focus(on(the(‘field’(work(side(of(collective(supporting!•(They(defend(a(non?violent,(festive(and(family?oriented(approach(to(collective(supporting!•(Chants(seek(to(encourage(the(team(on(the(pitch!•(In(aesthetic(terms,(they(do(not(often(use(jerseys(and(banners(that(allude(to(the(group!•(They(support(the(team(in(an(uninterrupted(way,(chanting(and(standing(the(whole(time((distinct(from(the(traditional(organised(groups,(which,(for(new(movements’(members,(are(often(silent(when(the(team(is(losing)!•(Adoption(of(chants(and(instruments(influenced(by(Argentinean(barra/bravas!

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group, originated from Esportes-MG, a board at the Louca BBS, which, since 1990, gathered fans from diverse clubs to chat about sport29. Some Cruzeiro supporters, on the other hand, used a board at Horizontes BBS, another BBS in BH, that later developed into an electronic mailing list, an unofficial fan-run website and a blog, all three of which are still in operation at the time of writing30.

When the Internet arrived in Brazil (i.e. when its use started going beyond universities and research centres) in 1995, the same NetG@lo, which I will now concentrate on, became the Atleticanos electronic mailing list at Esquina das Listas, a server at the Brazilian university Unicamp. Later, in 1996, it migrated to BHNet, an Internet service provider that originated from Louca BBS. At BHNet, the list was hosted under the name lista-atletico and some of the messages (precisely 30, from 1999) are still available at the Internet Archive31. In these messages, supporters wrote about the team’s problems, the then coach, Toninho Cerezo, and the club’s poor administration. In plain text messages, the fans discuss what was going on with the team, and how they could protest and change the state of things within the club.

Beyond these text-based online messages, since 1996, when the list migrated to BHNet, the group of subscribers also used to arrange face-to-face meetings to follow games together. In August/September 1996, the list had around 250 members and, because of its continuous growth, the first conflicts started to emerge. Fights and off-topic messages were abounding and Emmerson Maurilio, the list moderator (also later the president of the association NetG@lo, and today, the Multimedia Manager at the club), created a list of rules that aimed to keep the conversations civil. The members accepted the rules and, at this point, the group, which

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!29#Information#available#at#NetG@lo’s#Facebook#page:#https://www.facebook.com/pages/TorcidaBOrganizadaB

NetGalo/235658343213901?sk=info&ref=page_internal#(accessed#August#6,#2014).#30#Information#available#at#their#website:#http://www.cruzeiro.org/coluna.php?id=535#(accessed#22#Aug.#2014).#

31#Available#at#http://web.archive.org/web/20020224081612/http://www2.bhnet.com.br/listaBatletico/#

threads.html#(accessed#August#22,#2014).#

#

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was using the name Galonet to identify itself, voted for a new name, NetG@lo.

After these disagreements, the first meeting of the list subscribers occurred in March 1997 and was indeed online. One of the members had suggested making jerseys for the group, which, at this point, started to see itself as a collective of fans sharing similar ideas. The same Maurilio arranged it on an Atlético-dedicated channel (called #galo) at an Internet Relay Chat network. Around 10 supporters participated in the online meeting, which was fundamental for structuring the torcida. The following day, a message was sent to lista-atletico asking for a re-registration and telling everybody else about the meeting. In April, an in-person meeting was scheduled at Xodó da Vovó, a restaurant near the Mineirão stadium, where another meeting of the list had already taken place in 1996 when some of the fans got together to see a match of the state championship. As NetG@lo members recall, many of the subscribers were students, from Belo Horizonte. But, at this meeting, even Daniel Accioly, a Galo supporter living in Rio de Janeiro, came to town to meet the gang.

In July 1997, the group was already meeting on a regular basis and on July 27, they executed the first action at the stadium. That day, a Sunday, in buildings that stand side-by-side at the Pampulha suburb in BH, Atlético won two matches. In the morning, Atlético’s futsal team won the Brazilian Futsal Championship at the Mineirinho gymnasium; in the afternoon, Atlético’s professional football team beat, in a city derby that was part of the Brazilian Football Championship, its big rival Cruzeiro at Mineirão. NetG@lo made its first stadium flag to support both teams (futsal and football) and publicise the torcida. And, at this point, I may add, many other football-related mailing lists and fan-run websites had already been created as the newspaper Folha de São Paulo reports in an article from May 28, 1997 (Torcida leva disputa de times para o gramado cibernético, 1997). For instance, Botafogo, Flamengo, Corinthians, Grêmio and Ponte Preta supporters were using GeoCities servers. Avaí, Coritiba,

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Criciúma, Juventude and Vitória fans, on the other hand, had webpages on several universities’ servers. Some groups formed online were also becoming organised supporters’ groups, such as TIF (Torcida Internet Flamengo)32.

After the double win on that happy Sunday for Atlético supporters, Netg@lo members decided the next step would indeed be the registration with the club as an official organised supporters’ group. For that, they had to create the first statute and form the first board of directors. Maurilio was the president; Frederico Arrieiro and Daniel Accioly, the deputies; Alexandre Leocádio, the public relations person; Rodrigo Neves, the treasurer; and Michel Kalil Bacarat, Ivan Machado Nogueira and Henrique Passini formed the council. Later, many of the list members continued to be key fans within Atlético’s online communities, such as the above-mentioned Michel Kalil, a moderator at the most popular Atlético community on Orkut.

Wilson Franco, known as ‘Zeca’, was part of NetG@lo, later a moderator at the Orkut community, the creator of Galocast, a popular podcast with the club’s supporters between 2008 and 2012, and is currently one of the most influential fans on Twitter and producer of Espora Afiada, a popular channel at YouTube (discussed in Chapter 6). Zeca recalls that some of other members of the list continued to be key participants in the online conversations surrounding the club (personal communication, August 5, 2014). For example, Igor Assunção, also member of the list, who became his partner at Galocast, was a moderator at the Orkut community and is today one of the most influential journalists within the Twitter network. Assunção is at the radio station 98FM, presenting the innovative daily sporting program 98 Futebol Clube, which combines journalism with parodies and sketches.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!32#Some#remnants#of#such#sites#may#still#be#found#online,#such#as#this#FlamengoBdedicated#webpage#

(http://www.oocities.org/southbeach/9781/Flamengo.html),#made#by#a#fan#in#1996.#This#GeoCities#page#is#

archived#at#Oocities.org,#a#webarchive#project#of#old#GeoCities#pages,#published#from#1994#to#2009,#when#

GeoCities#services#were#shut#down#everywhere#but#Japan.#

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In October 1997, the jerseys of the now Grêmio Recreativo Social e Cultural Torcida Organizada NetG@lo were premiered and the domain www.netgalo.com.br33 was registered. In 1999, NetG@lo gained its own server at Horizontes Internet and the list started to have more functionalities and a better management. Also in 1999, the bond between club and the ‘virtual supporters’ group’ became clearer when they assumed the task of redesigning the club’s official webpage.

One of the most celebrated actions of the group was when they broadcast the final of the 1999 state championship from the stadium. Computers were taken to Mineirão and a photographer was sent to the pitch to take exclusive photos so that Galo supporters from all over the world would have information and images from the centre stage in real time (or almost real time, because at this point, the connection was still via a dial-up Internet access). But the task was not that easy, and according to the group, a series of arrangements had to be made with a telephone landline provider, the stadium managers and especially with the Internet access provider, Horizontes Internet. The group accomplished the challenge, but compared with the experiences of another group of Atlético fans, which today does live commentaries via a digital radio from the stadium (Web Rádio Galo), NetG@lo’s work was much harder and more limited by the affordances of the available technology.

In addition, NetG@lo’s restricted audience made it very different to Web Rádio Galo. In 1997, between 450,000 and 1 million people had access to the Internet in Brazil (Benakouche, 1997). In 1998, according to an Instituto Datafolha poll, this figure had risen to 2.1 million people ('População comum ganhou acesso à internet em 1995, 2009). By 1999, it had risen to more than 2.5 million (Anos 90: o desenvolvimento da internet no Brasil, 2005); however, this number corresponded to only 1.5% of the total Brazilian population. Web Rádio Galo videos on YouTube, on the other hand, have been viewed more than 3.2 million times (as at !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!33#Its#content#is#no#longer#available#on#the#Internet.#

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August 2014). Web Rádio Galo has 6,318 subscribers on its channel, another 3,300 at TuneIn, 2,000 in their own application, almost 20,000 followers on Twitter, 17,000 likes on Facebook and more than 30,000 unique visitors every month on their website. Some of these figures come from publicly available sources (YouTube, TuneIn, Twitter, Facebook), and Web Rádio Galo creators/producers provided others (subscribers on their channel and unique visitors on their website). It is important to emphasise here, in the context of these numbers, that Web Rádio Galo is only one project within a single club in Brazil.

From%subculture%to%mainstream%

This comparison between the pioneer work of NetG@lo in the late 1990s and Web Rádio Galo today demonstrates rather well how online football fandom changed from a subcultural practice to a mainstream one in Brazil. A group of enthusiasts of no more than 250 fans felt the need to become an official supporters’ group back in 1997. This group was indeed a more homogenous one if we compare them to the complexity of the types of football fans engaging in online practices today. Also, the need to institutionalise their community was a natural move in a context in which collective and more deep participation in such a culture used to take place through such associations. Today, the active and organised supporter groups dedicated to Atlético are also on social-media platforms, but the number of fans discussing club-related issues goes far beyond such institutionalised groups.

Digital technologies were one of the causes for the changing nature of pop-culture fandom from a subcultural activity in the 1980s to a mainstream practice today (Booth & Kelly, 2013; Gray, et al., 2007). In Brazil, the transformation of online fandom into a mainstream activity also brought about the popularisation of collective football supporting. A big step was taken when Orkut was launched in 2004. This shift took the online cultural practices of football fans from the kind of restricted audience of

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the email lists in the 1990s towards a more mainstreamed fashion that today is found in the distributed communities that spread out over diverse platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. With limited users at first (someone needed to be invited by someone else to join the network), Orkut was launched in the US (having indeed only an English interface at first) but quickly flourished in Brazil. As each user had only 20 invites to send out, being part of Orkut turned into something exclusive, giving the platform a type of special aura (Hamann, 2011). With the success (which was rather unexpected by Google), in 2005, the site gained a Portuguese version. At the same time, the platform’s rules changed, so that it was no longer necessary to receive an invitation to join Orkut.

Orkut had what Boyd and Ellison (2008) identify as the characteristics of social-network sites, being the first one to become highly popular in Brazil. As they explain, social-network sites are web-based services that allow individuals to

(1)!construct!a!public!or!semi3public!profile!within!a!bounded!system,!

(2)!articulate!a!list!of!other!users!with!whom!they!share!a!connection,!

and!(3)!view!and!traverse!their!list!of!connections!and!those!made!by!

others!within!the!system.!(Boyd!and!Ellison,!2008,!p.!211)!

As Recuero (2005) explains, Orkut basically operated through two functions: profiles and communities. In this sense, Orkut gathered the traditional functions of Internet forums with the affordances of social-network sites. The forums were concentrated inside communities that were created by users. And already in 2004, football-related communities started to abound, with most of the largest communities of Brazilian professional clubs being created in 2004 or early 2005 — the exception is Botafogo. At the time of data gathering, the largest Botafogo community identified was from 2010, probably due to community hijacking or something like that. Table 4.2 shows the date of creation of the largest communities of each of the 12 clubs considered here and the amount of members by September 6, 2013.

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Table%4.2:% Size%of% the% largest% communities% found%on%Orkut%of% each% club% considered%here%and% their%creation%date%(as%at%September%6,%2013).%

Clubs& Community& Members& Creation&

AtléticoBMG# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=26674# 315,697# 9/03/2004#

Botafogo# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=98661891# 232,318# 15/02/2010#

Corinthians# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=45002# 1.621,714# 22/04/2004#

Cruzeiro# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=17429# 535,851# 15/02/2004#

Flamengo# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=981665# 2.067,918# 21/12/2004#

Fluminense# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=28077# 231,190# 13/03/2004#

Grêmio# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=839652# 495,314# 1/12/2004#

Internacional# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=29755# 397,990# 18/03/2004#

Palmeiras# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=15532# 646,091# 12/02/2004#

Santos# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=1273448# 371,970# 4/02/2005#

São#Paulo# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=2255466# 1.150,791# 28/05/2005#

Vasco# http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community?cmm=603745# 440,898# 21/10/2004#

Orkut became more popular in the country, getting to a point when more than 50% of the users database were in Brazil in 2011 (Hamann, 2011). As the platform’s popularity increased, the football-related communities also grew; their Orkut sites worked as meeting points for many football supporters who would gather around the club-based communities. Football fans also formed groups related to a particular tournament or state, or about shared dislikes for a club, football commentator and so on.

But not all members would actually engage in conversations. For many, subscribing to a community was a way of displaying their affiliation to an institution or a preferred hobby; it was simply a way to signal identity. With club-based communities, it was no different; many users would become members so their football preference was publicly showcased in their profiles. However, the number of members engaging in everyday conversations was so large and the use of those spaces for sociability purposes was so widespread that even when Orkut was about to shut down and many communities were completely abandoned, the football-related groups were the few that were still very much active. Google announced Orkut’s discontinuation on June 30, 2014 (Golgher, 2014), and immediately, the club-related communities started to look for spaces to

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replace the platform, and therefore, maintain their established social ties (Lima, 2014b).

Reliable data is not available, but from surveys made by fans and published on a diverse range of sites, I was able to organise information that shows the increase of members of such communities over the years (Table 4.3).

Table% 4.3:% Size% of% the% largest% communities% found% on%Orkut% of% each% club% considered% here% over% the%years.%

Clubs& 200534& 2007

35& 2008

36& 2009

37&

AtléticoBMG# 21,858# 156,064# 212,000# 275,203#

Botafogo# 18,623# 128,64# 150,461# N/A#

Corinthians# 52,796# 517,691# 711,772# 1.323,086#

Cruzeiro# 29,175# 276,868# 374,749# 474,554#

Flamengo# 91,759# 645,669# 919,251# 1.448,823#

Fluminense# 24,446# 122,310# 166,358# N/A#

Grêmio# 44,170# 345,313# 360,018# 490,721#

Internacional# 37,937# 183,953# 208,239# 338,452#

Palmeiras# 80,738# 406,928# 432,002# 555,536#

Santos# 29,407# 146,108# 167,276# 241,875#

São#Paulo# 116,845# 815,461# 860,998# 1.287,744#

Vasco# 42,616# 204,051# 276,524# 341,066#

Most of the reports found about the size of each of these communities did not include a link to the community or any other information that could guarantee that the communities included in Table 4.3 are the same ones included in Table 4.2. However, in most reports, the groups in Table 4.3 are referred to as the largest communities of each club. The fact that the growth pattern is continuous also gives an indication that they are probably the same ones from Table 4.2 — except for Botafogo because the community in Table 4.2 was only created in 2010. The golden years of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!34#Source:#http://vgbr.com/forum/topic/738BasBmaioresBcomunidadesBdeBclubesBnoBorkut/##(accessed#

September#22,#2014).#35#Source:#http://www.caixapretta.com.br/2007/11/topB12BmaioresBcomunidadesBdeBclubesBnoBorkut/#(accessed#

September#22,#2014).#36#Source:#http://forums.tibiabr.com/threads/249331BOrkutBAsB15BmaioresBcomunidadesBdeBtimes!#.VBB

z4_mSxBl#(accessed#September#22,#2014).#37#Source:#http://www.insoonia.com/topB10BasBdezBmaioresBcomunidadesBdeBtimesBnoBorkut/#(accessed#

September#22,#2014).#

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Orkut in Brazil were probably between 2007 and 2009; during this time, such communities were incredibly popular and central to each club’s general fan culture.

In 2011, Orkut started to lose space to Facebook and Twitter and, in December of that year, Zuckerberg’s platform became the most accessed social-network site in Brazil. This decline was also felt in the football-related communities and, even though there is no available information about a decline in memberships in 2012, in 2013, I personally recorded a shrinking pattern (Figure 4.1). At the same time, the clubs’ accounts and pages on Twitter and Facebook registered growing patterns.

!Figure% 4.1:% Evolution% of% Brazilian% football% clubs% on% Twitter,% Facebook% and%Orkut% from% Sep% to% Nov%2013.%

For Boyd and Ellison,

The! rise! of! SNSs! [social3network! sites]! indicates! a! shift! in! the!

organization! of! online! communities.! While! websites! dedicated! to!

communities! of! interest! still! exist! and! prosper,! SNSs! are! primarily!

organized! around! people,! not! interests.! Early! public! online!

communities! such! as! Usenet! and! public! discussion! forums! were!

structured! by! topics! or! according! to! topical! hierarchies,! but! social!

network!sites!are! structured!as!personal! (or! “egocentric”)!networks,!

with! the! individual!at! the!center!of! their!own!community.!This!more!

accurately!mirrors!unmediated!social!structures,!where!“the!world!is!

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composed!of!networks,!not!groups”!(Wellman,!1998,!p.!37).! (Boyd!&!

Ellison,!2008,!p.!219)!

In this sense, the features of social-network sites have introduced a new organisational framework for online communities. For Boyd (2006), people define their community egocentrically in these environments by slicing people first and interests second. This dynamic has created a new way of building social context, which is then defined by a user’s list of friends or selected audience.

Orkut merged the features of social-network sites with traditional forum functionalities, but the environment of the communities was in some sense detached from the profiles and their components. Someone’s contributions to a community were not visible in their profile. To see someone’s posts in a community, for instance, a user would have to enter the community environment, join it when it was ‘members only’, and then search for someone’s messages among the threads. This partial separation meant that communities worked pretty much like the early groups of the Usenet and other interest-based spaces.

Baym (2007), on the other hand, provides a different perspective to Boyd’s (2006) about the replacement of groups in the web’s first incarnation by egocentric networks in which the individuals are the basic units rather than communities. For Baym (2007), these groups have not been replaced; they have actually assumed a distributed shape, forming types of multi-sited communities or networked collectivisms (Baym, 2010):

Even! as! their! members! build! personal! profiles! and! egocentric!

networks! on! MySpace,! Facebook,! BlackPlanet,! Orkut,! Bebo,! and!

countless! other! emerging! social! networks! sites,! online! groups!

continue! to! thrive! on!Web! boards,! in!multiplayer! online! games,! and!

even! on! all3but3forgotten! Usenet.! However,! online! communities! are!

also! taking! a! new! form! somewhere! between! the! site3based! online!

group! and! the! egocentric! network,! distributing! themselves!

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throughout! a! variety!of! sites! in! a!quasi3coherent!networked! fashion.!

(p.!1)!

I come back to this point later in Chapter 5, but I would argue, with Baym (2007, 2010), that within these personalised connections, we still have the emergence of interest-based groups. These groups exist not only on traditional group-based spaces such as the Usenet, but also with the help of the functions of social-network sites (such as the ‘group’ function on Facebook). Besides that, these groups have organised themselves in a more networked fashion today, using distinct sites that “have become increasingly specialized in the functions they serve for fans” (Baym, 2007, p. 3).

Much of the integration of these diverse spaces is done by key hubs in such groups, who have profiles in many platforms and transfer the information from one to another. The fact that football supporters in Brazil have a relationship with their clubs that is anything but frivolous means that such hubs are generally fans who have been around for a very long time and who are well known by other fans. Furthermore, their club is found in their usernames, photos and headers. In Atlético’s case, for instance, countless fans have ‘galo’, ‘CAM’ and other club markers in their usernames such as the year the club was created (1908), the number 13 (the rooster number in a popular Brazilian gambling game) and so on. In this sense, even though online fandom and collective forms of football supporting have become more mainstream, such supporting leaders demonstrate a pinch of subcultural traces (Robards & Bennett, 2011) when it comes to how central football is for their identities.

Conclusion%

In this chapter, I discussed the diverse modes of collective football supporting in Brazil over history. I started with the symbolic-fan phase, which started in the 1940s, when the first groups of more dedicated fans

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began to be established. At that time, they had a more passive attitude, being subordinated to clubs and their leaders. These groups, usually formed by middle-aged adults, generally had some type of close connection with the institutional organisation of the sport, or were the result of the personal endeavour of avid fans. These groups adopted a more festive style of supporting, which became associated with the golden age of Brazilian football because they were the predominant formations at that time.

After that, I explored the genesis of the organised groups and how they formed in a time of sadness, violence and suffering, which was generated, above all, by the intensification of the economic exploration and political oppression in Brazil. Most of them were created in the most repressive period of the military regime, which followed the proclamation of the Institutional Act Number Five (1968). As opposed to the groups of the symbolic-fan phase, these formations had a more active attitude, exerting pressure over club leaders, and were formed by young adults. They had an autonomous, hierarchical and impersonal organisation, and their headquarters were sites of sociability. Their activities could be divided between ‘social’ and ‘field’ work. The social practices involved parties, celebrations, the conviviality of the headquarters, the Carnival preparations in some cases (not all organised groups had aggregated Samba Schools) and the campaigns that they got often involved with. The field practices concerned the match-related activities, including the choreography and chants, and the tours to away matches. These groups also became attached in the public imaginary to violent acts and to questionable relationships with club leaders. These groups still exist in the contemporary football environment in Brazil, even though they have lost the centrality that they had for fandom cultures in the 1990s.

Following that, I discussed the new supporting movements, which are formations that first emerged in the southernmost part of Brazil and are influenced by the South American barra bravas, particularly the Argentinian ones. They are formed by dissidents from organised groups or

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newcomers who reject the ethos and some of the practices of the traditional supporters’ collectivisms. They defend a non-violent, festive and family-oriented style of supporting and they cheer for the club not for the torcida. They are less institionalised and hierarchical and they focus on the ‘field’ activities. For some observers, they legitimise the hegemonic discourses of traditional-media commentators and industry insiders, fitting rather well in the profile of spectator expected in the new football economy. On the other side, I analysed how these groups are also the result of a broader change in the country. Groups with interests in exploring the economic potential of football in Brazil have been trying for years to turn this industry into a hypercommodified model; the thing was that, in the 1990s, the social reality of the country did not conform to their expectations. The leftist terms of Lula and Dilma created the conditions in which both the consumer culture and the purchasing power of the population increased. I explored briefly the recent political history of the country to approach, in particular, the paradoxes of a post-neoliberal agenda. If the Workers’ Party policies were behind most of the social developments of Brazil in the last decade, they also served as a support for the dominance of a more neoliberal approach in the football sector. As I asserted above, it is important to understand not only that there are more-affluent fans turning to football as a pastime, but also that traditional supporters (those who, for instance, have been attending football matches since before the stadium renovations) have gone through all these changes in the country. As a result, these dislocations, in terms of how supporting is defined by fans, how they believe they should behave and so on, are becoming more visible than ever.

I concluded the chapter analysing the emergence and developments of the online communities of football fans in the country. These groups first formed with the use of BBSs (in the early 1990s), and later, they migrated to electronic mailing lists and became more mainstreamed with Orkut’s arrival in Brazil in 2004. I discussed such developments through the history of NetG@lo, the earliest online group dedicated to Atlético-MG.

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The historical developments that led to the current distributed fashion of online communities for football fans cannot be seen as a continuous line (the interest-based groups of the Internet’s first incarnation have not disappeared, for instance). However, there is some continuity in the club-dedicated networked publics in the sense that many users have been around for quite some time and they are today what I am calling here the new supporting leaders within such torcidas. As I argued before, even though collective supporting and online fandom have become more mainstream practices, a core of fans in these communities still exhibits a rather subcultural sense of identity. For these supporters, football and their clubs are central in their conversations and social-network profiles. This is particularly noticeable in the fact that most of the key hubs in Atlético’s online communities have some type of club-related signal in their accounts’ name, location, header and profile photos. In the next chapter, I continue discussing the online communities, focusing on their current form.

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5! Online%Football%Fandom:%Networked%Collectivisms,%Opinion%Leaders%and%

Convergence%Points%

New!media! do! not! offer! inauthentic! simulations! that! detract!from! or! substitute! for! real! engagement.! [...]!What! happens! through!mediation!is!interwoven,!not!juxtaposed,!with!everything!else.!

—! Nancy! Baym,! in! Personal) Connections) in) the) Digital) Age,!2010!

In the previous chapter, I started to discuss the online communities dedicated to football in Brazil, particularly introducing the topic through the historical developments that led such collectivisms to their current distributed form. From BBSs (early 1990s), to mailing lists (late 1990s) and Orkut (2000s), these interest-based groups have today assumed a more dispersed formation with the popularisation of networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

This chapter continues this discussion, but now concentrates particularly on their current form. Today, football fans congregate on a range of distinct social-network sites in Brazil. The Orkut times are over, but the communities formed there were tightly knit. So much so that most club communities started a ‘selection process’, after Google announced Orkut would be shut down, to find a new platform where they could keep the ties built over many years. Most communities chose the Russian-based social-networking system VKontakte (VK), which for them offers similar functions to Orkut. The Orkut communities described in Chapter 4 now

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have ‘mirrors’ on VK. At least Atlético-MG38, São Paulo39, Santos40, Cruzeiro41, Corinthians42 and Grêmio43 supporters had decided to create communities there by the time of Orkut’s deactivation.

Facebook and its distinct functions (groups, walls, fan pages etc.), and YouTube comments are largely used to make conversation about football clubs in Brazil. Here, however, my focus is on Twitter. The adoption rate of Twitter in Brazil is actually far behind that of Facebook. In 2013, Twitter was used by less than 2% of Brazilian social-media users, whereas Facebook was adopted by almost 67% (Agrela, 2013). However, Twitter has a distinct penetration when it comes to highly dedicated supporters. In fact, its more public nature often supports the formation of ‘ad hoc’ or interest-driven publics (Baym, 2014; Bruns & Burgess, 2011). The large adoption of Twitter among football players and sports journalists has also attracted football fans to the platform. In this sense, even though Facebook is largely used for football interactions, Twitter has been the preferred space for those highly engaged supporters who used to be moderators of the clubs’ communities on Orkut, for example.

In this chapter, I present an exploratory analysis of the large data set of football-related conversations on Twitter that I mentioned in the Introduction. Around 7.4 million tweets, along with contextual information (such as each club’s schedule) are used as data sources for a type of abductive research strategy (Dixon, 2012). These posts are related to the 12 top professional clubs in the country, and the patterns found through such an exploratory investigation shed light to two issues that are further explored: (1) the strong temporal rhythms that dictate online fandom cultures; and (2) the emergence of new opinion leaders within the torcidas in such networked environments.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!38#https://vk.com/galooficial##

39#http://vk.com/saopaulofutebolclube##

40#http://vk.com/santosfutebolclubeoficial##

41#http://vk.com/cruzeiro1921#

42#http://vk.com/ptpoderosotimao##

43#http://vk.com/gremiofbpaoficial##

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I analyse some of the roles played by these new leaders. For example, they are like the regulars found at Oldenburg’s (1991) third places, setting the tone of conviviality and the style of such groups’ interactions; they also act as convergence points, particularly important for the decentralised coordination of the distributed communities of fans that are found on the Internet today and that Baym (2007, 2010) calls networked collectivisms. I finish this chapter with an analysis of a regular collective performance of Atlético-MG’s supporters called Inferno Alvinegro. From conversations posted on a thread at the largest community of Galo fans on Orkut, I examine three main factors:

•! how the practice first emerged

•! how ordinary fans resort to the convergence points for their organisation and mobilisation efforts

•! how supporters are aware of the new hierarchies of these groups (based mostly on skills), and indeed, seek to explore the personal publics (Schmidt, 2014) of key fans within the communities in such situations.

Throughout the mobilisation efforts, it is noticeable that these new leaders, traditional groups of supporters and new movements are the main mediators within the dispersed online groups, and between them and the torcida as a whole. In this sense, Inferno Alvinegro illustrates rather well Baym’s (2010) assertion that “what happens through mediation is interwoven, not juxtaposed, with everything else” (p. 139).

Methods%and%brief%contextualisation%of%the%data%sets%

The analysis covered in this chapter was divided into five phases: planning, collection, pre-processing, processing and visualisation/analysis (details in Appendix B). I used yourTwapperkeeper to collect the messages, but before this phase, so that I could archive the conversations,

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it was necessary to learn the keywords that football supporters use on Twitter. Many challenges were found in this planning stage: some clubs in Brazil have names that are common nouns; their names and nicknames are words in other languages than Portuguese; and Twitter users in Brazil use far fewer hashtags than English-speaking users.

Solutions like the one proposed by Bruns, Weller, and Harrington (2014), for instance, did not look particularly appealing for my goals. These scholars used football clubs’ official usernames on Twitter to collect a similar data set, but I had the impression that this strategy would not account for the collectives I wanted to analyse. These communities are rather independent from the clubs themselves in Brazil, and I wanted to develop a strategy that could help me to map out the subsequent step of the project by revealing suitable supporters to be interviewed. Indeed, the development of my particular methodology was later fundamental to identifying the supporters producing popular original content within Atlético’s supporter base, which I explore in detail in Chapter 6.

So, to solve my methodological issues, I used the name and one nickname for each club to collect the data, followed by a pre-processing phase in which many non-related messages were filtered out of a total of 42 million tweets collected over a three-month period in 2013. This filtering process selected: (1) only messages in Portuguese; and (2) tweets that included one of the keywords of a list that I created with names of the then current players, the head coach and other staff of each club, plus usual terms related to football such as goal, championship, referee and so on. The starting line-up players and the substitutes of every match of every club included here were used44 and, in Atlético-MG’s case, I also filtered out tweets with words related to one Brazilian namesake club: Atlético-PR. Everything that did not comply with these rules was excluded from my corpus. This way, I ended up with a final data set that was made up of 7.4

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!44#This#information#is#available#at#CBF’s#website.#

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million tweets and in which around 1.6 million accounts took part in the conversations.

In the processing phase, I used the Twitter metrics proposed by Bruns (2011), together with information collected from other sources, to create a table. In this table, the Twitter metrics generated for each day were matched with the respective details about that day in the schedule of each club (see Appendix B, Table B.1). For instance, I added information about the matches, the place where the club was playing (home/away or if it was a derby), and whether the game was being broadcast on free TV or only on pay TV. This type of contextualised Twitter metrics was particularly helpful in shedding light on the specific temporal rhythms of online football fandom, as I explore later.

Figure 5.1 introduces the basic statistics for each club: number of tweets and accounts involved in the interactions.

%

Figure%5.1:%Number%of%tweets%and%accounts%involved%in%interactions%on%Twitter%surrounding%the%12%Brazilian%professional%football%clubs%with%the%largest%fan%bases%in%the%country%during%three%months%of%the%2013%Brazilian%Football%Championship%(between%September%and%November)45.%

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!45#*During#the#process#of#archiving#the#data#sets,#for#one#week#(from#September#23#to#29),#Flamengo’s#data#was#

not#correctly#collected#due#to#technical#problems.#This#is#why#the#club’s#interactions#do#not#match#the#size#of#its#

supporter#base,#always#considered#the#largest#or#the#secondBlargest#behind#Corinthians’.**Palmeiras#was#playing#

the#second#division#of#the#Brazilian#Championship.#

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Most of the data follows either the size of each club’s Twitter follower base (which is displayed in Figure 5.2) or their performance in the season (Table 5.1). For instance, Cruzeiro has a smaller follower base than Palmeiras; however, Cruzeiro was the Brazilian champion of 2013, which attracted more attention to the club. The same is true for Atlético-MG, which has a larger number of related tweets than clubs with larger follower bases due to its successful campaign at the 2013 Libertadores da América and the presence of the celebrity player Ronaldinho in its squad during this year. Clubs that have successful campaigns receive more attention from mainstream media channels as well, which impacts on the Twitter-related conversations about them because the data sets comprise not only fan-posted messages, but also all types of tweets mentioning the club.

%Figure%5.2:%Followers’%base%of%each%Brazilian%club%here%considered%(as%at%August%24,%2014).%

%

Table% 5.1:% Performance% of% each% Brazilian% club% here% considered% at% the% final% of% the% 2013% Brazilian%Football% Championship% (Série% A).% *% Palmeiras% was% playing% the% second% division% of% the% Brazilian%Championship.%

Club& Final&position&

AtléticoBMG#

#

8#

Botafogo# 4#

Corinthians# 10#

Cruzeiro# 1#

Flamengo# 16#

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Fluminense# 15#

Grêmio# 2#

Internacional# 13#

Palmeiras# 1*#

Santos# 7#

São#Paulo# 9#

Vasco# 18#

In addition, it is important to note that such data sets do not reach all messages related to each club because football supporters do not use the name or nickname of their clubs in all messages they post about them. Onomatopoeias46, players’ names and other expressions are often used instead of the names of the clubs, especially during the matches.

On one hand, these data sets seem to be representative of the conversations about each club that were taking place on Twitter — either corresponding to the follower base of each team or their performances in the season. On the other hand, estimating their representativeness within their respective broader cultures and supporter bases is a rather complicated matter. First, the idea of what constitutes a ‘supporter’ in the area of football-culture studies is as controversial as what defines a fan within research about pop-culture fandom (De Kloet & Van Zoonen, 2007; Gibbons & Nuttall, 2014). To be considered a supporter, is it necessary to follow the games in-person? Or is it enough to watch them on TV? In either case, how many matches? Does one have to be a member of the club? Or does one have to buy club merchandising? Would it be enough to simply declare support for a team? This complexity makes it difficult to know the representativeness of such data sets within their broader cultures because it is not an easy task to estimate the size of supporter bases in the first place.

One could argue that it is possible to quantitatively measure the supporter base with club membership data. The number of each club’s members considered here is displayed in Table 5.2; however, membership programs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!46#Messages#formed#by#onomatopoeias#—#such#as#‘uhh’#for#disillusion#in#a#missed#goal,#‘uhu’#for#celebration,#

‘haha’#and#‘kkkk’#for#laughing#and#so#on#—#or#misspellings#—#like#‘gooooooooooool’#instead#of#‘gol’#(goal#in#

Portuguese)#—#are#often#posted#by#football#supporters#particularly#on#matchBday#occasions.#

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are only starting to become popular in Brazil now, and countless supporters who are regular stadium attendees and whose clubs are central to their identities do not have memberships (including some of the fans I interviewed).

Table% 5.2:% Club%members,% supporter% bases% according% to% Ibope,% and% total% attendant% public% for% the%period.%

Club& Members&

(Feb&2015)47&

Supporter&base&by&

Ibope48&

Supporter&base&in&

relation&to&Brazilian&

population&by&Ibope&

Attendance&

(home&matches)49&

AtléticoBMG# 39,234# 7#million# 3.5%# 126,745#(11)#

Botafogo# 8,234# 3.4#million# 1.7%# 279,013#(13)#

Corinthians# 83,356# 27.3#million# 13.6%# 241,632#(11)#

Cruzeiro# 68,076# 6.2#million# 3.1%# 338,562#(10)#

Flamengo# 54,049# 32.5#million# 16.2%# 423,002#(14)#

Fluminense# 23,531# 3.6#million# 1.8%# 260,569#(10)#

Grêmio# 80,767# 6#million# 3%# 257,098#(12)#

Internacional# 130,207# 5.6#million# 2.8%# 88,759#(12)#

Palmeiras# 97,629# 10.6#million# 5.3%# NA#

Santos# 57,052# 4.8#million# 2.4%# 94,403#(11)#

São#Paulo# 48,458# 13.6#million# 6.8%# 305,356#(11)#

Vasco# 15,634# 7.2#million# 3.6%# 242,483#(12)#

To measure the size of each club’s torcida, it is also possible to use the frequent surveys that marketing research institutes undertake in Brazil. A recent one by Ibope is also shown in Table 5.2. Nevertheless, these polls are also problematic when used as a comparison parameter because they do not indicate individuals that actually engage and are part of such cultures (in the sense of effectively participating in the processes of construction of meaning that they comprise).

And that is because, in Brazil, these surveys are done as traditional public-opinion polls. People indicate a preference, which is biased by a social environment where most people, through socialisation, learn to say that they ‘like’ a particular club even though they may not care about football that much in their everyday lives. And often, these polls suggest that up to 80% of people in Brazil are somehow football supporters (see

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!47#Data#available#at:#http://www.futebolmelhor.com.br/#(accessed#February#18,#2015)#

48#Available#at:#http://www.lancenet.com.br/minuto/PesquisaBLANCEBIbopeBFlamengoB

Brasil_0_1200480135.html#(accessed#February#18,#2015)#49#Number#of#games#in#brackets.##

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Gonçalves, 2013, for instance). But this biased ‘like’ does not mean anything in concrete terms, in the sense that it is a very loose notion of supporting. Many people who do not attend football matches, do not follow the sport in any mediated way, do not know anything about the history and current squad of ‘their’ clubs, nor even the basic rules of the game will be categorised as supporters. However, these polls will classify them as fans only because they say they have a club, which is just a ‘natural’ response.

Yet another data source that one may use to gauge supporter numbers is match attendance. Table 5.2 displays the sum of the attending public for all home games that these clubs played during the period in which I collected the Twitter data sets. However, again, I also do not think this data is accurate enough to say how representative the online communities and conversations are of supporter bases and cultures. A couple of examples can back me up here: Internacional, for instance, is the club with the largest number of members and the smallest attendance in Table 5.2. And that is because, in 2013, Internacional’s stadium was being renovated, which affected how many people it attracted to its matches. Another example: Atlético-MG had a relatively ‘lower’ attendance in late 2013 because of what its supporters called the Libertadores title’s ‘hangover’.

Besides that, considering only match attendance as the parameter presupposes a notion that only match attendees are actually supporters. To complement this data, then, I could use information about pay-per-view subscriptions by team, data that is, however, not publicised by Rede Globo. Unofficially, some industry insiders observed that, in 2011, the number of subscribers to Premiere FC (the pay-per-view package) had reached, for the first time, the 1 million threshold, although there is no information available, even unofficially, about club percentages (Murad, 2011).

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In this context, what I believe can better indicate the representativeness of online conversations and communities for the clubs’ cultures is the fact that the comprehension of traditional and embodied activities of each torcida has depended more on an understanding of these online groups and their daily interactions. Or, in other words, the fact that in order to understand ‘offline’ practices, one often must look at ‘online’ groups and interactions.

During this research, many cases appeared that indicate that this is the case and one of them is worth mentioning at this point. In 2013, in the second leg of the Copa Libertadores da América final, Atlético supporters assembled a large mosaic that covered half of the upper stands of Mineirão: it said Yes, We CAM (Figure 5.3). The mosaic expressed a motto that, over the competition, Atlético’s torcida strongly embraced, together with the then new and now traditional Eu acredito (‘I believe’) cry. The Yes, We CAM motto became a central notion for the fans at that moment — so much so that it was the message communicated in the main crowd performance in what was, for Atlético supporters, the most important match in the club’s history. To understand how and why this message emerged and become so central, one has to understand its organic creation in online discussions and how it existed for some years before the supporters finally got the chance to make full use of it.

The Yes, We CAM motto was inspired by Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign (replacing the ‘can’ by ‘CAM’, the club’s acronym) and emerged during conversations in a thread on Galo’s Orkut community around that time. Atlético fan Wilson Franco, already mentioned in Chapter 4 and who appears here again soon because he is one of the most influential supporters within the club’s torcida on Twitter (where he is @zeca1908), recalls that such conversations were taking place during a match that Galo was losing — a loss that would lead to it being eliminated from the tournament. In need of a comeback to survive, supporters started

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!Figure%5.3:%Yes$We$CAM%mosaic,%displayed%during%the%final%of% the%2013%Libertadores%da%América%by%Atlético%supporters.%Photo%by%Daniel%Teobaldo.%

to write encouragement expressions, saying that ‘they believed’ the team was indeed capable of winning the match. Amid the interactions, at some point, someone used Obama’s slogan in its ‘regular’ version and someone else ended up suggesting the pun (Wilson Franco, personal communication, August 5, 2014).

In 2009, when the club was doing well in the Brazilian Championship, as it had not done for quite some time, @zeca1908 decided to make t-shirts with the ‘great’ slogan. The thing with the Yes, We CAM is not only the pun itself (which of course has a great impact because Obama’s slogan and the club’s acronym are both widely known), but also that it fitted well with Atlético’s underdog status at the time. @zeca1908 made a few t-shirts and gave some to journalists who were open supporters of the club. Dudu Schechtel, who was at the time working on Alterosa Esporte, a popular program on the regional network TV Alterosa, wore his a couple of times on air. Milton Neves, a well-known sports presenter at Band, a nationwide network, also showcased the t-shirt on his program.

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In 2012, Galo had a good season, disputing the Brazilian title until the very end with Fluminense (but losing it) and, in 2013, the club finally had a strong squad that its supporters believed could indeed win the Libertadores (what most outsiders doubted because of Atlético’s unconvincing performances in the previous years). At these times, the motto and the cry (elements often associated) became the greatest representation of the torcida’s commitment to that team. At this point, the president of the club was also tweeting the fan-created hashtag #YesWeCAM, the coach, Cuca, was wearing @zeca1908’s t-shirt everywhere, and the club produced a non-commercial version of the t-shirt that the whole squad used on one occasion (Atlético-MG chega ao Independência com camisa motivacional "Yes we C.A.M.", 2013).

This type of interweaving of the same message across mediums, which is also visible in the case of the performance Inferno Alvinegro (see below), is what suggests that conversations taking place on social-network sites, including Twitter, are representative of these cultures. Below, I discuss two issues that arose during my exploration of the dynamics/patterns of the Twitter data sets.

Temporal%rhythms%

Previous research suggests that usage patterns of social-network sites and other electronic communication tools are subject to temporal rhythms that are related to the cultural circumstances of the environment under analysis (Golder, Wilkinson, & Huberman, 2007; Grinter & Palen, 2002). Grinter and Palen (2002) investigated the use of instant messaging by teenagers and found that because of temporal constraints in the home (such as dinnertime), teens were subject to particular restrictions that affected their use of such platforms. Because such constraints were the same for other teens, their similar schedules made synchronous communication easier for this group than for college students, for instance, who had less predictable schedules.

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Golder and colleagues (2007), on the other hand, explored patterns of interactions on Facebook at a time when the network was still restricted to college students. They found strong regularities that were robust and consistent across campuses and seasons, with undergraduates following two patterns: a ‘weekend’ one, between midday Friday and midday Sunday, and a ‘weekday’ one at all other times. The use was at its highest on the first days of the week (weekdays) and decreased substantially during the weekend, which for college students runs from mid-Friday to mid-Sunday. Golder and colleagues compared such behaviour with messaging activity in a corporate email network, where a workday pattern was observed, to conclude that:

Messaging!patterns!thus!encapsulate!the!differences!between!college!

students’!lives!and!those!of!employees!of!a!corporation.!While!people!

in!the!working!world!have!a!five!day!schedule!characterized!by!what!

are!conventionally!known!as!business!hours,!college!students!have!a!

schedule! in! which! they! integrate! computer! use! into! most! of! their!

waking!hours.!(Golder,!et!al.,!2007,!p.!9)!

For Golder and colleagues, Facebook and computer use in that particular context did not represent leisure time, “but rather social interaction engaged in as an activity paralleling the schoolwork and other computer-related activities during the week” (p. 9). In this sense, “use of Facebook is weaved into the college student experience, and its use mirrors college students’ daily, weekly and seasonal schedules” (Golder, et al., 2007, p. 13).

The use of Twitter and other social-network sites in the context of football fandom cultures also seems to be weaved into the experiences of football supporters in an increasingly mediated society. Match-days concentrate most activities (Table 5.3): the number of tweets and accounts taking part on such occasions far exceed the number on days with no games.

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Table% 5.3:% Tweets% and% accounts% by% day% type% for% all% clubs% (medians,% averages% and% standard%deviations).%

& & PreHmatch& Match& PostHmatch& Interval&

Tweets# Median# 4134# 12522# 5371# 4049#

# Average# 4300# 13766# 6797# 4405#

# Std.#dev.# 1957# 7954# 5964# 2312#

# # # # # #

Accounts# Median# 2641# 7001# 3388# 2621#

# Average# 2598# 7450# 4016# 2743#

# Std.#dev.# 1046# 3838# 3071# 1288#

Table 5.3 shows considerable differences in the average number of tweets posted by supporters of each club on match-day (13,766 tweets) and on days preceding the games (4,300 tweets). On average, 7,450 accounts gather on Twitter on game days, but only 2,598 accounts take part in conversations in the days before matches. The days after matches are also relatively bustling because of the unfolding coverage and discussions related to the games. Both match-days and the days after a match have relatively higher standard deviation rates because the results of the matches affect online activities in varied ways. Intervals demarcate either days when the club did not play in the preceding day or is not playing in the succeeding day.

Yet, the types of online football-related interactions differ significantly when the club is on the pitch. In the analysis of the interactivity metrics of the included data sets, match-days stand out as less conversational, with less genuine replies being posted than on any other occasion. Figure 5.4 (a to c) shows the distinct types of communication by the type of day, with their respective average percentages and standard deviations. Figure 5.4 (d) combines the averages in a single image that better displays the specific interaction patterns of each day type.

Regarding Figure 5.4, it is important to take into account that in terms of Twitter use, original messages resemble the act of “making a public statement to a known group of friends and acquaintances — a speech at a family gathering, a lecture to a class of students” (Bruns & Moe, 2014, p.

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17). Genuine replies are directed messages that involve at least two entities and conversations that make use of such an affordance are like an offline chat with one or several friends or acquaintances, possibly conducted in the presence of non-participating bystanders (Bruns & Moe, 2014). Retweets are similar to forwarding an email that may be of interest to a mailing list and it is via retweets that breaking news, for instance, quickly spreads across the network. Tweeting a large number of original tweets is described as taking an annunciative approach by Bruns and Stieglitz (2014). In turn, users that post mostly replies adopt a conversational style and retweets are largely used by those adopting a disseminative behaviour (Bruns & Stieglitz, 2014). As Figure 5.4 shows, match-days are particularly non-conversational on Twitter for publics that have gathered to watch football matches.

Figure%5.4%(a–d):%Types%of%communication%by%day%type%for%all%clubs.%

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Yet, match-days are not that informational either. The level of messages carrying URLs on these occasions is lower than on any other day, which is displayed in Table 5.4.

Table%5.4:%Percentage%of%messages%carrying%URLs%by%day% type% for%all% clubs% (medians,%averages%and%standard%deviations).%

& & PreHmatch& Match& PostHmatch& Interval&

Percentage#of#

URLs#

Median# 35.1%# 16.7%# 33.5%# 34.9%#

# Average# 36.1%# 17.6%# 34.1%# 35.5%#

# Std.#dev.# 11%# 5.7%# 11.4%# 10.8%#

A low level of URLs being included in tweets has been associated in previous research with live-televised events (Bruns & Burgess, 2011). Bruns and Burgess (2011) argue that low levels of @replies and also URLs being shared are likely connected to situations when Twitter users are watching the news or other TV content and tweeting their impressions and commentaries without necessarily replying directly to any other user. In this sense, Twitter serves as “a backchannel to television and other streaming audiovisual media, enabling users offer their own running commentary on the universally shared media text of the event broadcast as it unfolds live” (Highfield, Harrington, & Bruns, 2013, p. 315).

At the same time that the more annunciative style of posting and the fewer URLs suggest the strong presence of TV viewers making use of Twitter in a second screen, the increase of embedded images within the relatively few messages sharing a link in such situations indicate the use of the platform for on-the-move communications. On match-days, the percentage of links to other social-media platforms (except YouTube) increases (Figure 5.5); Instagram URLs are proportionally more significant in this regard.

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Figure%5.5:%SocialZmedia%URLs%shared%in%footballZrelated%tweets%by%day%type.%

Twitter URLs are usually photos embedded in the messages, and many Facebook URLs are also photos — but there are links to posts, groups and fan pages as well. These patterns indicate that Twitter use is weaved not only into the public life of supporters that experience football mostly in a mediated fashion (i.e. those who are not stadium attendees and follow the games mostly on TV), but also into the lives of those who are co-present with the show. We live in a time when mobile media evoke a type of ambient participation and co-present visuality (Hjorth & Gu, 2012). And with the rise of high-quality camera phones and distribution services via social and locative media, images have often been produced and consumed on the go (Pink & Hjorth, 2012). Even though a more deep analysis of the visual narratives presented in such photos is desired in the future, the slight increase of Foursquare links also suggests that Twitter is used by ‘armchair supporters’ — how fans who do not attend matches are classically seen by attendees — in addition to being interwoven with embodied football-fandom practices.

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Cultural%authority%of%new%leaders%

The opinion-leader concept was recently introduced into football-fandom research as a way to understand how fans have used online communities and other media resources to develop, articulate and maintain fan cultures in the digital age (Millward, 2013; Ruddock, 2013). As I discussed in the Introduction, Ruddock (2013) focuses on the role played by such leaders in the everyday practices of myth-making within emerging football fan cultures and Millward (2013) explores how social-networking technologies are able to assist in the formation of groups with ‘project’, ‘resistance’ and ‘legitimising’ identities in the football universe.

Ruddock (2013) uses Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarfeld’s concept of opinion leaders to understand the functioning of ‘media centres’, a notion he borrows from Couldry (2003). As Ruddock (2013) explains, media centres are “places that blend cultural rituals — daily practices that buttress deep-seated convictions about the way that life should be — and quotidian media habits” (p. 154). Such media centres make “the presence of media and cultural industries indispensable to social life” (Ruddock, 2013, p. 154) and they form in this sense the foundation of media power. It is through ‘media practices’ — ordinary habits whereby people experience many aspects of their lives in relation to media — that the ultimate convergence between social rituals and media habits comes into being. As Ruddock (2013) explains, we live in “a world where it is now rare to have one without the other” (p. 156).

Ruddock (2013) uses such a framework to analyse, in particular, the ways that supporters of the Melbourne Heart, an association football club founded in Australia in 2009, have fabricated traditions and myths, strongly marshalled by skilled ‘opinion leaders’ within these sport cultures. Opinion leaders within football fan cultures are “people who employ media resources to win peer recognition and exert authority over other fans” (p. 154). Specifically, Ruddock explores how the Yarraside, a

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group of highly committed supporters, helped a new sports-media franchise to achieve its goals and the singular role of ‘Liverpool Red’, their leader, in this process. As he explains,

They!do!this!by!leading!opinion!towards!the!view!that!a!new,!privately!

owned!club!is!not!an!opportunistic!commercial!gambit,!but!a!worthy!

attempt!to!command!genuine!loyalty!in!keeping!with!the!traditions!of!

soccer!fandom.!(Ruddock,!2013,!p.!157)!

According to Ruddock, when the opinion-leader concept was created, it offered a radically different perception of media power, in which power was horizontal and “‘flowed’ in often surprising directions because it was mediated by people” (p. 155, emphasis in original). These leaders tended to pay attention to advertising and news, in the hope of achieving peer esteem, which they often received: Katz and Lazarsfeld’s interviews suggested that when shopping, voting or interpreting current events, people were more influenced by the opinions of those they knew than they were by media content. As Ruddock asserts, “the apparent partnership between media and opinion leaders masked a deeper form of media dependency, where access to social status rested on access to media resources” (p. 155). A similar type of mediated power would be in play now with access to new-media resources and to other people, through these resources, becoming integral parts of public life and, in this case, in the public life of football supporters.

According to Ruddock, ‘the most conspicuous finding’ of the analysis that he did from 521 answers to a thread at bigfooty.com about the creation of the club was that reflections on marketing were largely positive. Fans were more interested in the prospective name of the club and the strip colours than anything else. As he explains:

By! and! large,! [...]! posters! saw! the! spectacle! constructed!before! their!

eyes,! and! were! happy! to! accept! it! into! the! Australian! sporting!

landscape.!Discussions! about!marketing!were! slightly!more! frequent!

than! debates! over! potential! signings,! but! far! outstripped! others! on!

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how! the! club! could! profit! from! a! history! of! soccer! fan! rivalry! that!

predated! not! only! the! Heart! but! also! the! A3League! itself.! (Ruddock,!

2013,!p.!159)!

For Ruddock, the thread supports Crawford’s (2004) claims that “the phatic pleasures of fan gossip are increasingly occupied with discussions of the commercial aspects of sport, with the business of sport having become a source of cultural capital rather than irritation” (p. 159). This harmony with football’s business-oriented model of cultural organisation was expressed in Liverpool Red’s discourse: the supporter asserted in posts analysed by Ruddock (2013) that “the group generally engages with the commercial aspects of the club on positive terms” (Ruddock, 2013, p. 160).

Millward (2013), on the other hand, is more interested in how social-network sites “have expanded the ability of social actors to change the relationship between media and power” (p. 140), focusing on ‘project’, ‘resistance’ and ‘legitimising’ identities that may emerge within football fan cultures in ‘the network society’. Millward (2013) adopts Castells’ theoretical framework to investigate Manchester United fans’ responses to their club’s takeover by the US-based Glazer family. Millward (2013) concentrates most of his discussion on the creation of the new club FC United of Manchester, which for him represents the manifestation of a ‘project’ identity in the context of football. Millward analyses a couple of conversations of FC United fans and asserts that:

[...]!along!with!match3day!attendance,!this!forum!bolsters!the!group’s!

motives!for!collective!action.!The!project!identity!in!evidence!here!is!a!

cross3fertilization! of! fandom! and! activism,! with! websites! serving! as!

meeting! places! for! group! members! to! discuss! tactical! repertoires.!

Such! websites! carry! a! heavy! symbolic! value! that! serves! to! renew!

political! attitudes! and! to! allow! people! to! debate! club! strategies.!

(Millward,!2013,!p.!145)!!

Millward (2013) also analyses ‘resistance’ identities emerging in such a context through an exploration of the ‘Green and Gold’ movement, and

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later, he discusses ‘legitimising’ identities, exemplifying them also through online communications taking place in fan networks and forums. In fact, he uses the example of one ‘opinion leader’, who is a blogger, and expressed a consumer-oriented relationship with Manchester United in an Internet thread. The same supporter, according to Millward, displayed later a resistance identity, altering his line of argument and supporting the Green and Gold movement. This case and others demonstrate, for Millward, how “identities, on a collective basis, are potentially powerful, but they are also immensely changeable and certainly far from fixed in time, space or culture” (p. 149).

Ruddock’s and Millward’s studies indicate the multiple uses that football fans have made of digital technologies. They express rather well how these ‘opinion leaders’ and other fans often reinforce media powers and adopt legitimising identities in their online fandom practices. Indeed, as Millward (2013) asserts, “no matter how impressive the number of people taking part in various fan-led protests, it is almost certain that the majority of supporters display legitimizing identities” (p. 147). Importantly, they also stress the existent “synthesis between media-related opinion leading and embodied fandom” (Ruddock, 2013, p. 154), not separating what is going on in online fan cultures from embodied practices. In this sense, they suggest how online fandom practices have become integral to the public life of football supporters, whether for the banalities of the ordinary football-related chat, for fabricating new traditions, for mobilisation and coordination efforts or even for expressing ‘resistance’ and ‘project’ identities.

The presence of these leaders is also a striking feature of the data sets collected here. The first signal of it is found in how different accounts contribute in different ways to the conversations. As Bruns and Stieglitz (2014) explain,

most!communicative!situations!on!Twitter!and!other!platforms!will!be!

distributed! in! keeping! with! a! power! law:! a! comparatively! small!

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number!of!highly!active!users!are!likely!to!dominate!the!dataset,!while!

a!much!larger!‘long!tail’!(Anderson,!2006)!of!far!less!active!users!will!

be!responsible!for!a!smaller!volume!of!tweets.!(pp.!73374)!

A long-tail distribution varies, however, depending on the context under analysis. For instance, Bruns and Stieglitz (2014) compared archives collected from diverse hashtags and perceived that in cases such as #occupy and #masterchef, 10% of the most active accounts contributed to more than 60% of the messages, while #stopkony and #royalwedding, which were related to publics gathered in more occasional situations, exhibited a less pronounced domination by leading users. For the authors, the distribution of the messages in a pronounced way serves, then, as evidence of a well-established elite group of users who dominate the conversations around particular topics; it may also point to the presence of genuine community structures, centred on such leading accounts.

In the case under analysis here, 11 of the 12 data sets have leading users that dominate more than 60% of the interactions, reaching up to 75% for some clubs. Figure 5.6 shows that the only club that has a less pronounced distribution is Botafogo, which may indicate that its supporters do not use Twitter that much as a tool for community articulation or that the keywords adopted here may not have reached the most articulated users within this team’s torcida. Furthermore, of these 12 clubs, Botafogo is the one often seen as the least popular, with fewer fans and whose supporter base is hardly mobilised, even when the club is doing well. In 2013, for instance, the team was going toe-to-toe with a few other contestants for the Brazilian Championship’s trophy and, notwithstanding, at the end of the season, the club had only the 23rd best average attendance in the country, with a mere 9,723 supporters per match (Cruzeiro teve melhor média de público no ano de 2013, 2014).

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!Figure%5.6:%Contribution%to%the%conversations%of%different%groups%of%accounts.%Leading%accounts:%top%1%%most%active;%Highly%active%accounts:%following%9%;%Least%active:%bottom%90%.%

Then, with the exception of Botafogo, the pronounced distribution that characterises my data sets reveals that groups of users exist in each club network that are especially ‘talkative’ and dominate most of the conversations. The other suggestive point about these highly engaged accounts is that some of them are not only ‘chatty’, but they also have a strong cultural resonance within the rest of their communities. Here, I mean how an even smaller group within this elite receives most of the genuine replies and retweets in these Twitter collections. We can call what these accounts have a type of cultural authority in the sense that some of these highly engaged users are not only active, but also have visibility and influence in the discourses circulating more broadly within these publics.

Table 5.5 displays the accounts with higher levels of cultural authority within the Atlético data set (I highlighted the fan-run ones). In such a context, what these accounts say is more likely to be retweeted or strike up a conversation than what is contributed by any other user’s account. While some accounts may be more active (tweeting more messages) than the most influential accounts, the accounts in Table 5.5 are those

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reasonably chatty (top 10%) that have an audience because their messages generally are met with retweets and replies.

Table%5.5:%30%accounts%with%the%highest%levels%of%cultural%authority%within%the%Atlético%data%set.%FanZrun%accounts%highlighted.%

Account& Tweets&posted& Retweets&and&replies&received&

catleticomg# 267# 13157#

sitedogalo# 565# 10759#

10Ronaldinho# 7# 6228#

Menor_Polado# 528# 5441#

AtleticoMGHonra# 1727# 3243#

EsteAlguemBola# 28# 3170#

AtleticanoCitou# 544# 3041#

SuperesportesMG# 432# 2996#

LeoGomide# 82# 2991#

SaoPauloFC# 26# 2872#

MiltonNeves# 308# 2646#

fred_kong# 25# 2635#

atleticonews# 831# 2627#

cmm103019174# 148# 2533#

zeca1908# 222# 2282#

AIexandreKaIiI# 134# 2231#

webradiogalo# 440# 2121#

globoesportecom# 112# 2101#

Canelada_FC# 66# 1970#

Alec_Gol# 514# 1882#

infocam13# 823# 1882#

goleada_info# 391# 1766#

Voz_doGalo# 661# 1748#

Igortep# 87# 1676#

CrisCastroGalo# 734# 1542#

albertoliveCAM# 794# 1412#

Oledobrasil# 21# 1399#

tvgalo# 138# 1398#

ESPNagora# 170# 1396#

rafalincoln_# 120# 1381#

Yet, another point worth a brief analysis is the most retweeted messages, which give an idea of what these accounts are tweeting and what kind of content has such resonance within football clubs’ communities. @catleticomg, a fan-run account, for instance, is indeed behind many of the most retweeted posts within the Atlético data set. Most of its popular messages are either shared expressions of the torcida (such as stadium chants and cries) or jokes about Atlético’s city rival, Cruzeiro (or both). For instance, on November 11, 2013, @catleticomg tweeted an excerpt from a

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new chant that, at the time, had become very popular with Galo’s supporter base:

@catleticomg:)E)pra)Marrocos)eu)que)vou,)o)Mundial)eu)vou)vencer,)e)as)

Maria) eu) vou) zuar,) quando) chegar) em) BH,) Vamos) Vamos) meu) Galo)

♫♫♫♫♫♫♫!!

(‘I’m!the!one!going!to!Morocco,!where!I!will!win!the!cup,!and!when!I!

come!back!to!BH,!I!will!tease!Marias.!Let’s!go,!let’s!go!my!Galo’)!!

This chant talks about Galo’s qualification for the 2013 FIFA Club World Cup, stating that they were the ones going to Morocco (because they were the Libertadores champions), where they would be indeed successful. It stressed that they would make fun of Cruzeiro’s supporters when they got back to BH (the club hometown), concluding with Vamos Vamos meu Galo, something like ‘Let’s go, let’s go my Galo’.

This chant embraces many values and expressions shared by Atlético’s torcida. The idea of referring to the club as ‘my Galo’ encompasses proximity, a belonging relationship: it is not only Galo; it is mine. The Morocco chant is also a representation of the joking relationships that characterise many Brazilian torcidas’ cries (as I briefly discussed in Chapter 4) and, particularly, the dynamics of Galo supporters in relation to Cruzeiro fans. As these cultures are male-dominated environments, most ambiguity of the jokes and cries revolve around questioning the masculinity of the opponent. And, in Atlético’s case, this takes a particular fashion, which is calling Cruzeiro’s supporters Maria, the Portuguese version of Mary, a female name. For Atlético fans, city derbies against Cruzeiro are João vs Maria matches, being João the Portuguese version of John, a male name. Regarding this example, one may see it as just a representation of the use of new technologies for announcing the type of bland elements of football-related cultural identities, which, Millward (2013) argues, are what most online conversations are about. On the other side, this is also an indication of the interweaving of mediated and in-

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person fandom activities: the same chant that is sung in the stadium is also ‘sung’ on Twitter.

On November 14, @catleticomg tweeted the same message again, amplifying its cultural resonance. In total, during the period I collected the data, both messages had been retweeted altogether 372 times, and by February 2015, they had reached more than a thousand retweets. Another interesting example of what has cultural resonance is a post tweeted on November 14 in which @catleticomg congratulates Cruzeiro for its Brazilian Championship title:

@catleticomg:) Tenho) que) parabenizar) a) torcida) do) Cruzeiro) por)

respeitar) a) lei) do) silêncio.) Todo) mundo) queria) ter) uma) torcida) rival)

assim.)Obrigado!))

(‘I! have! to! congratulate! Cruzeiro’s! supporters! for! not! disturbing! the!

peace.!Everybody!wants!to!have!a!rival!torcida!like!this.!Thank!you!’)!

This message was retweeted 242 times in the data-collection period and makes fun of how supposedly ‘quiet’ Cruzeiro’s torcida was after the club became the Brazilian champion of that season. Making fun of the quietness of a torcida is also a way to downgrade it, but particularly pointing out their lack of devotion. As I approached in Chapter 4, the devotion language is particularly associated with the new movements’ ethos of articulating passion with madness, rather than with danger. For instance, in July 2013, when Atlético defeated Olimpia, from Paraguay, in the final of the Libertadores, a video that circulated on the Internet showed how the entire city of Belo Horizonte ‘went crazy’ with fireworks, loud car horns and cries after the end of the match, around midnight on a Wednesday50. In this sense, Atlético fans were ‘proud’ of disturbing the peace of the city as a signal of how much they cared about their club.

Another interesting dynamic is actually the presence of Cruzeiro’s supporters among the accounts with higher levels of cultural authority

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!50#Available#at:#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka1vIxWeMCA#(accessed#February#20,#2015).#

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within the Atlético data set (which actually happens with all clubs). @EsteAlguemBola is one of these. Highly popular fan-run accounts talk about their own clubs and also often make fun of their rivals. Because messages that express rivalry, especially city rivalries, are largely retweeted, such fans assume prominent positions in both data sets (their clubs’ and their rivals’).

This analysis revealed how a small number of accounts dominate the football-related interactions on Twitter in Brazil. Among such highly engaged accounts, there are official channels of the clubs, players, conventional media accounts, journalists and supporters. It was highly expected that supporters would be among the most active accounts, being especially ‘talkative’ about their clubs, but what this analysis also indicated is that they have achieved striking levels of cultural authority, by not only ‘chatting’ frequently about their clubs, but also being heavily retweeted by their peers. Among the top 30 accounts with the largest cultural authority within the Atlético data set (displayed on Table 5.5), 14 are supporters. I also analysed the following 70 accounts, and in total, 45 of the 100 most replied/retweeted ones are indeed fan-run profiles.

The highly retweeted messages within the Atlético data set revolve largely around the banalities of the ordinary football-related chat, embracing a typical supporters’ language, and concerning mostly in-jokes, rivalry-loaded comments and community-shared catchphrases and expressions. Such commentaries often reproduce unequal power relations, like a deep-seated heterocentric environment, but these everyday exchanges also establish the grounds in which such communities are built. I come back to this point later in Chapter 6, but playful conversations characterised by elements such as anecdote, humour and witticism (like the football-related messages I just analysed) are generally the shape assumed by non-purposive sociable moments marked by what Simmel (1949, 1950) called sociability.

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For Simmel (1950), sociability is a distinct social form that “distils [...] out of the realities of social life the pure essence of association, of the associative process as a value and a satisfaction” (p. 255). Sociability is, therefore, about the sheer company of others and differs tremendously from the results of instrumental communication. Rationalism, Simmel (1949) says, finds no content there and often dismisses it as empty idleness, ‘just’ small talk.

In this sense, the comic and witty messages shared by football supporters are indeed ‘useless’. And that is actually what made them the grounds from which such communities are built. It is because of the pure pleasures of exchanging messages whose content is less important than their form, and the fact that the pleasures of fan gossip come from the banalities of expressing a shared passion through in-jokes and stadium chants, that those supporters become more than opinion leaders, being rather community leaders. In this context, the new supporting leaders are therefore fundamental in the formations of others’ opinions, and above all, dictate the tone of conviviality that demarcates such groups. Next, I discuss how these leaders are similar to the regulars of what Oldenburg (1991) called third places.

Furthermore, many of these community leaders are also involved with more organised projects of amateur content production related to clubs and torcidas. From this exploration, it became clear to me that the supporters behind such accounts were important entry points for comprehending the dynamics of these networked collectivisms, and of other digital practices that fans have engaged in, which go beyond Twitter. Because of their cultural significance, I selected the fans to interview for this study from Atlético’s community leaders, identified during my exploratory analysis of the Twitter data sets.

In selecting the participants, I gave preference to those engaging in more articulated projects of media production (besides keeping influential

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Twitter accounts) because these supporters could provide me with insights into the community dynamics, but also inform the research for my next chapter, which focuses on fan-run original content initiatives. @zeca1908 and three supporters collaborating at @webradiogalo (both included in Table 5.5) were interviewed. Another fan among the top-50 accounts with higher cultural authority (@faelslim, who runs @cam1sado2e) accepted the invitation. In addition, two other fans were selected from an analysis of the URLs shared in Atlético-related conversations. In this analysis, I explored what domains are mostly shared within the data sets, which generated Table 5.6, which comprises the results for all clubs. Even though conventional media domains were the most shared ones in the form of URLs in the posts considered here, which demonstrates their persistent role as central informational sources within football cultures, every club had a few alternative-media domains that were relatively well linked. Two Atlético supporters running two projects that were particularly popular within the club’s torcida (the top two alternative-media domains most shared in Atlético’s case) also took part in the study. I discuss this more properly in Chapter 6, but a couple of other fans were also selected from suggestions made by the interviewees.

In sum, these opinion leaders are mediators of media power as Ruddock (2013) argues, they may be mediators of identity power as Millward (2013) discusses, and they are also central to understanding the general tone of conviviality that characterises such communities. Next, I explore how these leaders resemble the regulars that Oldenburg (1991) talks about, and then I discuss how they have become central for the coordination and articulation of the dispersed fan communities found on the Internet today. I consider that Inferno Alvinegro and some of the practices these supporters have engaged in are more humorous and mundane ways of challenging the increasing rationalisation of this sector. These practices express the power of identity that Millward (2013) takes from Castell’s framework, but in a rather ordinary and parodical form.

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Table% 5.6:% % TopZ20% domains% shared% on% Twitter% footballZrelated% interactions% in% Brazil.% Dark% grey:%conventional%media;%light%grey:%alternative%media;%white:%socialZmedia%websites.%

Domain& Total& Percentage&

globoesporte.globo.com# 218,135# 12.7%#

facebook.com# 135,616# 7.9%#

esporte.uol.com.br# 105,060# 6.1%#

twitter.com# 99,630# 5.8%#

lancenet.com.br# 83,866# 4.9%#

youtube.com# 64,538# 3.8%#

esportes.terra.com.br# 59,995# 3.5%#

instagram.com# 53,205# 3.1%#

mg.superesportes.com.br# 38,350# 2.2%#

espn.uol.com.br# 32,691# 1.9%#

gazetaesportiva.net# 31,345# 1.8%#

foursquare.com# 29,011# 1.7%#

futnet.com.br# 27,989# 1.6%#

netvasco.com.br# 26,464# 1.5%#

supervasco.com# 24,704# 1.4%#

meutimao.com.br# 24,685# 1.4%#

sportv.globo.com# 24,163# 1.4%#

zerohora.clicrbs.com.br# 21,539# 1.3%#

estadao.com.br# 18,758# 1.1%#

ask.fm# 18,688# 1.1%#

They$are$like$Oldenburg’s$regulars$

The core group of supporters discussed over this chapter has similar features to the regulars found at Oldenburg’s (1991) third places. Oldenburg (1991) extends Simmel’s work, especially Simmel’s (1949, 1950) concept of sociability, through the analysis of places in the physical world where sociable associations tend to occur. For Oldenburg (1991), third places is a “generic designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work” (p. 16). The smalltalk, humour and wit that characterise the conversations created in such spaces are seen as essential to the health of communities. Later, other scholars use the concept of third places to analyse online environments such as WELL, an early text-based chat room, and Massively Multiplayer Online Games as ‘virtual’ versions of those places that have historically served as nests for sociability such as cafés, bars, tavernas and so on (Ducheneaut, Moore, & Nickell, 2007; Rheingold, 2000[1993]; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006).

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Regulars are a common and essential feature of Oldenburg’s third places. Regulars are the ones giving these spaces their particular characters and they also assure that on any given visit some of the gang will be there (Oldenburg, 1991). According to Oldenburg (1991):

Third!places!are!dominated!by!their!regulars!but!not!necessarily!in!a!

numerical! sense.! It! is! the! regulars,! whatever! their! number! on! any!

given! occasion,! who! feel! at! home! in! a! place! and! set! the! tone! of!

conviviality.! It! is! the! regulars!whose!mood! and!manner! provide! the!

infectious!and!contagious!style!of!interaction!and!whose!acceptance!of!

new!faces!is!crucial.!(p.!34)!

When talking about the dispersed and distributed nature of groups of fans in a time of individually oriented sites, Baym (2007) mentions how, over time, “active fans will find that they bump into many of the same people wherever they go” (p. 12). There is a core group comprised of fans who enjoy a great level of cultural authority in Atlético’s case; they are the people Atlético supporters bump into on other social-network sites when talking about the club. These influential supporters are more than opinion leaders; they are also community leaders in the sense that these groups are more than just the sum of their members. Somehow, they not only lead other supporters’ opinions but they also set the tone of conviviality within the torcidas. As I analysed above, most of the top retweeted messages within the Atlético data set revolved around humour and witticism. Cruzeiro’s fans are often the target of the in-jokes, and traditional chants and expressions of the torcida are also rather popular. A comic and passionate language, characteristic of the tone of the leaders’ messages, dominates the general mood of the communities. This particularly mudane way of talking about football is also a feature of recent embodied practices engaged in by Atlético supporters. Next, I analyse how these new leaders are then also central articulators (along with other types of collectivisms) for stadium performances and other on-site activities. They have become key mediators among the distributed online communities and between them and the torcida as a whole.

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Remix,%parody%and%appropriation:%how%dispersed%footballZsupporter%

collectivisms%converge%%

Football-supporting cultures have historically been cultures of remix, appropriation and parody, even before the Internet and the emergence of online groups, as I discussed briefly in Chapter 4. A recent example of these processes that permeate all supporting cultures in Brazil (and also in South America as a whole) is the hit Brasil decíme que se siente (‘Brazil, tell me how it feels’), sung by Argentinian supporters during the 2014 World Cup (Argentines Sing of Brazil’s Humiliation, Loudly and in Rio, 2014; Hutchins, 2014; Malyon, 2014). After the event, supporters of the Brazilian football clubs Atlético-MG, Cruzeiro, Vasco, Internacional, América-MG and ABC created their own lyrics, which are chanted in the rhythm of the same melody (Leal, 2014b; Ramos, 2014). This melody is indeed based on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song Bad Moon Rising. Actually, Brasil decíme que se siente is a type of third-generation remix because the song’s tune was already notably popular in Argentina, adopted by many football clubs’ hinchadas51 before it gained new verses (which then make fun of the host and historical rival, Brazil) that were sung repeatedly by Argentines during the tournament. The Brazilian versions would be a fourth generation, if it were possible to follow exactly the path of original and derivative works in the popular-culture universe.

Countless are the chants in Brazil that reappropriate pagode and samba tunes; countless are the melodies that are repeated in diverse stadiums sung with lyrics that express each particular club culture. The networked form that these collectivisms are assuming today only strengthens these features, which are notably part of the aesthetics of networked public cultures (Russell, Ito, Richmond, & Tuters, 2008). In this context, performances, chants, campaigns and other collective actions of torcidas from all over the world have become more persistent over time, increasing even more the intertextuality that has always characterised these !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!51#The#correspondent#of#torcida#or#supporter#base#in#Argentina.#

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phenomena. Concretely, they are not so much circumscribed to a particular place and time as they used to be. Digital media is more easily stored, replicated and searchable (Baym, 2010; Boyd, 2011; Couldry, 2012a) and, in such environments, supporters purposefully upload their performances and seek new ideas from other torcidas on the Internet to appropriate them to their club cultures52. Actions that rely on the use of Jason53 masks (São Paulo), Ghostface54 masks (Atlético-MG, Figure 5.7) and warrior helmets (Fluminense) are some other recent examples related to these reappropriations and to the satirical and remixed characters of supporting cultures55.

The action I analyse here is part of this context. Originally conceived by supporters of another Brazilian club (Internacional) and also adopted by other teams (Ceará, for instance), the idea was reappropriated and became a ‘tradition’ of Atlético’s torcida since 2012, being performed repeatedly since then. In addition to being part of such an environment in which remix and parody come to the forefront, strengthened even more by the networked aesthetics, Inferno Alvinegro is also over determined by the socio-economic context that I have been discussing throughout this thesis.&

In a comment to a news article about the performance preparations, a supporter expresses how this and other actions organised by fans represent strategies they have found to deal with an environment that has, each day, become more rationalised, commoditised and plasticised:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!52#An#example#of#this:#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZwcO8QW9OE#(accessed#November#30,#2014).#In#

this#video,#a#new#supporter#movement#of#Atlético#fans#plans#a#new#chant#that#they#are#taking#from#another#

context#and#adapting#to#the#club.#New#lyrics#are#proposed#to#match#the#same#melody.##53#Jason#Voorhees,#the#fictional#character#from#the#Friday#the#13th#series.#

54#The#fictional#character#of#the#Scream#series.#

55#More#about#these#actions#are#found#at#http://www.lancenet.com.br/fluminense/guerraBFluminenseB

contara_0_923307904.html#—#Fluminense’s#warrior#helmets#action#(accessed#November#30,#2014)#—#and#at#

http://www.clicrbs.com.br/blog/jsp/default.jsp?source=DYNAMIC,blog.BlogDataServer,getBlog&uf=2&local=18&

template=3948.dwt&section=Blogs&post=226139&blog=696&coldir=1&topo=3994.dwt#—#São#Paulo’s#adoption#

of#Jason#as#a#species#of#mascot#of#the#team#(accessed#November#30,#2014).#

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%Figure% 5.7% (a–c):% #CampanhaMascarasNoHorto56% (‘Mask% Campaign% at% Horto’;% Horto% is% the% suburb%where%Atlético’s%stadium%is%situated).%Photos%by%Daniel%Teobaldo.%

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!56#For#the#performance,#supporters#of#Atlético#dressed#up#as#‘Death’#and#with#the#traditional#Ghostface#masks#to#

create#an#aesthetic#impact#and#‘scare’#the#opponent,#TijuanaBMEX,#in#a#match#by#the#2013#Copa#Libertadores#da#

América.#The#creative#performance#almost#backfired#when#TijuanaBMEX#had#a#penalty#kick#in#the#last#minute#of#

the#match#that#if#converted#would#eliminate#Galo#from#the#competition.#The#goalkeeper#defended#it#though.#I#go#

back#to#this#folkloric#day#in#Chapter#6.#

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I!am!tricolor!(carioca57)!and!I!think!what!Galo’s!(Ghostface!masks)!and!

Flu’s!torcidas!(warrior!helmets)!are!doing!is!superb.!This!is!Brazilian!

football!! Not! this! thing! that! FIFA! wants! to! do! at! the! World! Cup,!

banning! most! of! the! torcidas’! forms! of! expression.! Absurd!! I! hope!

Fluminense!will!be!the!champion,!but!if!it!does!not!happen,!I!hope!it!is!

Galo.! Because! what! the! torcidas! of! these! two! clubs! are! doing! is!

marvellous.!I!hope!that!here!in!Brazil!we!always!have!this!cool!rivalry!

with! a! lot! of!mockery! and! no! fights.! Today,! torcidas! are! doing! their!

role,!but!football!itself!is!becoming!something!totally!commercialised,!

with!too!many!rules,!and!one!day!we!are!going!to!have!only!robots!at!

the!stadiums.!Go!Flu!!Go!Galo!!(Santos,!2013d)!

I use the organisation of the first performance here to qualitatively explore how these distinct platforms are adopted in a distributed way that is, at the same time, quasi-coherent and articulated. These convergence points are actually supporters and subgroups that coordinate in a non-hierarchical way the practices and actions of the torcidas. The central supporters and groups and those on the fringes are not mobilised sporadically. They are constantly in touch, through the ordinary conversations they get involved in within these multiple spaces. So much so that when a higher level of coordination and mobilisation is necessary, they quickly identify those who are the aggregators. Elen Campos, a supporter of Atlético-MG, stressed that the role played by some of these convergence points is more than mere content producers (personal communication, August 3, 2014). Even though many of them are involved in the original production of Galo-related material (explored in detail in Chapter 6), their function goes much beyond: “They are able to put people together and move, around, becoming more than texts. They are more than texts and videos. They are aggregators”, asserts Elen.

That does not mean that they are the people who always come up with the ideas. Actually, most of the time, they are not. But they are the people who other fans often resort to in the process of coordination/mobilisation of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!57#Supporter#of#Fluminense.##

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supporters’ collectives. Many of the fans on the fringes that have creative ideas for collective performances, chants, campaigns and so on seek these convergence points, which may or may not offer their support. In this sense, they are like gatekeepers within supporters’ bases.

Inferno$Alvinegro$

The performance Inferno Alvinegro consists of the deliberate action of supporters in taking to the stadium’s surroundings with flares just before the matches, especially the crucial matches. Supporters position themselves in a strategic place on the route taken by the bus that brings players and staff members to the stadium. When the bus arrives, the supporters light their flares in an orchestrated way (Figure 5.8). For the supporters, the environment and aesthetics created by the warm greeting to the athletes helps to prepare them for the ‘battle’. Furthermore, the smoke symbolises a traditional chant of the largest organised group dedicated to Atlético, Galoucura: acabou a paz, o Mineirão vai virar um inferno (The peace is over, Mineirão will become hell).

The type of flare used in the action is not allowed inside Brazilian stadiums. Called pisca in Brazil, the pyrotechnic device has no explosion and is distinct from maritime flares like the one that recently killed a fan at a Corinthians’ match (Fonseca, 2013). Pisca, on the other hand, is seen as a relatively low-hazard device: it produces only light and coloured smoke, lasts for a shorter period and has a less intense glow than regular flares.

The performance always happens outdoors (in an avenue near the stadium) and is followed by the police. The same occurs in the events organised by Internacional supporters (Semler, 2013). There have never been any incidents during the execution of Inferno Alvinegro, but safety

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%Figure%5.8%(aZf):%Supporters%performing%Inferno%Alvinegro%on%multiple%occasions%in%2013%and%2014.%Photos%by%Daniel%Teobaldo.%

issues have been discussed, including by supporters. Even though this aspect of the action may be seen as controversial, especially for outsiders, my objective here is to analyse how its organisation unfolds because it seems to be repeated in other types of campaigns and actions.&

The fan who first suggested the idea justified it as an attempt to include as many supporters as possible in the celebrations of the torcida. The initial message reads58:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!58#I#will#translate#some#messages#in#this#section,#but#bear#in#mind#that#they#were#written#in#a#much#more#informal#

language#than#you#will#find#them.#Besides#my#own#incompetence#in#EnglishBbased#Internet#slang,#typos,#lack#of#

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User:!User!1!

Message:!Guys,!

Many!of!you!surely!have!already!seen!other!clubs!doing!this!and!it’s!a!

very! interesting! idea.! They! [those! involved! in! the! organisation! of!

football]! are! limiting! our! performances! more! and! more! inside! the!

pitch,!and!on!the!stands,!so!we!can!make!a!big!party!outside!instead.!!

Following!is!a!link!to!one!of!the!times!Inter’s!torcida!did!it:!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8fxubPwkSI!!

It’s!easy!to!get!these!devices!and!they!are!not!that!expensive.!Close!to!

Mercado!Novo!there!is!a!store,!Minas!Pirotecnica:!Avenida!Bias!Fortes!

1437,!Barro!Preto!

Worth! taking! any! type! of! flare! or! fireworks,! i.e.,! pyrotechnics! in!

general.!

I!believe!that!if!40!or!50!supporters!took!part!and!each!one!bought!2!

or!3!flares,!it!would!be!AWESOME!!

The thread, started on July 24, 2012, rendered 641 answers and the last comment was posted on May 17, 2013, by the initial creator of the topic (data from September 30, 2014, the day that the platform was discontinued). The author, writing after such a performance had become incorporated in the ordinary practices of the torcida, asserted that the action had been great and that the community was surviving indeed — a comment that was part of a context when Google had already announced Orkut’s discontinuation.

The first act took place in a match against Santos, three days after the beginning of the collaborative process of planning the Street of Flames. The action later was renamed with more specific expressions that are part of the shared vocabulary of Galo supporters. It became Inferno Alvinegro, which represents very well the traditional chant of the torcida mentioned above. The idea was reposted on Facebook on groups of the club’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!punctuation,#acronyms#and#abbreviations#that#are#common#in#such#conversations#may#not#have#respective#

versions#in#other#languages,#which#makes#it#harder#to#translate#them#appropriately.##

#

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supporters and also on the walls of fan pages dedicated to Galo. The supporters told each other about these developments:

User:!User!1!

Message:!I!had!the!idea!and!I!already!posted!it!once!

now! it! is!echoing!on! facebook!and! I!have!already!some!other!people!

with!me!in!this!party!!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!At!GALO’s!wall!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/217266184959152/!

!

User:!User!2!

Message:!https://www.facebook.com/groups/luciano.bmg/!!

this!is!the!largest!galo3related!group!on!fb!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!guys!are!scheduling!on!face!

it’s!getting!serious!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/217266184959152/465971113

421990/?comment_id=465972236755211&notif_t=group_comment!!

!

User:!User!3!

Message:!Event!via!face!

https://www.facebook.com/events/179116712220196/?context=cre

ate!!

It quickly became an event scheduled on Facebook and publicised simultaneously on Twitter. Over the thread, many supporters give their ‘ups’, an expression used when one posts an answer with the purposeful intention of making a topic rise to the top of the community’s threads list, and ergo, give it visibility. They discuss how to get more publicity for the idea and they quickly figure out that the solution is to resort to the organised groups, who become part of the planning, and to ‘famous’ fans, many of them included in Table 5.5. Here are a couple of other answers to

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the topic that reveal how they have a shared understanding about the importance of these convergence points for situations like this:

User:!User!1!

Message:!

https://www.facebook.com/Movimento105.Oficial/posts/44704144

1984398?notif_t=feed_comment!!

The! guys! from!105! [new!movement]! liked! the! idea! too! and!we!may!

have!a!cool!party!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!it’s!already!on!Twitter!the!event!!

https://twitter.com/infocam13!

!

User:!User!4!

Message:! someone! knows! any! twitter! or! famous! person! that! may!

forward!this!idea?!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!it’s!everybody!posting!that!counts…eventually,!it!reaches!the!

guys.!

it’s!hard.!by!now,!only!infocam![@infocam13]!

!

User:!User!5!

Message:! so,! you! mean! like! the! guys! from! web! radio! galo!

[@webradiogalo]! and! fael! lima! [@faelslim]! from! camisa! doze!

[@cam1sado2e]?!

!

User:!User!4!

Message:!yeah!!that’s!it.!Try!talk!to!them.!Ask!Fael!if!he!can!post!it!at!

camisadoze.!If!so,!surely!many!people!will!see!and!support!the!idea.!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:! camisa!12,! 105!and! força! jovem! [organised! group]! already!

know!

!

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User:!User!4!

Message:!it!would!be!nice!if!they!post!it!on!their!sites!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!True!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!it’s!gonna!work!

it’s!getting!there.!Imagine!in!the!peak!time!on!face!

haha!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:! other! people! are! talking! to! galoucura…105,! sempre! galo!

[new movement],! fja! [acronym of the above-mentioned força jovem]!already!know.!Tell!everybody!guys!! User:!User!1!

Message:!FAEL!WILL!POST!ON!TWITTER!

CAMISA!12!!

UP!

!

User:!User!6!

Message:!Talk!to!other!guys!with!many!followers!on!twitter! like!Igor!

[@Igortep]!from!98FC…!

In these messages, the supporter who suggested the performance, together with those who first got involved in the discussion, seek those who they consider to be the disseminators of ideas within the torcida: organised groups and the new leaders. In this sequence, they start to set the exact place, time and flare colours that they would use:

User:!User!7!

Message:!I!haven’t!seen!anybody!talking!about!the!exact!spot.!Would!it!

be!at!Silviano!Brandão!(an!avenue!close!to!the!stadium),!at!that!corner!

pub!in!front!of!the!gallery?!

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User:!User!8!

Message:!I’m!always!at!Chef!Túlio![a!bar!at!the!vicinity]!until!the!time!

the!bus!comes!by…I’ll!bring!three!flares.!!

!

User:!User!8!

Message:!Have!u!decided!the!colour!of!the!flares???!

!

User:!User!6!

Message:! At! the! face! event! they’re! saying! that! we! should! take! all!

colours!but!I!think!it!won’t!work.!it’s!gonna!be!weird…!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!Those!bringing! flares,! you! should!be! there! at! 7!p.m.! in! the!

corner!of!Pitangui!with!M.!Montijo.!7!p.m.!so!we!can!start!to!organise!

everything!until!the!team!comes!by!around!8p.m.!

!

User:!User!9!

Message:!To!be!even!better!organised,!we! should! create!a! team! that!

will!inform!everyone!of!the!exact!position!of!the!bus!and!communicate!

with!people!that!will!be!at!the!other!points!!!!

!

User:!User!1!

Message:!yeah,!to!get!a!good!sense,!the!team!will!get!together!during!

the!afternoon!before!the!match!and!later!we!will!concentrate!there!to!

orient!and!instruct!other!fans!

And in this way, the thread unfolds, with ideas being improved and recreated. The smallest details of the performance are planned and the ideas posted on other platforms are brought to the discussion as well. The possibility that the police may prevent the use of flares in the surroundings of the stadium is considered and lamented by supporters. Many of them have a feeling that the ordinary practices of the torcidas are being undermined in this new football economy. Others argue that the police officers are doing their job and that even though sometimes it may look silly, their actions are grounded in the Sports Fans Statute (discussed

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in Chapter 3). Others repost a photo that one player took from inside the bus and which was posted on Twitter. Later, videos appear, as do links to a small amount of traditional-media coverage of the performance.

Since then, Inferno Alvinegro has continued to be planned and executed, and has become part of the performative traditions of the torcida, above all, in deciding matches59. In many other recent actions (such as the above-mentioned #CampanhaMascarasNoHorto), the ideas have also come up through the online groups, not necessarily suggested by the convergence points; however, the convergence points are quickly called on in the coordination efforts. The personal publics (Schmidt, 2014) of high-centrality supporters on Twitter are then mobilised by networked collectivisms that know exactly the status and prestige of the regulars within the torcida.

Conclusion%

Over this chapter, I discussed the current formation of online football fandom communities in Brazil. I started with an exploration of a large data set of Twitter conversations, which suggested that:

•! online football fandom cultures follow strong temporal rhythms, which are weaved into the public life of supporters that experience football mostly in a mediated fashion, but also into the lives of those who are co-present with the show

•! in such networked and distributed environments, particular supporters have emerged as cultural authorities around which groups of more dedicated fans gather online, especially on Twitter.

In the particular case of Brazilian football fan groups, these opinion leaders are well-known supporters, who have been around for quite some !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!59#One#of#the#largest#Inferno1Alvinegros#was#the#one#before#the#match#against#São#Paulo#in#the#round#of#16#of#the#

2013#Copa#Libertadores.#A#video#of#it#is#found#at:#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjnqvT6pHrQ#(accessed#

September#30,#2014).#

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time. In the case of Atlético, some were even part of NetG@lo (discussed in Chapter 4), a fan community that originally formed in the early 1990s in a BBS and later on became an organised group. A few have achieved such a status faster and this generally involves the production of some type of innovative and unique content that becomes popular among their clubs’ supporters; for example, Web Rádio Galo, whose creators joined Atlético-related online communities when Facebook and Twitter started to take Orkut’s place as the dominant social-network sites for football-related conversations (in 2011, to be precise).

In previous research, these opinion leaders have been approached as mediators of media power (Ruddock, 2013). For Ruddock (2013), a sports-media opinion leader is “someone who uses online communities and other media resources to achieve an image of authority by sharing news, analysis and general guidance” (p. 163). I argued that the supporters’ new leaders are both mediators of media power and identity power, being fans who are on Twitter not only for peer recognition but also for sociability purposes. In this sense, they are like the regulars that Oldenburg talks about. Their jokes are the ones with strong cultural resonance; their commentaries are largely retweeted (the most retweeted account within the Atlético data set is indeed a fan, @catleticomg); and they set the tone of conviviality, assuming a similar role to third places’ regulars (Oldenburg, 1991). They are the people who active supporters bump into wherever they go online.

They also serve as convergence points, particularly important for the articulation and coordination of these groups in a time of dispersed fan communities. Other supporters are very aware of the social-media attention economy, seeking indeed the support of these leaders in their ordinary mobilisation efforts for practices such as the performance Inferno Alvinegro or the #CampanhaMascarasNoHorto (Mask Campaign at Horto). As one of the fans I interviewed put it: they are more than texts and videos; they are aggregators.

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Right now, in Brazil, many of these new leaders are from Generation Y — the age range of my interviewees, for instance, went from 19 to 40 years old, with an average of 32. This means that they use technology in higher rates but they grew up in a context in which football was less commodified than it is now in Brazil (the 1980s and 1990s). Unlike the football fans discussed by Ruddock (2013), the business of the sport is a source of irritation for many. Even one of the youngest supporters I talked to, Rodolpho Victor (19 years old), expressed his disillusion with what Brazilian football is becoming: “I don’t have the patience to turn on the TV and watch Barcelona and Real Madrid. But I really enjoy going to Villa’s stadium and watching Villa Nova [a club that plays in the 4th division of the Brazilian football system] and Anapolina [4th division club]. That’s the kind of Brazilian football I like.” For him, Libertadores da América (the most prestigious continental club competition in South America) represents one of his few hopes that things in Brazil will not become as they are in Europe. “There is nothing like Libertadores”, Rodolpho says, stressing the more passionate and committed style of play and the strong regional rivalries, especially between Brazilian and Argentinian clubs, that characterise the tournament.

Others accept the fact that football has become a business, but they also stress how some measures adopted in the sector are abusive. For example, Daniel Teobaldo (38 years old), who does not believe in tickets as cheap as they used to be (‘R$5 or R$10’) “because football has become an expensive business”, and as such, “there is no way to run it with tickets that cheap”. On the other side, Daniel also argues that the current prices are too expensive and impractical. But that is the state of things today, and when a new generation comes about and starts to lead these communities, a more middle-class ethos may emerge, changing the dominant values and norms.

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6! The%Digital%Productivity%of%Football%Supporters:%Formats,%Motivations%and%Styles%

The! initial! motivating! factor! behind! football! fanzines! is!enthusiasm.![...]! this!enthusiasm!may!develop!into!something!else!(a!livelihood),! or! draw! zeal! from! different! criteria! (the! necessity! of!producing! a!monthly!magazine),! but! the! essential! ingredient! is! still!passion!for!football!and!the!desire!to!express!opinion.!The!capacity!to!produce!fanzines!by!the!mid!80s!was!enhanced!by!the!commonplace!of! word! processors/personal! computers! not! only! within! the!workplace!and!education,!but!within!the!home.!Writing!with!this!new!‘mode!of!information’!allowed!the!‘ordinary’!fan!access!into!advanced!printing!technology.!As!Mark!Poster!suggests!‘computer!writing!is!the!quintessential! postmodern! linguistic! activity’! (Poster,! 1990,! p.128).!Desk! top! publishing! is! an! ideal! tool! for! the! production! of! fanzines.!The! form! of! technology! corresponds! with! the! fanzine:! ephemeral,!instantly!transformable,!and!evanescent.!

—! Richard! Haynes,! in! The) Football) Imagination:) the) rise) of)football)fanzine)culture,!1995!

In recent years, many publications in the fields of communication and cultural studies have turned to investigating the implications of the Internet and new technologies for fandom practices (Bore & Hickman, 2013; Gray, et al., 2007). Grounded on concepts such as ‘participatory culture’ and ‘convergence culture’, studies in this area have followed the developments in terms of structures and functionalities characterising information and communications technologies. As a result, investigations about online fandom cultures have, for instance, changed their focus from the Usenet and other message boards (Baym, 1999; Jenkins, 2006 [1995]), to fan-run and fan-fiction websites (Cumberland, 2002; Hellekson & Busse, 2006). More recently, academic interest has turned to how fans

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have used social-networking systems such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter (Booth, 2008; Bore & Hickman, 2013; Wood & Baughman, 2012).

These studies stand out because they help us to understand how audiences in general relate to media content in a convergent environment. For some researchers, indeed, new technologies have played a central role in the popularisation of the type of creative and productive engagement that previously used to flourish with greater expressivity within subcultures — such as among the marginalised fans of Star Trek approached by Jenkins (1992) — and that, today, has characterised the ordinary practices of wider audience segments (Booth & Kelly, 2013; Hills, 2013). The democratisation or mainstreaming of the so-called textual productivity of the fans (Fiske, 1992) has followed the popularisation of tools such as blogs, vlogs, podcasts and wikis. Other researchers have also explored the paradoxes of media production in the digital age, stressing how the dependency of the Internet economy on volunteer work has created new forms of labour exploration, including within fan communities (Andrejevic, 2005; De Kosnik, 2014; Terranova, 2000).

For diverse historical and conceptual reasons, very little has been done about the relationship between sports fans and new technologies (Gibbons & Dixon, 2010; Schimmel, et al., 2007; Vimieiro, 2013). In previous chapters, I approached some of the under-explored issues. In Chapter 2, I discussed the historical and conceptual reasons that have kept research about football- and sports-fandom cultures away from the humanities — and, as a consequence, away from digital studies. In Chapter 4, I made a closer analysis of the Brazilian environment, analysing the historical developments of collective football supporting there and paralleling the emergence of online communities with major socio-economic changes taking course in the country. I also discussed the phenomenon of digital football fandom in historical terms, approaching the differences between these collectives in two different eras: the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Internet was group-based, and the late 2000s, when online

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communities dispersed themselves with the popularisation of multiple social-network sites.

In Chapter 5, I analysed the current shape of such groups, stressing the role of the new supporting leaders as mediators of both media power and identity power. Such supporters occupy a central position in the networks formed by interactions about their clubs on Twitter, having indeed a strong cultural resonance on an everyday basis and possessing a type of cultural authority over their peers. The new leaders are also important when it comes to the tone of conviviality and the style of interactions in their communities. At the end of Chapter 5, I explored how new supporting leaders have an important role as convergence points, fundamental for the coordination and mobilisation efforts of such dispersed groups.

In this chapter, I explore the textual productivity of Brazilian football supporters, particularly focusing on projects and enterprises related to football clubs. From in-depth interviews and an analysis of the material produced by supporters of a single club, Atlético-MG, this chapter discusses the regular formats, reported motivations/aims and the approaches found in the texts (in the broader sense of the expression because here I include a range of media, such as blogs, podcasts, digital radio stations, vlogs, images.). My purpose is not to exhaust all forms, motivations and approaches that exist in the Brazilian context, especially because my empirical data includes only material related to a single club. My aim is, rather, to pave the way, to start a conversation that may take us to a better understanding and debate about the topic, above all, from a communication approach.

Textual%productivity%

In Chapter 2, I argued, with Schimmel and colleagues (2007), that research into pop-culture fandom has a longer history than sports-fandom

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studies60. Pop-culture scholars generally attribute to the letters page of Hugo Gernsback’s magazine Amazing Stories (1926) the ‘birth’ of the fandom culture focused on science fiction (Coppa, 2006; Jenkins, 1992). The letters page worked as a public forum where fans interacted with each other and with writers and editors about the published stories. Amazing Stories enabled, for instance, the organisation of the first regional conventions of science-fiction fans in the United States. In this context, fans also started to get organised and produce their own texts. In 1930, for example, the first science-fiction fanzine, The Comet, came out; its existence helped to compensate for the irregular publication of the professional magazines during the Great Depression (Coppa, 2006). Fan texts filled in such gaps through commentaries about the professional magazines’ stories, amateur fiction written by fans, news, gossip, debates and so on. A type of fan labour started to take shape, resulting in material artefacts, or, in other words, the fans’ textual productivity.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since this period of incipient practices, such as the first fanzines, conventions and amateur press associations zines; the latter managed the letters generated by the other activities (Coppa, 2006). Fan fiction (and its subdivisions, including the main genres, gen, het and slash), for example, is one of the oldest fan practices that has become more broadly known and in some cases commercially explored (as with Fifty Shades of Gray). Today, a diverse range of websites are dedicated to publishing regular recaps and reviews of TV series and fans have developed a variety of artistic artefacts, such as paintings, drawings, digital animations, bricolages and posters. Fanvids, filk and cosplay are also regular practices; with the popularisation of the Internet, many of these activities were more or less transformed because the fan-fiction stories that gained archives and online libraries were now better stored, catalogued and shared (Coppa, 2006). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!60#On#the#other#hand,#organised#groups#of#football#supporters#have#probably#been#around#for#longer#than#the#

more#systematic#practices#of#popBculture#fans.#Taylor#(1992)#reports#that#as#early#as#1880,#football#supporters#

already#used#to#arrange#travel#to#football#matches#through#the#earliest#organisations#run#by#fans#—#they#were#

called#Brake#Clubs#and#first#emerged#in#Scotland.#

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Today, there is a significant body of literature that explores these products and their contents/discourses, the motivations that lead people to get involved in such activities, the communities behind these projects and many other related aspects (Bacon-Smith, 1992, 2000; Baym, 1999; Booth, 2008, 2009, 2010; Cumberland, 2002; Hellekson & Busse, 2006; Hills, 2013; Jenkins, 1992; Lamb & Veith, 1986; Lewis, 1992; Russ, 1985). Nevertheless, football fandom cultures have still not been significantly explored from the objects produced by football supporters. Perhaps, this is because football fandom cultures were historically based more on oral communciation and, as such, have generated fewer material practices based on words and textual content. Besides such immateriality, as I discussed in Chapter 2, the incorporation/resistance paradigm from audience-studies research is still dominant in the works that analyse football fan cultures (Abercrombie & Longhurst, 1998; Crawford, 2003). Such dominance is related to historical developments that created a detachment between scholarly work dedicated to sport-supporting cultures and that dedicated to media and cultural studies (Gibbons & Dixon, 2010; Schimmel, et al., 2007; Vimieiro, 2013). Therewith, the sender and receiver poles of the communication process are still seen as clearly separated, and the approximation between producer and audience that is noticeable in the spectacle/performance paradigm has not yet been sufficiently absorbed by research into the sociology of football (Crawford, 2003, 2004).

Because the supporter is rarely seen as a producer and is always studied in her/his acts of resistance/incorporation to a hegemonic media, a vast range of objects that have been produced by football fans have gone unnoticed by researchers in this area. These supporter-producers also develop their works as members of communities. In comparison with other similar entertainment-related fandom practices, these football fans’ enterprises are linked to the specificities of sport and to the historically constructed relationships between supporters and their clubs — which are

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much more loyal and ‘monogamous’ than the relationships that pop-culture fans have with their objects of devotion, for instance.

One of the few studies that analyses the productivity of sports fans (still in a pre-Internet era, though) is Haynes’ (1995). The author investigates the football fanzine culture that emerged in the context of the disasters of Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s in England. According to Haynes (1995), such fanzines were motivated by the ethos of the DIY culture and by a conviction among the supporters that it was necessary to create a forum for the expression of grievances and for the discussion of latent political issues related to football at that particular time. The fanzines that Haynes (1995) analysed were published in the late 1980s and early 1990s and were influenced by a diverse range of other projects. These projects included, for example, the football alternative magazine Foul, published between 1972 and 1976, and the pioneer fanzine The End, which was created in 1981 and combined music, football and fashion with a focus on the English north-western working-class subculture known as ‘scally’. The impact of The End, above all, is highlighted by Haynes (1995):

The! idea! that! working! class! lads! could! produce! something! on! their!

own!—�conduct! interviews,!write!skit!articles,!draw!cartoons,!etc.!—�

was!novel! and!gained! respect! from! their!peers!many!of!whom!were!

later!to!be!inspired!by!the!fanzine.!(p.!45)!

Then, from 1986, this culture gained more strength, especially because of the general and non-club-based fanzines Off the Ball and When Saturday Comes (WSC). Using previous distribution networks, such as those developed by music-culture fanzines, these publications started to sell more copies and meetings of the Football Supporters Association provided the perfect place to increase cooperation between editors and collaborators of individual titles. Fanzines had ‘guest appearances’ by writers from other publications; editors republished articles from other titles when their clubs were cited; and collaboration and copying of ideas were prevalent. According to Haynes (1995), the reasons behind the creation of

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such fanzines revolved around a need for representation: to give ‘ordinary’ fans a voice. The style of language adopted in the fanzines excelled in humour, irony and creativity. The often-bizarre titles paid homage to club traditions, obscure football anecdotes, and regularly resorted to comic transgressions of dominant values and ideas on football from both fans and wider society. All that was combined with a strong dose of the punk-culture sensibility. For Haynes (1995), then, these publications represented an incipient postmodern style of football writing that emerged in the late 1980s and gained strength in the early 1990s: from about 22 titles in 1988 to more than 600 in 1992.

Despite the innovative character of Haynes’ work, his book The Football Imagination did not have the same impact as, for instance, Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers had within pop-culture research. At Google Scholar, Textual Poachers accumulates almost 3,000 citations, whereas The Football Imagination does not even reach 100 (data from October 2014). Only recently, the productivity of sports fans came to be a focus of academic research again. McCarthy (2013, 2014), for example, has studied blogs produced by fans of gymnastics and tennis, adopting a quantitative approach in both studies. In her article from 2013, she investigates the content and functional features of 20 blogs related to these sports hosted at the platforms Blogger, Wordpress and National Examiner; in her 2014 paper, 40 questionnaires answered by bloggers of the same sporting codes are analysed. McCarthy (2013) raises a series of questions that are more or less related to my concerns in this chapter: What exactly is fan sports blogging? What are the shared codes and conventions of these cultures? What are the motivations that lead sport fans to produce content? Do bloggers who are fans try to mimic traditional sports reportage? Or is the content produced by them supplementary, seeking instead to explore paths and areas not approached by traditional journalism? McCarthy looks for answers in the rare research that investigates fans’ sports blogs to later highlight the empirical analysis that she developed.

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One of the studies McCarthy cites is a research report from Pennsylvania State University scholars (2009), which is the result of a survey with 214 sports bloggers and focuses clearly on the relationships between journalists and bloggers (adopting even a corporatist approach, I would argue). The study asks participants questions about topics such as: whether they see themselves as rivals to professional journalists; what differentiates their work from the traditional news; and whether their work could be seen as sports journalism. The researchers found that 75% of these bloggers did not see themselves as rivals to professional journalists, 40% never applied for a credential to a sporting event and only 30% had already included some type of ‘original reporting’ in their blogs (i.e. material resulting from attending games and news conferences, or interviewing athletes or coaches). Nevertheless, 85% considered that their work was a type of sports journalism and most of the participating bloggers highlighted that, through their approach (a combination of singular attitude and focus on producing independent commentaries), they offer to sports fans something that they do not find elsewhere. This research highlights that creativity and interactivity dictate the popularity of fan blogs.

From these previous findings, McCarthy (2013) seeks to advance understanding about:

•! the conventions shared by sports bloggers

•! the topics and issues they write about

•! whether their coverage changes from on-season to off-season periods

•! whether the more popular sports, which enjoy larger media coverage, have distinct coverage in blogs

•! where fans who are bloggers seek the information they need to produce content for their projects

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•! how blog platforms are used for interaction and community building.

Using content analysis, McCarthy examines 495 posts from 10 blogs about tennis and 383 texts from 10 blogs about gymnastics, which were posted in a 30-day period. Her choice of these two sports is purposeful because she wants to compare a more popular code (tennis) with one that receives less media attention (gymnastics). Two of McCarthy’s main findings are particularly relevant to this thesis. First, fan blogs constitute a kind of coverage that is regularly updated and that focuses particularly on discussions about preparation and performance. However, this coverage also approaches peripheral topics such as celebrities, governance issues and general news that are presented in a single space. This is unlike traditional media coverage, which sometimes publishes sporting issues in one section and sports celebrity gossip, for instance, in another. Second, fan bloggers, according to McCarthy (2013), “take their cues from modern mainstream sports journalism” and “the measure and nature of their output is somewhat reflective of the measure of outputs of the mainstream media through which they may largely experience sports” (p. 429). On the other hand, there is also evidence that fans augment and supplement the quotidian sports coverage because many posts deal with history, non-play stories and individual athletes.

McCarthy (2013) articulates some answers for her questions; however, one of the aspects that she indicates as a concern remains unanswered, especially because of her methodology and also because she largely attaches the paper’s discussion to the current literature about blogs. The unanswered aspect is the interaction and the communities formed around such enterprises. This proximity with the blog universe brings about some elements that enrich the debate, such as the idea that sports-fan productivity often dialogues with journalism. However, this conceptual option also distances McCarthy from fandom-culture studies, leading to a type of dislocation of these projects from the communities behind them. A

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central element thoroughly reiterated in pop-culture research, and also in Haynes’ work, the interaction with other fans and the emotional ties that constitute these cultures show up only as future research agendas in McCarthy’s work. This is because the analysis, which is more quantitative, cannot account for the intrinsic sociability that characterises such projects.

McCarthy’s research is innovative in discussing a topic that urgently needs more academic attention; however, her conceptual framework choice that focuses on blogs, and in a dialectic between journalism and bloggers, ends up not opening enough space for fan texts and a detailed examination of them. A perspective that scrutinises such projects and seeks to comprehend them in their own creative dimension may provide the necessary elements so we can understand more properly exactly how such texts augment and supplement the media content produced by mainstream media channels. This point, which remains rather abstract in McCarthy’s discussion, is approached here, not only through the topics, but also, more precisely, from the perspectives adopted in such texts. Lastly, I seek to expand this discussion about the textual productivity of sports fans beyond the discussion about blogs. These fan texts are clearly articulated to the communities behind them, which, in Brazil at least, reached some considerable popularity with Orkut. This is despite the fact that, as I discussed in Chapter 4, many football supporters used BBSs and mailing lists to interact about their clubs long before Google’s Orkut platform was launched in 2004.

Galo%supporters’%productivity%

This thesis methodology was discussed in detail in the Introduction, but here a couple of notes are necessary to contextualise the material that is analysed in this particular chapter. As I previously explained, in 2013, I collected around 7 million messages related to the 12 professional clubs

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with the largest supporter bases in Brazil61 posted on Twitter between September and November of that year. This data was used in previous chapters to analyse distinct aspects of the relationship between new technologies and football supporter cultures. From an analysis of the patterns found in the data sets, one of the important indications was that football-related communities have central supporters who have a great level of cultural authority over their peers. Many of the central supporters were those producing original amateur content related to their clubs. Besides these fans, I also analysed the URLs being shared in these conversations, and from this, I identified those websites maintained by supporters that were the most shared over this period. Lastly, I also asked the participants for the names of other supporters who were producing original content in a search for a greater variety of modes of expression — for instance, the fan photographers presented below were not part of the most central or the most shared websites, although they were cited countless times by many of my interviewees. After this process, 22 fans were invited to be interviewed and 11 accepted. Each semi-structured interview lasted around two hours (see Appendix A for the questions) and they all took place between May and August 2014. It is important to note that the supporters and projects analysed here were not randomly chosen; these interviewees were selected because they had greater influence over the conversations of this community and their projects were highly popular within this particular club’s supporter base. In Table 6.1, I provide further details about how each participant was selected.

%%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!61#AtléticoBMG,#Botafogo,#Corinthians,#Cruzeiro,#Flamengo,#Fluminense,#Grêmio,#Internacional,#Palmeiras,#Santos##

São#Paulo#and#Vasco.#

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Table%6.1:%List%of%participants,%projects%they%have%been%involved%and%selection%criteria%for%each%one.%

These interviews were then transcribed, which became around 300 pages of text that were later analysed with the software NVivo. In this analysis, I sought to list (1) the distinct media formats, (2) the motivations that led these supporters to create or take part in such enterprises and (3) the styles and approaches embraced in the texts. In Table 6.2, I sum up all of the formats, motivations and styles that are discussed below.

%

Interviewee& Age& Projects& Reason&for&selection&

Christian#Munaier#

(@Munaier)#

40# •!CAMikaze#and#previously#Terreirão# •!Suggested#by#participants#

Daniel#Teobaldo#

(@daniteo)#

38# •!Soul1 Galo# and# provides# material#

for#other#projects#

•!Suggested#by#participants#

Douglas#Pereira#

(@Dodo_CAM)#

19# •!Galo1Forever1 •!Popular# domain# (shared# on#

Twitter)#

Eduardo#Guerra#

(@EduardoWRG)#

40# •!Web#Rádio#Galo# •!Popular#domain#and#top#account#

on#Twitter#

Elen#Campos#

(@ElenCAM)#

37# •!CAMikaze#and#previously#Terreirão# •!Suggested#by#participants#

Gabriel#Castro#

(@gabrieltim)#

27# •!Provides# material# for# other#

projects,# including# Cam1sa1 Do2e#and# @Massativa,# and# the# book# O1atleticano1vai1ao1paraíso#

•!Suggested#by#participants#

Leide#Botelho#

(@leidebotelho)#

36# •!NotiGalo#and#Web#Rádio#Galo# •!Popular# domain# (NotiGalo)# and#top# account# on# Twitter# (Web#

Rádio#Galo)#

Rafael#Lima#

(@faelslim)#

29# •!Cam1sa1 Do2e,# #ICan’t1 Galo1 is1Playing,# the# books# A1 Tradução1 do1Sentimento1 Alvinegro# and# Nós1Vivemos,1Nós1Vencemos1etc.#

•!Popular# domain# (Cam1saDo2e)#and#top#account#on#Twitter#

Roberto#Guerra#

(@BETOWRG)#

30# •!Web#Rádio#Galo# •!Popular#domain#and#top#account#

on#Twitter#

Rodolpho#Victor#

(@ rodolphovictor_)#19# •!NotiGalo1 •!Popular#domain#

Wilson#Franco#

(@zeca1908)#

36# •!Espora1 Afiada# (Terreirão)# and#

previously#Galocast#•!Top#account#on#Twitter#

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Table%6.2:%Digital% productivity% of% football% fans% and% their% distinct% formats,%motivations% and% style% of%writing.%

Categories& Formats& Motivations&and&goals& Styles&and&approaches&

Variables# •!Textual#(mostly#blogs)#

•!Audio#production#(podcasts#and#digital#radios)#

•!AudioBvisual#(YouTube#channels#with#original#

content)#

•!Photography#(fan#photographers#who#often#

collaborate#with#other#

bloggers)#

•!Wikis#(clubBrelated#ones#and#

also#Wikipedia)#

•!To#get#closer#to#the#clubs,#for#pleasure#and#for#the#

friendships#

•!To#engage#in#a#combination#of#hobbies#

•!To#have#a#voice#and#help#the#club#

•!To#produce#what#was#missing#and#share#with#other#

supporters#

•!To#improve#skills#

•!Focusing#on#the#torcida#in#their#narratives#

•!Talking#like#supporters#in#their#texts#

•!Embracing#a#literary#

perspective#

•!Adopting#a#critical#attitude#•!Focusing#on#the#information#and#in#technical#

analyses#

%

The analysis of the texts was done from observations made by the supporters themselves about their works and their peers’ works. When possible, I illustrate the analysis with examples also mentioned by the interviewees themselves.

Formats$

Football supporters have produced an extensive variety of simple and complex content forms that have gone unnoticed by researchers in this area. For example, podcasts, flogs, vlogs and other types of audio-visual productions have been overlooked. Not to mention the projects that are intended to preserve the memory and history of football clubs, such as wikis and YouTube channels that retrieve and organise goals, matches and the teams’ other historical moments.

Among those producing mostly textual content, there are countless fan columnists who collaborate in blogs such as NotiGalo62, one of the most popular within Atlético’s supporter base. NotiGalo was created in 2010 by Rodolpho Victor, who is currently a journalism undergraduate student but was only 15 years old at the time. Textual content is the more accessible format for fan producers, above all the newcomers, which spread over

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!62#http://www.notigalo.com/#

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countless small blogs that generally have very few page views. Texts (here in the narrow sense), in comparison with other formats, demand less investment in terms of time, travel, equipment, training, mobilisation and so on. But there are also many experienced fan producers who use the written word as their main mode of communication. Rodolpho is one of these, as is Elen Campos, currently a blogger at CAMikaze63, Galo’s space at ESPN FC — a type of exclusively user-generated content division at the website of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) Brasil. Elen has produced texts about Atlético since 2009, when she started to collaborate with other fans, including Christian Munaier, at Terreirão64, a blog dedicated to Atlético at the section reserved for fan-generated content at the Globoesporte platform — the flagship online portal of Grupo Globo, the largest media network in Brazil.

Digital radio stations have also proliferated within football supporter bases in Brazil. Among atleticanos, the most popular one is Web Rádio Galo (WRG)65, which produces regular original content (mostly weekly programs) and also provides live commentaries for its audience during Atlético’s matches. WRG, created in 2011, did not arise in a vacuum. Numerous other radio stations with similar models have dedicated their work to other Brazilian clubs, including: Web Rádio Verdão (Palmeiras), São Paulo Digital (São Paulo), Rádio Coringão (Corinthians), Rádio Guerreiro dos Gramados (Cruzeiro), Web Rádio Lusa (Portuguesa), Rádio Santista (Santos), Rádio Estação Coral (Santa Cruz), Rádio Alvinegra (Ceará), Rádio Avaí (Avaí) and Rádio Paraná Clube (Paraná)66. The production of a radio station generally requires some investment in terms of equipment (better computer sound cards, for instance) and the demand associated with travel is also high because the supporters behind WRG,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!63#http://espnfc.espn.uol.com.br/atleticoBmineiro/camikaze#

64#http://www.terreirao.com.br##

65#http://webradiogalo.com.br/##

66#Other#fanBrun#digital#radio#stations#dedicated#to#football#clubs#in#Brazil:#http://www.webradioverdao.com.br/,#

http://saopaulodigital.com.br/,#http://www.radiocoringao.com.br/,#http://guerreirodosgramados.com.br/,#

http://www.webradiolusa.com.br/,#http://radiosantista.com.br/,#http://www.coralnet.com.br/,#

http://radioalvinegra.com.br/,#http://www.radioavai.com/#and#http://www.radioparanaclube.com.br/.##

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for example, make the live match commentaries directly from the stadium. A radio station still might involve investment in training (the creators of WRG took professional sports-announcing courses) and a high level of mobilisation because many of them rely on many collaborators.

Similar to radio stations, and many times part of them (with the distinction that radio stations in general have live programming), podcasts are also very popular. One of the most celebrated by Atlético’s supporters is Galocast67, created in 2008 with the political function of exerting pressure over the then president of the club, Ziza Valadares. Later, Galocast began discussing the weekly events involving Atlético and even had a reporter doing daily coverage from the training centre of the club (Cidade do Galo). Currently, it is split up into two projects: TerreirãoCast68 (a podcast led by ‘Couttinho’, one of the former members of Galocast) and Espora Afiada69 (a vlog by ‘Zeca’, the creator of the enterprise). Both projects are currently part of Terreirão and other former members of Galocast are still around, such as Igor Assunção and Léo Gomide, both journalists working for professional media networks in BH.

Indeed, vlogs and other videos form one of most consumed types of fan-generated content among atleticanos. Besides Espora Afiada, channels such as the one of the blog Cam1sa Do2e70 at YouTube71 demonstrate the strength and esteem among fans for the audio-visual form. Rafael Lima, the supporter behind Cam1sa Do2e, produces numerous programs and series about Atlético’s torcida and its characters since 2009. The blog has more than 3,100 subscribers and almost 4.5 million views in the channel (data from October 2014). And Rafael has, for instance, made videos of the crowd performances in the stands in the section Vídeos da Massa (Videos

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!67#Galocast’s#website#is#no#longer#available#on#the#Internet#but#a#brief#history#of#the#project#may#be#found#in#

another#fan#blog,#Lances1&1Nuances:#http://lancesenuances.com/2011/06/02/galocastBoBmaisBpuroB

atleticanismoBemBaudio/#(accessed#October#15,#2014).#68#https://soundcloud.com/galoBconnection#

69#https://www.youtube.com/user/zeca1908#

70#http://camisadoze.net/#

71#https://www.youtube.com/user/faellima18#

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of The Mass)72 and told the incredible stories that supporters experience because of the club’s matches in the episodes of the documentary series #NãoPosso Tem Jogo do Galo (#ICan’t Galo is playing)73. Even though Rafael reposts non-original content at the YouTube channel of Cam1sa Do2e — such as historic goals — he produces the vast majority of the uploaded material.

Supporter bases have also witnessed the spread of fan photographers. Among Atlético’s supporters, some of them are Gabriel Castro74, who, since 2010, has been registering matches and other events involving Galo’s torcida; Daniel Teobaldo75, who, since 2012, has also been recording supporters and games for the project Soul Galo76; and Moacir Gaspar, who photographs particularly the club’s largest organised supporter group, Galoucura77. These supporters publicise their works on their personal websites and on social-media platforms. They also collaborate with countless other blogs — or, as they call it, with the Galosfera, in a pun with the words Galo and blogosfera (blogosphere) — where their photos are posted side-by-side with textual content produced by other supporters.

Beyond these formats, supporters have also involved themselves in projects designed to archive and preserve the memory of the club. For instance, even though the project Galo Digital78 (a wiki that archives, organises and provides information about the history of the club) is an enterprise of the Centro Atleticano de Memória79 (a non-for-profit organisation that works in cooperation with Atlético), it still counts on the collaborative efforts of supporters to recover and retrieve information about the club. Others often get involved in updating the club’s page at !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!72#A1Massa1is#the#way#Atlético#supporters#call#themselves,#which#literally#means#‘The#Mass’.#Torcidas#of#other#

clubs#have#also#their#peculiar#selfBcreated#names.#For#instance,#Cruzeiro’s#supporters#call#themselves#China1Azul,#which#literally#means#‘blue#China’,#and,#as#in#Atlético’s#case,#it#is#also#used#to#give#a#sense#of#greatness#to#the#

torcida.##73#https://www.youtube.com/user/temjogodogalo#

74#http://www.gabrielcastro.net/#

75#http://danielteobaldo.net/#

76#http://soulgalo.com.br/#

77#http://somosgaloucura.wordpress.com/#

78#http://www.galodigital.com.br/#

79#http://atletico.com.br/site/camisa12/centro_de_memoria#

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Wikipedia as well as developing their own projects, such as Matheus Soares80, who catalogues historic and rare matches and goals in a YouTube channel that he has maintained since 2008 and that has around 1,300 subscribers and 2.7 million views (data from October 2014).

Although some supporters tend to produce particular types of content, most of the time they are indeed multimedia producers. Rodolpho, who is a writing enthusiast, used to do a podcast for his blog. Rafael Lima, who produces videos, has a podcast in partnership with WRG, writes chronicles and has already independently published two books about Atlético. WRG, which is supposed to be a radio station, in fact has most of its programs in audio-visual format. This material is then made available on their YouTube channel, which as October 2014 had almost 7,000 subscribers and whose videos have been viewed around 3.5 million times. In short, many supporters produce content in diverse forms and collaborate with other fans that have distinct skills. As a result, such projects are enriched and usually end up aggregating a variety of expressive modes in each single enterprise.

Motivations$and$purposes$

Supporters’ motivations for producing original media content can be individualistic (for example, to improve their writing skills) or altruistic (for example, to help the club). Many fans cite more than one reason, but all of them stress the pleasure that they feel in doing what they do. The following sections outline the main motivations uncovered through the interviews:

•! to get closer to Galo, for pleasure and for the friendships

•! to engage in a combination of hobbies

•! to have a voice and help their club !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!80#https://www.youtube.com/user/SoaresGalo13#

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•! to produce what was missing and share with other supporters

•! to improve skills.

To)get)closer)to)Galo,)for)pleasure)and)for)the)friendships. For Wilson Franco — the previously mentioned Zeca — the main reason to produce what he produces is pleasure itself: “first of all, it is the pleasure that I feel because I am a fanatic supporter of Atlético and I really enjoy talking about it”. Eduardo Guerra, the creator of WRG, asserts that the work is important for him to be “with Galo”. Roberto Guerra, Eduardo’s brother and founder of the radio station, asserts that the task is “pleasurable. Because if it wasn’t, I would have already given up. Chatting about football is good. Many people enjoy it and would like to have a place to do it”. For Rafael Lima, from Cam1sa Do2e, there is a personal satisfaction that comes with working with something that you like so much. For Gabriel Castro, photographer, it is a “matter of being with Atlético, being closer to Atlético”.

The pleasure that most supporters mention is strongly associated with the collaborative character of such projects. These projects are built on the contact with other supporters and formed from relationships that are less hierarchical than those found between mainstream media organisations and their audiences. One of the greatest motivations for the supporters interviewed comes from the companionship of other supporters or from the sociability found in the quotidian conviviality with an audience that here is clearly not separated from the producers.

As I discussed in Chapter 5, Simmel (1950) was one of the first to seriously take into account the social encounter, the less instrumental act from where what he called sociability can emerge. Sociability is the term used by the German sociologist to refer to a distinct social form that extracts all the serious substance of life leaving only the relationship, the togetherness. A truly social game, sociability is found in a variety of conversations and playful activities, arising from practices such as playing

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card games and team sports. Resulting from interactions with no pragmatic purposes, sociability is the essence of association, of the associative process as a value and as a satisfaction in itself. It is, above all, about the pure pleasure of companionship and differs tremendously from the results of instrumental communication.

According to Simmel (1950), the interaction defined by the characteristics of sociability has a self-sufficient content, in the sense that it is the satisfaction of the relationship itself that wants to be nothing but relation that moves such type of encounters. Life stories, jokes and anecdotes that often serve only as a pastime reflect these imperative elements of sociability. Later, Oldenburg (1991) extends Simmel’s work discussing places where such encounters tend to happen (the ‘third places’ I discussed in Chapter 5) and reassures us of the importance of such places for the health of communities. Giulianotti (2005), on the other hand, adopts Simmel’s sociology and his concept of sociability to understand the culture around the Tartan Army, group of supporters of the Scottish national football team that emerged in the context of the hooligan culture and became known by their friendly and festive behaviour inside the stadium. For Giulianotti (2005), the group and its conviviality provide a type of escape from the oppressing modern culture, expressing, in this sense, the importance that Simmel had given to the sociable encounter:

To! so! many! serious! persons! who! are! constantly! exposed! to! the!

pressures!of!life,!sociability!could!not!offer!any!liberating,!relieving,!or!

serene! aspects! if! it! really!were! nothing! but! an! escape! from! life! or! a!

merely!momentary!suspension!of!life's!seriousness.!Perhaps!it!often!is!

no! more! than! a! negative! conventionalism,! an! essentially! lifeless!

exchange! of! formulas.! Perhaps! it! frequently! was! this! in! the! Ancien!

Regime! when! the! numb! fear! of! a! threatening! reality! forced! men!

merely! to! look! away! and! to! sever! all! relations! with! it.! Yet! it! is!

precisely! the! more! serious! person! who! derives! from! sociability! a!

feeling!of!liberation!and!relief.!He!can!do!so!because!he!enjoys!here,!as!

if! in!an!art!play,!a!concentration!and!exchange!of!effects!that!present!

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all!the!tasks!and!all!the!seriousness!of!life!in!a!sublimation!and,!at!the!

same! time,! dilution,! in! which! the! content3laden! forces! of! reality!

reverberate!only!dimly,! since! their!gravity!has!evaporated! into!mere!

attractiveness.!(Simmel,!1950,!p.!57)!

Those taking part in the initiatives are strongly motivated by two types of communities: those formed on popular social-media platforms and the subcommunities found around specific projects. WRG, for instance, was created because of a deep curiosity and motivation to produce something about Atlético that was already being done by supporters of other clubs:

I!was!watching!CQC![a!television!show,!which!is!the!Brazilian!version!

of!the!Argentine!program!Caiga)Quien)Caiga],!and!there!was!an!award,!

I! don’t! remember! the! name,! but! they! were! showing! the! award!

ceremony.! And! there! was! Cléber! Machado! [a! journalist! at! Rede!

Globo],! [who!won]!best! commentator! and! so!on.!And! then! they! said!

something! about! a!web! radio! station,!Web!Rádio! Lusa,! dedicated! to!

Portuguesa,! which! had!won! [an! award].! Then,! they! interviewed! the!

guy!who!is!still! there![at!Web!Rádio!Lusa]!today.!His!name!is!Romão!

Ribeiro! and!he! is! the! announcer.! Then…best!web! radio…[I! thought:]!

‘What,!what!is!that?’.!Then!I!went!to!my!computer,![searched!for]!Web!

Rádio!Lusa,!and!then!I!found!their!site.!In!a!little!while,!I!realised!what!

they!were.! […]! They! broadcast! the!matches!with! live! commentaries.!

[…]!I! thought! it!was!very!cool.! [...]!Then!I!came!to!Beto![his!brother].!

Beto! is! a! singer! and! he!works!mostly! evenings! and! early!mornings,!

then! I! said:! ‘Hey!Beto,! if!Portuguesa!has!one!bro,!Atlético!must!have!

one!too’.![…]!And!then!we!started!to!study!and!we!thought!it!was!very!

cool!and!we!decided!to!create!Web!Rádio!Galo,!but!like!that,!out!of!the!

blue.!We!had!never!done!anything!like!that.!We!didn’t!know!anything!

about!it.!(Eduardo!Guerra,!personal!communication,!July!21,!2014)!!

The production model of WRG does not have any type of monetisation of labour. It does not generate any type of financial compensation for its producers, who are part of a gift economy — they make exchanges with a couple of partners, such as a designer (also a supporter) who did their website layout in exchange for publicity on their homepage. Indeed, their

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expenses are significant, as is the time spent with the production of the programs given the producers’ personal and professional pressures. Asked about the reason for continuing with the project, which has been on for three years and counts on many collaborators, Eduardo specifically stressed the importance of the friendships and the pleasure that comes from the pure sociability experienced within the radio station and its community.

To)engage)in)a)combination)of)hobbies. Some of the interviewees stressed that they felt passion both for the club and for their content-production activities. For Leide Botelho, a collaborator at WRG and NotiGalo, her passion for writing is one of the things that motivated her:

Actually,! I! have! liked!writing! since! forever.! […].! Poetry,! texts! about!

diverse! topics.! Thus,! you! write! about! prejudice,! war,! family! and!

feelings.!I!have!always!enjoyed!writing,!since!I!was!very!young.!For!a!

very!long!time!indeed.!But!about!football,!what!opened!doors![for!me]!

was! indeed! Beto! and! Eduardo’s! invitation.! (Leide! Botelho,! personal!

communication,!August!8,!2014)!

This combination of passions is also what is behind the work of fan photographers such as Gabriel Castro and Daniel Teobaldo. Gabriel said that photography was a hobby and that the collaboration with other friends who were supporters started to whet his interest for joining the two passions:

And!it!was,!if!I’m!not!mistaking!it,!in!2009,!2009!to!2010,!I!guess!it!was!

in!2010!that!I!started!to!do!some!works!more!related!to!Atlético,!take!

photos!more! related! to! Atlético.! And! it!was! in! Obina’s! arrival81! that!

Fael! [Rafael!Lima,!previously!cited],!Lucas!—!another! friend!of!mine!

—!and!I,!we!went!to!the!airport.!I!went!there!to!do!a!photo!shooting,!

Fael!went!to!record!and!Lucas!was!also!helping!in!the!video!shooting.!

Actually,! Fael! was! the! presenter! and! Lucas! was! doing! the! shooting.!

And!I!helped!both!in!the!video!shooting!and!was!also!taking!pictures.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!81#Available#at:#http://camisadoze.net/tvBretorcidaB2/tvBretorcidaBpaoBdeBqueijoBparaBobina/#.VEJEJYuUewE#

(accessed#October#18,#2014).#

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And!then!I!did!a!photo!gallery!and!I!started!to!get!more!interested!in!

photography,!especially!when!it!was!about!Atlético,!because!I!wanted!

very!much!to!do!a!work!related!to!my!club.!(Gabriel!Castro,!personal!

communication,!August!14,!2014)!!

On the other side, Daniel Teobaldo was doing a photography course when he started to photograph the stadium, a place that he had attended since early in life:

[It]! started! as! a! hobby! […].! Since! 2012,! I! always! used! to! take! my!

camera!with!me!to!the!stadium.!But!I!took!it!to!the!stadium!aimlessly,!

only! to! take! photos! [personal! photos].! I! used! to! carry! a! compact!

camera.!Then,!one!day,!I!was!leaving!the!course!and!I!had!my!camera!

[SLR],!then!I!had!to!go!straight!to!the!game.![…]!I!was!worried!about!

taking!it!to!matches.!But,!then,!I!took!it!and!I!didn’t!have!any!problem,!

so!I!started!to!carry!it![all!the!time].!Then,!2012!was!over!and…I!took!

photos! and! I! kept! them! for! myself.! Then,! it! was! the! reopening! of!

Mineirão,!the!first!match!of!2013.!And!then!I!began!to!take!photos!of!

the!action!before!the!match!and!people!started!to!ask!me:!‘Hey,!where!

is! it! going! to! be! published?’! And! I! didn’t! have! a! website.! Then! I!

decided!to!create!my!site!and!I!created!this!name,!Soul)Galo,!because!I!

like! our! torcida.! […]! It! started! as! a! hobby! and! it’s! still! a! hobby.! It’s!

something! that! de3stresses! me.! (Daniel! Teobaldo,! personal!


Among the 11 interviewees, two were journalism undergraduate students, two were professional journalists (working in areas other than sport), and one was an advertiser. Their strong association with studies and work in professional communication expresses rather well how their passion for the club was combined with an interest in the activity of producing media content.

To)have)a)voice)and)help)their)club. Other supporters reported motivations of a more political nature. This is the case with Zeca and the above-mentioned podcast, Galocast. This supporter has been part of online

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communities related to Atlético since NetG@lo82 times, through the period dominated by Orkut, to the current distributed age with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social-network sites taking the lead. Zeca explains that his aim today, with his vlog Espora Afiada, is to contribute in his own way for the club and for the decision-making processes that define Atlético’s policies, above all, those related to its supporters:

So,!I!want!to!have!my!opinions!heard.![…]!I!want!to!contribute.!I! feel!

the!need!to!contribute!to!something.!Like,!the!season!ticket,!I!try,!I!try!

to!be! a! channel! to! improve!our!program.!We!know! that!we! can’t! do!

much!because!Kalil![then!the!president!of!the!club]!is!a!centraliser,!but!

we!do!say!things.!Maybe!a!new!president!will!come!and!he!will!listen!

[Galo! was! about! to! have! an! election].! Indeed,! some! people! from!

Atlético’s!board!of!directors! follow!me!on!Twitter.!Then,! I!say!things!

in!the!hope!that!they!will!listen.!Then,!my!main!aim!is!this:!taking!part!

in! Galo’s! life.! Because! I! like! Galo,! I! want!my! club! to! improve,! and! I!

believe! that! however! small! it! may! be,! I! can! have! some! type! of!

influence! or! maybe! someone! will! listen! and! do! something! about! it.!

(Wilson!Franco! [known!as!Zeca],!personal!communication,!August!5,!

2014)!

Elen Campos is another fan who also stresses that she started writing about the club only because she wanted to help Galo. Elen also goes beyond, emphasising not only her concerns about the club itself, but also how she wishes to have a voice, particularly because she is a woman in a male-dominated culture:

What! I! expect! from!a! project! like! this! is! to! have! a! voice,! you! know?!

First! and! foremost! because! I’m! a! woman.! I! guess! that! if! I! wasn’t! a!

woman,! I!wouldn’t!have!such!a!need!because!I’m!going!to! tell!you,! it!

changes!everything,!it!changes!a!lot!when!you!write.!When!you’re!in!a!

group!of!male!fans,!you’re!not!heard.!Even!if!your!opinion!is!the!most!

sensible! and! correct,! they! don’t! take! you! seriously.!When! you’re! on!

the! other! side,! when! you! write,! people! give! you! so! much! more!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!82#NetG@lo#is#discussed#in#detail#in#Chapter#4.#

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attention! and! they! reflect! more! deeply! about! what! you’re! saying.! I!

used! to! say! that! I! like! when! they! scold! me! like! a! man.! When! they!

forget! I’m! a!woman! and! criticise!me.! Then! I! say:! This! one! read! the!

text.! He! is! not! talking! to! a! ‘little! girl’.! So! it’s! indeed! almost! a!

responsibility.!Because!I!think!that!many!women!have!already!done!so!

much! for! so! many! things! and! I! don’t! do! anything.! And! I! consider!

myself! a! feminist.! Then,! in! the! universe! that! I! like! most,! football,! I!

need! to! contribute! in! some!way.! […]! I! need! to!because! in! some!way!

people! respect! me! more.! Those! reading! it.! And! we! need! more.! We!

need! more,! you! know?! We! really! need! more! women! talking! about!

football! and! we’re! indeed! far! away! from! having! the! same! respect.!

(Elen!Campos,!personal!communication,!August!3,!2014)!

To) produce) what) was) missing) and) share) with) other) supporters. Most home grounds and headquarters of popular professional clubs in Brazil are located in big metropolises and that is because football culture has historically developed in association with urbanisation processes everywhere, including in Brazil (Damo, 1998, 2002; Giulianotti, 1999; Taylor, 1992). For that reason, the features characterising the supporter–club relationship, and even the club preferences, may be significantly distinct among those living in the capitals and in provincial areas. For instance, even though there is no reliable data available, in Minas Gerais, it is common knowledge that football fans living in Zona da Mata (a region that borders the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo), often prefer clubs from Rio de Janeiro city to those from the capital of the state, Belo Horizonte. Meanwhile, in BH, less than 2.5% of fans declare support for clubs from other states (CP2 Pesquisas, 2012) — the vast majority support the clubs from the capital: Atlético-MG, Cruzeiro and América-MG. When it comes to media coverage, the existence of regional network affiliates in diverse parts of the states — which produce then content that is relatively distinct from the capitals’ networks — simultaneously collaborates and reflects such differences. Then, for those who live in the countryside, but choose to support clubs from the capital, it is harder to follow their teams than if they were living geographically close to the club, in the capital.

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This ‘distance’ (both geographical and symbolic) also defines the relationship between supporters who do not live in the state and country where their club is based.

The gap in available material for supporters from provincial areas led Rafael Lima to produce original content. Rafael believes that supporters from provincial areas face more difficulties when they are interested in becoming more dedicated supporters. Fan groups often dismantle more easily and the club culture is experienced at a distance in these situations. As a result, the relationship between supporters and clubs is also weaker and football clubs do not occupy such a central position for everyday sociability as they do in the urban areas:

In!the!countryside!it!is!really!hard…to!keep!groups,!torcidas,!anything,!

operating!because!it!is!a!big!distance!from!the!club.!Then,!you!have!a!

big! influence! from! clubs! from! Rio! and! São! Paulo! because,! in! the!

provincial! areas,! their! influence! is! really! huge.!Atlético! and!Cruzeiro!

go! almost! toe3to3toe! with! Flamengo! in! the! countryside.! And! the!

supporters,! they!are!not! like! the!atleticanos! from!BH! that! I!know.! In!

BH,!they!are!‘psychopaths’.!They!think!Atlético!25!hours!per!day![…].!

In!the!countryside!it’s!not!like!this.!There,!it’s!in!the!lunchtime.!That’s!

the! time! you’re! in! front! of! the! TV,! having! lunch! and! watching!

something!about!Atlético.!You!don’t!think!about!it!the!whole!day.!And!

here,! in! the! capital,! it’s! different! because! of! it.! And! the! torcidas,! the!

groups,! in! the! provincial! areas,! slowly! they! lose! strength! and! they!

decline,!decline,!until!you!have!a!new!group!forming!with!new!ideas,!

new!teenagers,!new!young!adults,!that!get!excited!again.!(Rafael!Lima,!

personal!communication,!July!7,!2014)!

Rafael also stresses that conventional media coverage cannot meet the needs of supporters who follow non-local clubs because regional networks often focus on other teams (local or from other states). As Rafael lived himself in such a situation, at some point, he realised he was not the only one who wanted to have or keep (for those who moved from Belo Horizonte) strong ties with his club:

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254!

I! realised! that! supporters! from! the! countryside!are! really! in!need!of!

content! and! I! blamed! the! TV! that! gave! 30! seconds! to! us,! and! we!

wanted!more!than!that.!And!that!was!the!moment!that!I!thought!about!

doing! a! blog! that!would! be! a! connection!between!BH! and!Galo!with!

those!that!are!far!away!from!them.!And!then,!Cam1sa)Do2e!was!born.!

(Rafael!Lima,!personal!communication,!July!7,!2014)!

To)improve)skills. Lastly, supporters also reveal that their labour is related to a personal pursuit for skills. This is the case with Douglas Pereira, a 19-year-old computer science undergraduate student who has maintained the blog Galo Forever83 since 2009, when he was only 14 years old:

Actually,! I!was,! I! am! still! very! bad!when! it! comes! to!writing.! Then! I!

said:! ‘Well,! the! only!way! to! get! better! is! to!practice.’! Then! I! thought!

about!doing!a!blog!and!I!asked!myself:!‘About!what?’!And!I!decided!to!

write! about! the! thing! that! I! know! most:! Atlético.! […]! I! was! a! high!

school! freshman! but! I! was! already! thinking! about! vestibular84.!

(Douglas!Pereira,!personal!communication,!July!14,!2014)!

Even though training and skill development are not the key motivation for most supporters, other participants also stressed the importance of their fan work for their professional aspirations:

In! some! way,! for! my! training! as! a! journalist,! I! think! it! was!

indispensable!to!learn!how!to!deal!with!what!journalism!is!today,!on!

social3media! platforms,! having! to! handle! audio,! video,! you! know,! in!

real! time.!Then,! for!me,! it!was!a!gift,!both!my!column!at!WRG!and!at!

NotiGalo.!(Leide!Botelho,!personal!communication,!August!8,!2014)!

Styles$and$approaches$

The styles adopted in the digital projects of football supporters are as diverse as their formats and motivations. Some content producers are seen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!83#http://www.galoforever.com/#

84#Vestibular#is#an#entrance#system#used#by#many#universities#in#Brazil.#It#generally#has#two#stages:#one#exam#with#

multiple#choice#questions#and#one#that#contains#open,#written#questions.#Both#phases#approach#subjects#from#

the#high#school#curriculum#and,#especially#in#the#second#and#last#stage,#good#writing#skills#give#students#a#

significant#edge#for#getting#into#the#best#institutions.###

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255!

as ‘poets’ by their peers, whereas others express, in a rather intense way, the passion of football supporters. Some adopt a politicised and critical tone, while others do not invert the informational approach of mainstream media institutions, mimicking in some sense the journalistic narrative. There were five main approaches found in the projects analysed here:

•! focusing on the torcida in their narratives

•! talking like supporters in their texts

•! embracing a literary perspective

•! adopting a critical attitude

•! focusing on the information and in technical analyses.

The vast majority of the supporters and projects draw on all of these perspectives, even though some adopt one or another more often. Among them all, partiality and passion are two of the most used expressions to characterise their work.

Focusing) on) the) torcida) in) their) narratives. A fundamental characteristic of some of the above-mentioned projects is exactly the change of focus that they promote in comparison with traditional journalistic coverage of football: in the centre of the narratives, we find the supporters, not players and football leaders. Many of Rafael Lima’s fellow Galo supporters, for instance, feel that he ‘turned his back on the game and only talks about the torcida’. In Rafael’s work, supporters’ stories are told, for example, in the already mentioned series #NãoPosso Tem Jogo do Galo (#ICan’t Galo is playing)85. In these short documentaries, Rafael interviews fans about the unusual and complicated situations that they have experienced because of Atlético’s matches. As the caption of the first episode says: “Leaving work early, arriving late at your wedding, forgetting your girlfriend’s birthday, missing your daughter’s baptism, not showing up for

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!85#https://www.youtube.com/user/temjogodogalo##

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your own funeral. Atleticano doesn’t miss a Galo’s match for anything!”86 This video introduction sets the tone of the stories: they are funny and sometimes emotional.

—!Lucas!![A!woman!yells!her!son’s!name]!

—! Oi.) Pó) falar.! /! Yeah,! talk! to! me.! [Answers! her! son,! in! an!

unmistakable!Mineiro!accent87]!

—! Vai) na) padaria) para) mim,) por) favor.) /! Go! to! the! bakery! for! me,!

please.!

—!Hoje)não)dá)não,)mãe.)Tem)jogo)do)Galo.!/!I!can’t!today,!mum.!Galo!

is!playing.!!

—!Não)é)possível,)menino!)De)novo!)/!I!can’t!believe!it,!your!little!brat!!

Again!!

In the episode with the most views — Episódio especial (Não posso. Tem milagre do Victor!) [Special episode (I can’t. Victor is making a miracle!)] — many supporters are interviewed about the day of the ‘miracle of Saint Victor’. The fateful match was against Tijuana (Mexico) in the quarter-finals of the 2013 Copa Libertadores da América. During this match, the goalkeeper of the team, Victor, defended a penalty kick in the extra time of the second half of the game. This penalty, if converted, would have eliminated Atlético from the competition. Galo became the champion of that year’s tournament, which strengthened the mythological character attributed to the goalkeeper. For Galo supporters, ‘Saint Victor’s Day’ is one of the most legendary in the club’s history and the narratives of the supporters interviewed by Rafael accurately express the suffering, pain, agony and redemption they experienced on May 30, 2013.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!86#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGKKihonO0A#(accessed#October#18,#2014).#

87#Even#though#Portuguese#is#the#official#language#in#Brazil#and#is#spoken#by#virtually#everybody,#the#country#has#a#

vast#range#of#accents.#Basically,#almost#every#single#state#has#a#particular#and#unmistakable#accent.#People#from#

Minas#Gerais#are#known#for#having#a#particular#rhythm#of#speech#where#words#are#spliced#together,#with#the#final#

syllable#of#most#terms#disappearing.#Even#an#expression#has#been#created#to#identify#the#particular#‘language’#

that#Mineiros#speak:#Mineirês.#Yet,#Mineiros#have#an#accent#that#is#generally#portrayed#in#soap#operas#and#movies#as#a#typical#accent#from#the#rural#areas,#which#often#leads#to#the#stereotype#of#Mineiros#as#hicks.#Mineiros,#on#the#other#hand,#also#use#their#accent#as#a#way#of#strengthening#their#regional#culture.#A#typical#Mineiro#way#of#saying#‘Pode’#is#‘Pó’.#Pode1falar#literally#means#‘you#may#talk’,#but#it#is#much#more#informal#in#

Portuguese#than#its#literal#variant#in#English#—#‘pó’#indeed#makes#it#even#more#informal.##

257!

Indeed, this same match that was used by Gabriel Castro to exemplify how his own work also focuses on the torcida:

For! instance,! I! didn’t! go! there! to! take! photos! of! Riascos! kicking! the!

penalty! against! Victor.! I! didn’t! have! the! courage,! you! know?! And! I!

looked!behind!me!and!saw!myself!in!that!bunch!of!atleticanos![…].!And!

instead!of!taking!photos!of!the!move,!I!took!photos!of!the!torcida![see!

Figure! 6.1].! Then,! I! have! sequences! of! photos! of! when! the! penalty!

occurred;!at!that!moment,!I!turned!back!and!I!started!to!take!photos,!

not! believing! in! what! was! happening.! Then,! there! were! so! many!

people!with!hands!on!their!faces,!many!people!on!their!knees,!already!

crying.!I!have!so!many!photos!of!this!moment.!And!I!said!this:!‘No,!I’m!

not! going! there! to! take! photos’! [of! Riascos! kicking! the! ball]! and! I!

stayed!with!my!back!to!the!match,!taking!photos!of!the!reaction!of!the!

fans.! And! then,! in! a! two3minute! interval,! I! had! people! crying! to! the!

greatest! joy! that!someone!ever!had! in! life.!Then,! I! think! this!was! the!

point!when!I!identified!myself!with!the!supporter!and!this!is!when!the!

supporter! became! more! important! than! what! was! going! on! in! the!

field.!(Gabriel!Castro,!personal!communication,!August!14,!2014)!

%Figure%6.1%(a,b):%Photos%of% the%match%AtléticoZMG%vs.%TijuanaZMEX%(quarterZfinals%of% the%2013%Copa%Libertadores%da%América)%taken%by%Gabriel%Castro.%

halla

Due to copyright restrictions, these photos cannot be made available here.

!

258!

The same approach is found in Daniel Teobaldo’s work, another photographer who places Galo’s torcida at the centre of the narratives and, above all, of that fateful match (see Figure 6.2)88.

%

Figure%6.2%(a–c):%Photos%of%the%match%AtléticoZMG%vs.%TijuanaZMEX%(quarterZfinals%of%the%2013%Copa%Libertadores%da%América)%taken%by%Daniel%Teobaldo.$

)

Talking)as)supporters) in) their) texts. This perspective could also be used as a broader approach because it actually defines the texts produced by the interviewed supporters. However, the specific focus here is the use of more radical and passionate language, which resort most of the time to rivalry, especially to jokes with Cruzeiro supporters, as the raw material for the text. It is a more aggressive style of speech, loaded with qualifying adjectives for both the players of the team and those of the rival. It is not a simple rude name-calling or an injurious attack to someone’s honour; it is rather a discourse that reflects a bar conversation, the rage before a missed goal, and the pure irrationality that surrounds football supporting.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!88#Other#images#of#the#same#match#are#found#at:#http://soulgalo.com.br/wp/?p=1562#(accessed#October#18,#

2014).#

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In this sense, texts in which their authors talk as ordinary supporters have a radicalism that only indeed a fan may express. This type of approach, for Leide Botelho, is what makes atleticanos so addicted to content produced by other supporters:

There,! he! sees! himself.! He! is! facing! a! mirror.! In! the! rage! and! in!

happiness,! he! is! facing! a! mirror.! He! is! seeing! himself! there.! It’s! the!

same!thing:!Who!can!huff!and!talk!about!my!son?!It’s!me!and!only!me.!

If!any!other!person!says!anything,!it!will!bother!me.!‘Don’t!talk!about!

my! mum,! but! I! can.’! It’s! similar! to! that.! (Leide! Botelho,! personal!


According to Leide, this type of radicalism does not exist in the mainstream media; if this content were produced by journalists, it would not be consumed by supporters who cannot handle ‘others’ speaking negatively about their club. In the supporters’ speech, on the other hand, a higher level of criticism is allowed, even though, for many, this aspect has become a criterion that defines how much of a supporter someone is. The corneta89, for some, is only a critic and says the truth about the team at all costs. For others, the corneta is less of a fan because she/he does not support the club in ‘happiness and sadness’. Wilson Franco also stresses how this radicalism, “a thing of supporters indeed”, may often be misunderstood.

Embracing)a) literary)perspective. ‘Fan poets’ differ by taking particular care with the aesthetics in their texts. For many of those interviewed, the key example was Roberto Drummond, a writer from Minas Gerais who portrayed, as nobody else was able to, the soul of atleticanos. Elen Campos, who the interviewees very often cited as a representation of this

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!89#‘Corneta’#and#‘corneteiro’#are#popular#jargon#terms#within#football#culture#in#Brazil#and#both#are#used#to#

indicate#a#supporter#who#complains#and#criticises#a#team#more#often#than#other#fans.#Legend#says#that#the#term#

originates#from#the#culture#of#Palmeiras#supporters,#a#club#from#São#Paulo#that#was#created#by#Italian#

immigrants.#In#the#early#days#of#football#in#Brazil,#there#was#a#factory#called#Corneta#in#front#of#Palmeiras’#

stadium,#Parque1Antarctica.#Those#who#were#unhappy#with#the#performances#of#the#team#and#formed#a#type#of#

opposition#to#the#then#board#of#directors#used#to#get#together#in#a#pub#next#to#Corneta#to#agree#on#the#strategies#they#would#use#in#the#club’s#council#meetings.#Then,#the#name#of#the#factory#became#associated#with#the#group#

and#its#behaviour,#and#spread#to#other#club#cultures.#

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260!

poetic spirit, does not worry so much about having first-hand information or the originality of the topics she discusses:

I!will!rarely!say!something!that!nobody!else!has!said!yet!because!I!am!

not! here! for! that.! But,! maybe,! I! will! talk! in! another! way! and! that’s!

what! I! like! most! […].! I! enjoy! writing! unusual! things.! I! don’t! like! to!

write! about! tactics!or! the!match! itself.!That’s!not!what! interests!me.!

What!interests!me!most!are!the!stories!behind!football.!(Elen!Campos,!

personal!communication,!August!3,!2014)!

Elen’s texts are loaded with references to the history of the club, inside jokes that only supporters of Atlético understand, an emotional fondness for her idols and a deep care with the textual dimension. If Elen writes about Mineirão, the stadium embodies itself, turning into a person who has a chat with Atlético’s torcida90. If the subject is the idol Victor, the story is about the day when all kids at school wanted to be a goalkeeper at recess for the first time ever91. If the theme is an epic comeback victory, like Atlético’s comeback against Corinthians, in the second leg of the quarter-finals of the 2014 Copa do Brasil, she narrates the fortune of those who believed in the improbable and went to the stadium against all odds to see history being made in front of their eyes92:

[…]!Yes,!blessed!supporter,! rub!your! ticket! in! the! face!of! the!unwary!

ones,!open!a!big!smile!before!the!unbelievers.!Tell!them!how!it!was!to!

see! in) loco! Dátolo’s! tactical! importance! and! coldness,! recollect! how!

distressing!it!was!to!follow!the!ball!of!the!little!Carlos!hitting!the!post,!

explain! your! angle! when!Marcos! Rocha! almost! scored! the! goal! that!

Pelé!missed93.!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!90#http://espnfc.espn.uol.com.br/atleticoBmineiro/camikaze/amorBqueBfica#

91#http://espnfc.espn.uol.com.br/atleticoBmineiro/camikaze/victorBnaBhoraBdoBrecreio#

92#Elen’s#text#was#translated#here#to#illustrate#my#analysis#even#though#I#am#sure#I#am#not#doing#justice#to#its#

literary#qualities.#Many#expressions#and#terms#in#this#post,#as#in#most#of#her#texts,#are#almost#untranslatable,#but#

I#did#it,#giving#to#some#of#these#not#a#literal#translation#but#a#definition#of#what#they#mean#in#Portuguese.##93#This#move#is#part#of#popular#culture#in#Brazil,#known#by#even#nonBfootball#fans,#and#certainly#part#of#football#

folklore#as#a#whole.#It#is#the#goal#that#Pelé#missed,#but#despite#this,#it#is#still#celebrated#and#remembered.#It#is#

known#in#Brazil#as#o1gol1que1Pelé1não1fez#(the#goal#that#Pelé#missed)#or#o1golTqueTnãoTfoi1(the#goal#that#didn’t#happen).#It#happened#when#Pelé#saw#the#Czech#goalkeeper#Ivo#Viktor#off#his#goalBline#in#a#match#at#the#1970#

World#Cup#and#attempted#a#long#kick#from#behind#the#half#way#line.#Pelé#narrowly#missed#the#shot;#Brazil#won#

the#match#by#4–1,#and#eventually,#became#the#champion#of#that#tournament#with#a#team#that#is#arguably#the#

greatest#football#team#ever.#For#YouTube#footage#see:#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMfyVCpQBA0#

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261!

!

Climb!on!a!chair!during!breakfast!at!your! firm,!sit!at! the!head!of! the!

table! for! lunch,! stand! in! the! schoolyard! and! ask! people! to! come!

around.! Be! meticulous,! please.! Describe! tim\tim) por) tim\tim94)

everything! that! you! experienced! in! the! evening! that! Galo! needed! to!

score! four!goals! against!Corinthians!and! it!did.!The!evening! that! the!

underdog! walked! side3by3side! with! talent.! The! evening! that! the!

sneaky!luck!played!hide!and!seek,!turned!around!and!left.!At!the!same!

stadium,!at! the! same!side,! at! the! same!goal.!By!head,!by!Edcarlos,! at!

42,!to!explode!o)gogó)Periquito95!and!make!those!who!were!laughing!

at!us!cry!instead.!!

!

Just! go! for! it,! supporter.! You! deserve! it.! Self3elected! witness! of! the!

impossible,! you! believed! once! more,! crowed! as! a! rooster96,! fought!

and!won.!Definitely! learned!how!to!survive!this!thing!that!mata3não3

mata3nada97.!You!went!in!search!for!a!miracle!and!came!back!with!a!

piece!of!history.!(Campos,!2014)!

The tone of the text is set in three key ways:

•! the references to the history of the club (the goal exactly at 42 minutes of the second half, like in the final of the 2013 Copa Libertadores)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(accessed#November#02,#2014).#Recently,#Brazilians#even#tried#to#explain#why#Pelé#missed#the#shot:#

http://globoesporte.globo.com/programas/esporteBespetacular/noticia/2014/07/tecnologiaBemB360BexplicaBoB

golBqueBpeleBnaoBfezBemBchuteBdoBmeioBcampo.html#(accessed#November#02,#2014).#It#is#definitely#one#of#the#

greatest#episodes#that#reinforce#the#mythological#character#of#Pelé,#especially#because#there#is#coloured#footage#

of#the#scene#—#the#1970#World#Cup#was#the#first#in#history#to#have#TV#coverage#in#colour.##94#‘TimBtim#por#timBtim’#has#no#literal#translation.#According#to#the#Portuguese#Language#Dictionary#Priberam#

(http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo),#informally,#it#means#‘thoroughly’,#‘with#all#details’,#‘with#no#omissions’#(accessed#

November#02,#2014).##95#Again,#here,#a#literal#translation#would#make#it#anything#but#what#it#actually#means.#Elen#makes#a#pun#here#

with#‘Periquito’#(Parakeet)#and#the#nickname#of#the#radio#announcer#Osvaldo#Reis#(Rádio#Globo),#‘Pequetito’.#

Pequetito#commented#the#aboveBmentioned#match#against#TijuanaBMEX#and,#in#particular,#his#account#of#Victor’s#

defence#of#the#lastBminute#penalty#kick#reverberated#strongly#within#Atlético’s#fan#base.#It#became#part#of#the#

mythology#surrounding#the#victorious#campaign,#and#even#earned#him#the#2013#Best#Sports#Commentator#in#an#

award#organised#by#the#Brazilian#TV#channel#SporTV#—#the#TV#footage#of#the#penalty#scene#with#Pequetito’s#

voice#is#found#at#https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixriU8RFtxk#(accessed#October#18,#2014).#In#this#phrase,#

she#means#that#the#last#goal#in#the#match#against#Corinthians#was#able#to#‘explode#Pequetito’s#throat’#as#the#epic#

match#against#Tijuana#almost#did.####96#Atlético’s#nickname#comes#from#its#mascot:#a#rooster#(galo,#in#Portuguese).#

97#Another#term#that#cannot#be#literally#translated.#‘MataBmata’1is#the#expression#used#to#define#knockout#

competitions#in#Portuguese#and#literally#means#‘killBkill’#(because#one#of#the#sides#‘will#be#killed#at#the#end’).#

Here,#she#makes#again#a#pun#saying#that#knockout#competitions,#for#Atlético,#have#become#something#that#does#

not#really#‘kill’.##

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•! the references to the slogans and mottos of Atlético’s torcida (the self-elected witness of the impossible who believed again)

•! the word puns with aspects from the football universe (mata-não-mata-nada).

Even though the text is about a non-original topic (after all, everybody was talking about the match the following day, even supporters of other clubs), its style makes it appear authentic and novel.

As Elen explains, her writing process is long: “I can say that my process is dragged out. Because when it reaches the form of a text it means that I have been reading about it, seeing things and discussing it on Twitter for a very long time”. Because the central concern is aesthetic, Elen’s texts are highly intertextual, dialoguing with other supporters, with conversations that she has on Twitter, and with other texts and topics. For example, in the post Mas isso era antes98 (But this was before), she openly takes inspiration from the textual structure used by the actor and writer Gregorio Duvivier in his article Mas antes99 (But before).

Elen sees her aesthetically focused approach to football as more feminine. And, coincidence or not, another woman who was interviewed, Leide Botelho, was also mentioned by the other interviewees as representing this type of perspective. On the other hand, the interviewees also referred to male supporters that care deeply about textual aesthetics. One of these was Fred Melo Paiva, Galo’s blogger and columnist at the newspaper O Estado de Minas.

Adopting)a)critical)attitude. Other supporters have taken on a more critical attitude in their work. The focus in this case is often on topics such as the season-ticket program, the media coverage about the club, and political issues surrounding the organisation of tournaments in the country. As I

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!98#Elen’s#post:#http://espnfc.espn.uol.com.br/atleticoBmineiro/camikaze/masBissoBeraBantes#

99#Duvivier’s#article:#http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/gregorioduvivier/2013/07/1318207BmasBantes.shtml#

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asserted above, the podcast Galocast was a regular project that focused on political issues related to the club:

Because,!for!Galocast,!I!had!the!idea!of!doing!a!podcast!about!Galo,!but!

a!more!critical!podcast!because!at!that!time!it!was!Ziza![the!president]!

and!Ziza!was!only!doing!silly!things.!Then,!I!said…I!was!a!moderator!at!

the! Galo’s! community! on! Orkut.! […]! Then! I! wanted! to! strengthen! a!

channel! of! communication! and! pressure! about! Ziza! because! he!was!

really! bad.! Then,! I! gathered! a! gang.! Igor,! from! 98! [98FM,! a! radio!

station! in! Belo! Horizonte],! Couttinho,! Popó,! and! later,! Léo! Gomide!

[now!a!reporter!at!the!radio!station!Band!News!BH]!—!he!still!lived!in!

São!Paulo!at!the!time.!Later,!Emerson!Romano!from!Itatiaia![the!most!

popular! radio! station! in! the! city]! also! participated.! And! in! the! very!

beginning,!it![our!motivation]!was!that:!to!charge!Ziza.!But!these!guys,!

these! other! guys,! they! already! wanted! to! talk! more! about! football!

itself.! Then,! let’s! do! a!mix,! a! little! bit! of! pressure! over! the! board! of!

directors!and!talk!about!football.!And!then,!Ziza!left!and!we!ended!up!

talking! more! about! Galo.! (Wilson! Franco,! personal! communication,!

August!5,!2014)!

Today, this perspective is found, for instance, in the already mentioned vlog Espora Afiada (Sharp Spur), a type of spin-off of Galocast. Espora Afiada has been produced since 2012, and has, at the time of writing, 49 episodes, 2,700 subscribers on its YouTube channel and around 276,000 views (data from October 2014). The length of the programs is variable, for instance, the special episode Estreiando o benefício do GNV Prata (Debuting the benefits of GNV Prata) lasts around seven minutes and episodes such as the 17th and 25th100, which focus on diverse topics, both last more than 20 minutes. Besides the season-ticket program (called Galo na Veia, aka GNV), which was discussed in many episodes, other topics related to Atlético’s policies that are of interest to its supporters are also approached. These other topics include Atlético’s contracts with sportswear manufacturers, strategies adopted to sell the club’s licensed

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!100#

All#episodes#of#Espora1Afiada#are#available#at:#https://www.youtube.com/user/zeca1908/videos#(accessed#

October#14,#2014).##

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products, stadiums and the contractual relations that the club holds with the administrators of Arena Independência and Mineirão. In some episodes, CBF and its controversial actions, racism and police brutality are also discussed.

Most programs are shot at Zeca’s place, where he has a small office to work on the project. But, in some situations, he also does some external shooting, like in the above-mentioned example, when he recorded his own experience of exchanging for the first time GNV tickets in the headquarters of the club.

Focusing) on) the) information) and) in) technical) analyses. At last, we have the perspective that may be considered the least innovative in the sense that it does not invert that much the logic of the conventional football coverage done through the traditional media. For instance, numerous accounts on Twitter are used, in this sense, as web feed, so that news published in diverse media about the club is collected in only one place. Many blogs also reproduce — many times in their own words, I must say — the journalistic style of reporting events involving the club (e.g. ‘Galo plays against X today’, ‘Atlético plays well and defeats Y’, ‘Tickets for the game Z are on sale tomorrow’). Some supporters also make technical and tactical analyses that may surpass the ones done by professional journalists because of the deep knowledge that they have about the schemes used by the team over a championship. Or they may also end up being worse precisely because their specialisation in the topic ‘Atlético’ many times means a more shallow knowledge when it comes to opponents’ schemes and the broader tournament context. Ultimately, content that solely analyses a team’s line-up or resorts to reports officially publicised and widely known information (such as details about the match kick-off time, venue, opponent, referees and assistants) is not very original. In these cases, supporters are doing a similar job to that done by professional media producers.

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Journalism,%literature%and%postmodern%chronicle%%

Previous studies that approach sports blogs suggest that the content produced by supporters often follows a logic of imitation of the journalistic language (McCarthy, 2013). Many bloggers do not attend the matches they write about (Kian, Burden Jr, & Shaw, 2011) and do a job that may be considered ‘inferior’ to conventional journalism due to an absence of formal training and, above all, access to traditional sources and methods of reportage (Hardin & Ash, 2011). Although this previous research is important for providing elements that help us to understand the particular cultures they address (US sports, tennis and gymnastics), here, I sought to explore another sport and context, and to adopt a significantly different approach.

Fundamentally, all of this previous research was developed within the academic field of journalism studies, and included discussions about blogs, also from a journalism-focused viewpoint; my approach, on the other hand, is strongly grounded in the academic field of fandom culture, which is in general more aligned with cultural studies. These theoretical options have many implications. For instance, to some extent, this previous literature adopts normative perspectives that situate sports journalism as the parameter and then search in the blogs for similar content and approaches. However, in this thesis, I address blogs and other content produced by supporters as expressions of communities and supporting cultures, thus constituting forms of expression that are grounded in norms and values often distinct from those that rule traditional news production. One of the dimensions in which differences of values are noticeable is in the fans’ decisions to produce in the texts a ‘supporters’ viewpoint’, which is purposely partial and passionate.

Unlike the findings of the Pennsylvania State University’s (2009) report, in this research, I found that the projects that are popular within Atlético’s supporter base often involve elements of ‘original reporting’.

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These forms of original reporting may not necessarily be methods traditionally adopted by conventional media; for example, conventional media organisations would not send their reporters over to the middle of the stands, where Rafael Lima goes to tell the supporter’s stories. Yet, some enterprises discussed here strongly depend on the very traditional journalistic methods and routines as well. For instance, WRG producers and the photographers interviewed for this research have credentials to follow games in the press sector. This official registration enables them to do a job under similar conditions to professionals — and the photographers, at least, are indeed professionals; they do not work for traditional media companies and they are not full-time fan photographers, but they sell their products to supporters and other people interested in them. Furthermore, these photographers have found alternative ways to monetise their activities and create working conditions that are more professional. Gabriel Castro, for instance, did a crowd-founding campaign to gather money so he could go to Morocco to record Atlético’s performance at the 2013 FIFA Club World Cup. Because of his reputation and his long-time dedication to the club, in one week, almost 200 supporters made donations that paid his travel expenses. In return, each one of the fans gained high-quality posters with his photos when he got back.

In contrast to Kian, Burden and Shaw’s (2011) point that sports bloggers rarely attend the matches they write about, in the case of the fan producers investigated here, 10 of the 11 interviewees said they very often attended Atlético’s games. The only one who did not go that often to the stadium did not live in Belo Horizonte. Of the three interviewed supporters who did not live in BH, two said they still attended games regularly anyway. In addition, many supporters I talked to said they also sometimes went to matches in other cities, states and countries (three indeed went to Morocco for the Club World Cup last year).

The interviewed supporters did not simply ‘mimic’ journalism: they adopted the objectivity language of journalism, but recreated it by

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providing alternative approaches that enrich and pluralise the media environment. For example, at the centre of their stories, they placed their fellow supporters, the social actors with less political and symbolic power within the football field (which includes organising bodies, media conglomerates, clubs, sponsors, other companies like stadium managers and so on). Even though supporters and torcidas have a voice in the mainstream media coverage, they are not that often at the centre of the narratives, which often focus on players, sports leaders and clubs. Indeed, the mainstream journalists’ dependency on these regular productive routines (going to the training centres and doing the daily coverage of routine events involving clubs and players) has kept them away from the unusual, ordinary, passionate and ultimately more engaging stories told by supporters.

Besides that, those texts that ‘talk about the torcida’ and those that focus on textual aesthetics, especially, are very close to the chronicle genre, particularly the form it assumed in Brazil. McGowan (2013, 2015), who studies football literature, argues that fiction works are rather rare if compared with the accumulated amount of non-fiction literature published in this area. He also stresses the importance of such a genre as a creative and imaginative space to understand and explore in a deeper way the sport’s place in culture. Even though there may not be very much fiction produced in the case of football-supporting cultures in Brazil, a fictional element has been activated in combination with the journalistic language (as it is peculiar to the chronicle genre itself). Also, the fact that these texts are elaborated within their individual club’s fan cultures has led to the development of a more postmodern sporting-chronicle style. In this new style, grand issues involving the Brazilian society, such as racism, national integration and even the national football squad and its players — topics that were portrayed by the great exponents of the canonical Brazilian sporting chronicle — are replaced by a more fragmented language and less totalising approaches. In this emerging type of

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chronicling, certain stories are being told: those about club idols and those specific to particular local and regional areas.

The Brazilian chronicle originated from the French feuilleton, particularly those called varietés, and the Brazilian press first published such chronicles in the 19th century. Located at the bottom of the page in Brazilian newspapers, this genre of folhetim (as they are called in Portuguese) had very diverse content. This content could be easily differentiated from the formal news articles because they registered and commented on daily events of everyday life, reframing the ordinary in a literary way (El-Fahl, 2013). The genre became very popular and this enabled the emergence of the folhetinista persona, an ancestor of the current chronicler. Renowned names of Brazilian literature such as José de Alencar and Machado de Assis were for a very long time effective collaborators of major newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where they wrote about the events of the day in chronicles loaded with intellectual sophistication.

The genre acclimatised so well to Brazil that in the 20th century the chronicler role turned into an occupation, a paid job. For some researchers, the genre underwent such deep transformations when it arrived there, becoming ‘brazilianised’, that the modern-day Brazilian chronicle along with Cordel literature may be considered two of the few typically Brazilian literary genres (Candido, 1992; Capraro, 2007). For El-Fahl (2013), “chronicle, for its hybrid nature, something in-between journalism, literature and history, has always been the subject of controversies, especially when it comes to a confusing theorisation, which in some way has made it harder to include it as a canonical genre” (p. 38). Capraro (2007) classifies it as a ‘frontier literature’:

Its!aesthetic!characteristic!is!undeniable,!because!it!develops!multiple!

feelings!in!the!reader:!they!are!amused,!they!are!led!to!reflection,!they!

rejoice!and!it!motivates!them.!Despite!this,!it!is!firmly!attached!to!the!

everyday! (the! current! time)! and! has! a! perennial! commitment! to!

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‘reality’� because! at! the! same! time! it! informs,! narrates,! describes,!

constructs! and! deconstructs! truths,! always! in! a! spontaneous! and!

momentary!way.!(p.!35)!!!

Ribeiro (2001) stresses that during the period of consolidation of the chronicle, when the book publishing industry was practically non-existent in Brazil, the genre anticipated in some aspects the mass culture of the 20th century. A more popular form of literature and the result of two distinct languages — the literary and the journalistic — the feuilleton became a consumer item. For Ribeiro (2001), the feuilleton popularisation also represented the popularisation of literature in a context in which books were a privileged medium for the literary expression of a cultural elite.

Brazilian sporting chronicle, a subdivision within the broader chronicle genre, emerges at first associated with chroniclers who reported diverse topics of the everyday and, among them, football in a style known as colunismo social (social columnism) (Capraro, 2007). It is only from the 1940s/1950s that the sporting chronicle per se emerges, directly linked to the Jornal dos Sports and to the period after the newspaper’s purchase by Mário Filho101, one of the greatest exponents of the genre. Despite the term ‘sporting chronicle’ being used for this style, the vast majority is dedicated to football. Capraro (2007) summarised the central topics and perspectives of Brazilian sporting chronicle over the 20th century:

As! a! constitutive! part! of! the! Brazilian! culture,! the! union! of! both!—!

chronicle! and! football! —! resulted,! probably,! in! one! of! the! most!

notable! and! prominent! spaces! of! discussion! about! the! national!

identity! (Antunes,!2004:!22345).! From! the! civilising! issue,!prevailing!

in! the! first!decades!of! the!20th!century,!passing!by! the!debate!about!

ginga! and! malandragem! between! 1940! to! 1970! (Antunes,! 2004),!

coming!to!the!professionalised!and!globalised!style!of!the!last!decades!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!101

#Mário#Rodrigues#Filho#is#a#popular#figure#within#football#culture#in#Brazil,#especially#in#Rio#de#Janeiro.#The#

Maracanã#stadium#is#named#after#him.#He#was#a#journalist#and#writer#and#one#of#the#initial#epigraphs#of#this#

thesis#was#written#by#him.##

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(Manhães,! 2004),! football! chronicle! oscillates! between! extremes:!

those!who!argue! for! a! separation!and! those! that!defend!a! symbiosis!

between! the! nation! and! the! escrete102! —! a! term! spread! by! Nelson!

Rodrigues!(1993;!1994).!(p.!41)!

For Brauner (2010), modern-day sports chronicle in Brazil has restricted itself to a specialised discourse, tending more to the journalism side and moving away from literature:

Today,! information! and! the! truth!of! the! facts! are! the! things! that! are!

valued.!No!more!stories!about!epic!games,!magical!dribbles!or!gols)de)

placa103! told!using!hyperbole!or! irony.!Texts!are! synthetic,! objective,!

resembling!somewhat! the!current! football!played! in! the!grounds.!No!

more!amazed!or!ecstatic!descriptions!like!in!the!distant!past![…].!Just!

like!journalism!and!football!changed!over!time,!sporting!chronicle!also!

followed! this!path.! It! left! behind! a! romantic! era! filled!with!heavenly!

dribbles,! magic! goals! and! players! that! resembled! gods! to! become!

committed! to! the! truth.! Fiction! and! hyperbole! lost! ground! and! the!

talent! of! the! writers! was! replaced! by! the! bureaucrat! of! the! tactical!

analysis,!the!tipster!of!results.!(pp.!1083110)!!!

The analysis developed here, I must stress, is based in the textual productivity of only one club’s supporters. It suggests that the sporting chronicle with a more passionate and emotional nature, which characterised the golden years of José Lins do Rego, Nelson Rodrigues and Armando Nogueira, seems to be re-emerging. Now, it is turning into a style that expresses and reflects less about grand narratives such as the national identity and the civilising issue in Brazil (as its predecessors) to restrain itself to the universes shared by fans of individual clubs. It is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!102

#‘Escrete’#is#football#slang#in#Brazil#that#comes#from#the#English#‘scratch’#and#is#used#with#two#meanings:#to#

denote#the#starting#lineBup,#the#best#players#on#a#team;#or,#most#commonly,#the#Brazilian#national#team#(or#the#

best#players#in#the#country).#It#became#popular#with#Nelson#Rodrigues,#one#of#the#greatest#Brazilian#football#

chroniclers#of#all#time.#He#also#wrote#one#of#the#initial#epigraphs#of#this#thesis.##103

#This#expression#originated#from#a#goal#Pelé#scored#in#a#match#in#1961#(a#game#between#Fluminense#and#

Santos#at#Maracanã#for#the#Torneio1RioTSão1Paulo).#The#goal#was#so#spectacular#that#the#journalist#Joelmir#Beting#

ordered#a#bronze#plaque#for#the#stadium#hall#with#the#following#words:#Neste1estádio,1Pelé1marcou1no1dia151de1março1de119611o1tento1mais1bonito1da1história1do1Maracanã#(‘At#this#stadium,#Pelé#scored#on#March#5,#1961#the#

most#beautiful#goal#ever#scored#at#Maracanã’).#After#that,#the#expression#became#part#of#the#football#jargon#and#

is#used#to#designate#goals#that#are#distinguishingly#hard#and#of#rare#beauty#and,#as#such,#also#deserve#a#plaque#

(Gol#de#Placa,#2014).###

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more postmodern, in this sense, in expressing and articulating not a search for metanarratives about the nation and football, but rather pieces, fragments and micro-universes that go unnoticed by those who are not part of such cultures. The contemporary Brazilian football chronicle is mythical and folkloric, but its idols are localised, peripheral and not totalitarian or totalising like the myths of the literary sporting chronicle that could be categorised as canonical (Nelson Rodrigues, Mário Filho and so on). They reappropriate a genre and recreate it, talking less about supporters at an abstract and universal level and more about atleticanos (supporters of Atlético in Portuguese), the galo doido (crazy rooster; an informal name they call themselves), the mundane, immediate and local level that they represent and express. Sporting chronicles have become peripheral and regional, and the idols and supporters of the central clubs from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are no longer the only ones to matter. In this sense, even football itself disappears, before a narrative that replaces a single culture (football culture) as a canon to be inspired by diverse cultures of clubs and torcidas, here elevated to the centre of the narratives.

Conclusion&

I explored in this chapter the digital productivity of Brazilian football supporters, particularly from projects developed by fans of a single club, Atlético-MG. I interviewed those supporters running the most popular productions within Galo’s supporter base and found out that they were unlike pop-culture fans. Pop-culture fans often seek to explore alternative plots, less important characters and new narrative lines in their texts, regularly resorting, therefore, to fiction, to dialogue with the universe set in the canon. However, football supporters build their stories more in contraposition to journalism, as McCarthy (2013) also indicated.

I sought to understand in precisely which ways football supporters’ texts augment and supplement the content produced by the mainstream media

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and, by linking those projects to the communities and cultures behind them, I found out that these enterprises are innovative mainly because:

•! they place ordinary supporters at the centre of their narratives, therefore, making their stories more engaging and appealing to other fans

•! they adopt unconventional methods of reportage that challenge the dependency of journalism on regular productive routines and that are able to address unusual angles of sport-related stories

•! they are recreating that passionate and literary Brazilian sporting chronicle in a more postmodern fashion.

Fan writers talk about their local cultures and myths; they worship their particular idols; they tell stories about the everyday, always resorting to inside jokes and anecdotes. Indeed, they bring to a hypercommodified and highly globalised culture, a pinch of regionalism and authenticity. It is not a glocalization practice. It is a decentralising practice, especially in a country where historically the ‘national culture’ has meant the culture of two very specific states: Rio and São Paulo. The fan texts analysed here offer an imaginative and creative space where fans themselves may enjoy and reflect on their object of devotion. They, therefore, have both political and aesthetic value.

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7! Conclusion%

The!growth!in!mass!consumption,!though!it!did!not!destroy!or!overturn!the!barriers!of!class!divided!society,!did!profoundly!modify!everyday!life3patterns,!the!social!experience!and!expectations!and!the!lived! universe! of! the! majority! of! ordinary! people.! One! can! find!evidence!of! this! in!a!hundred!everyday!ways!—!in! the!new!kinds!of!modern!conveniences!which!found!their!way!into!ordinary!homes;!in!the!changes!in!patterns!of!leisure,!entertainment,!holidays;!in!shifts!in!patterns!of!drinking![...]!or!food!consumption.!

—!Stuart!Hall,!in!The)Culture)Gap,!1984!

Throughout this thesis, I argued that the socio-economic changes that Brazil experienced in the last decade are associated with the transition of the football sector’s model of organisation and with a dislocation in the cultural identity of supporters. Over the course of the six chapters, I described and analysed how the distinct historical conjunctures of the country are related to different forms of organisation of the domestic league and also to supporters’ formations and practices.

One of the central issues here was the supposed process of gentrification and embourgeoisement of Brazilian football audiences, which I sought to address in its complexity. In an attempt to escape simplified and immediate readings of the phenomenon, I made two critical arguments:

(1)!It was not a simple exchange of public, with more affluent strata of the population being attracted and those in the base of the social pyramid being completely sidelined.

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(2)!It was not the mere transformation of Brazil into a middle-class country, with the behaviour of supporters moving from urban working-class culture towards the values and practices of the traditional Brazilian middle-class.

In relation to the first key argument — the exchange of the public by a more ‘affluent’ audience — some evidence complexify the thesis of a simple gentrification. First, as I asserted in Chapter 2, the changes are also visible in the sectors of the stadium traditionally occupied by supporters from low-income areas. Second, a survey research conducted in 2014 with match attendees at the Mineirão stadium, in Belo Horizonte, indicated that 31.2% of the current public ‘always’ visited the space before the renovations and 26.9% did it ‘often’ (Gefut, in press). In other words, the old public composes almost 60% of the current public. Moreover, the same survey suggested that the distribution of income of the stadium attendees did not significantly differ from the Brazilian income distribution. In fact, if there is any disproportion, it is an over-presence of individuals from lower strata in the stadium in comparison with the social pyramid itself. If we follow the traditional division adopted by research institutes in classes A, B, C, D and E (approached in Chapter 4), in 2012, Brazil had 28% of its population in the D and E (low) range, 53% in the C (middle) range and 20% in the A and B (upper) range. Disregarding those who declared that they did not have any source of wealth (5%), the income distribution of the public of the new stadium would be around 34.5% from classes D and E, 38.1% from class C and the other 22.3% from classes A and B.

According to the second key argument, the changes in terms of organisation and expression of the supporters cannot be simply understood as a reflection of a shift to a middle-class country. As I explained in Chapter 4, social class encompasses a series of factors beyond income; however, at the same time, this does not underplay in any way the profound transformations the country has recently experienced, which are the result of a post-neoliberal agenda adopted by the PT. What seems to

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have happened in Brazil, as other scholars have argued, is the emergence of a ‘new working-class’ (Bomeny, 2011; Chauí, 2013; Souza, 2010; Yaccoub, 2011), and linked to it, is the massification of consumption.

To oppose the thesis of a ‘new Brazilian middle-class’ does not mean to ignore the deep changes, but rather to recognise effectively the composition, values and place of these individuals in the global capitalist system and in Brazilian society as well. Hall (1984) opposed the embourgeoisement thesis in relation to post-war Britain, where the Right discourse implicated somehow an understanding that “with affluence, the working class was becoming middle-class, and that class itself was a fast disappearing phenomenon” (p. 18). In Brazil, it is also necessary to resist the embourgeoisement thesis; however, here it is an even greater temptation because such a discourse has been strongly supported by the Left itself (in this case, the government).

For Hall (1984), the embourgeoisement thesis, which flourished with the massive post-war consumer boom, was not only patently absurd but also politically dangerous. As he puts it, “class relations do not disappear because the particular historic cultural forms in which class is ‘lived’ and experienced at a particular period, change” (p. 18). On the other hand, in Great Britain, argues Hall (1984), the problem was that the Left, by and large, failed to recognise that “consumer capitalism did refashion and reshape social relations and cultural attitudes quite widely and irrevocably” (p. 18, emphasis in original). Most importantly, the Left was not able to understand what the experience of having access to mass products meant to ordinary people:

[…]! to! take! but! one! area! —! it! transformed! the! immediate! lives! of!

many! working! class! (and! other)! women,! who! would! never! have!

come!into!the!labour!market!or!broken!some!of!the!leading3strings!of!

domestic!drudgery!without!modern!appliances!in!the!home;!and!who!

may!therefore!be!forgiven!for!refusing!to!regret!their!appearance![…].!

As! an! aside:! there! is,! sometimes,! in! the! reaction!of! the! Left! to! these!

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matters,! an! inverted! puritanism! which! hardly! bears! inspection.!

Middle! class! socialists,! heaving! under! the!weight! of!their! new! hi3fis,!

their! record! collections,! their! videos! and! strip! pine! shelving,! cheap!

prints!and!Chinese!lanterns!sometimes!seem!to!prefer!‘their’!working!

class! poor! but! pure:! unsullied! by! contact! with! the! market.! (p.! 19,!

emphasis!in!original)!

In sum, argues Hall (1984), “the Left was not incorrect in seeing the massive manipulation, the advertising hype, the ballyhoo, the loss of quality, the up-and-down-market division, which are intrinsic to commercial consumerism. The difficulty was that this manipulative side was all that was seen” (p. 19, emphasis in original).

The life stories of the supporters I interviewed, their practices and the values they expressed through their projects and discourses are not that disconnected from the traditional working-class ethos of football culture. In Nash’s (2000) theorisation about traditionality and new fandom, these supporters fall mostly into the traditionality domain (repackaged somehow, though). They are passionate, have a close personal identification with their club, are predominantly local fans, mostly go to both home and away matches, and they believe strongly in specific club traditions. They may sporadically watch matches on TV (new fandom, for Nash), buy some club merchandise (also new fandom) and go to the stadium by themselves or with their families (new fandom again). However, their strong identification with the team, the resentment they feel for those seated and quiet at the stadium, and the sense of history they take from the club are remarkable. One of the supporters I interviewed named his dog after a symbolic fan who was responsible for sewing the first flag of Atlético — in 1909!

Yet, Giulianotti’s (2002) ‘supporter’ in his typology of football spectators is very similar to the supporters I am talking about. Giulianotti (2002) divided football spectators into four broad identities: supporter, follower, fan and flâneur. As with Nash’s categories (traditionality/new

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fandom), Giulianotti’s typology also follows the transition of football from working-class to consumer culture, and most of the supporting leaders I interviewed are rather similar to the classic ‘supporter’ Giulianotti (2002) talks about: they have a long-term personal and emotional investment in the club and such dedication may be supplemented by a market-centred investment, but never supplanted. The classic ‘supporter’ “has a relationship with the club that resembles those with close family and friends” (p. 33). Galo is definitely that for them. Giulianotti’s other categories have a more fickle relationship with their objects of devotion and especially the fan and the flâneur fall very much in what Nash (2000) called new fandom.

Then, the persistent football culture’s working-class ethos, manifested particularly by the supporting leaders I studied, corroborates the idea that what we have in Brazil today is the emergence of a new working-class, not a new middle-class. With the expansion of the consumer culture, football supporters, as Brazilians in general, have had access to products and services they have never had before. Maybe nothing is as symbolic as the growth of the commercial aviation sector in the country. Only accessible to the upper classes until not that long ago (late 1990s), from 2003 to 2012, the sector expanded 234% (Anac, 2013). In 2004, commercial aviation transported 41.2 million passengers in Brazil; in 2013, it was 109.2 million. In 2003, bus road transport was the main form of commercial interstate travel in the country, accounting for 72% of trips (against 28% for air transport); in 2010, for the first time, this equation was inverted. In 2013, 59% of all commercial interstate trips were done by plane and 41% by bus.

This change represents a substantial transformation for a continental country such as Brazil. As Bomeny (2011) describes, thousands of people who migrated to the southeast in the past decades, coming from poorer regions of the country, notably the north and the northeast, no longer need to face “two, three-day trips by bus, in the heat and without any comfort”

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to go home. The expansion of the sector, the availability of credit and the promotional rates of the airlines gave these people not only the opportunity of saving time and seeing their families more often, but also some self-esteem and a feeling of empowerment. On the other hand, there were many cases of individuals from the upper classes who publicly complained that airports were becoming bus stations: bothered, they now have to divide ‘their’ space with the rest.

Some of my interviewees told me how their passion for football already took them to diverse places. To some, many of the interstate (and occasional international) trips that they have done in their lives were to follow Atlético in away matches. The estimated 30,000 fans of Corinthians that travelled en masse to Japan to attend matches of the 2012 FIFA Club World Cup and the 25,000 supporters of Atlético that went to Morocco for the 2013 edition of the same tournament are occurrences that are more complexly understood against this background. The devices supporters use to take photos, record or edit their projects are also part of this context where electronic equipment has a featured position in the mass market.

Giulianotti (2002) sees the Internet as the site of spectators with weak ties with their clubs, above all the flâneur type, whose behaviour he described as that of the consumer with high purchasing power; however, this does not seem to be the logic of the Brazilian culture. Giulianotti's mistake may be linked to how the Internet was seen more than a decade ago by some researchers, the limited public that football-related communities and forums gathered at that time or the fact that in other countries supporter cultures are no longer that influenced by working-class culture (or perhaps, there is also a mistake about how working-class culture manifests itself in post-industrial capitalism). However, the type of relationship that these new leaders have with their clubs and other supporters is still characterised by significant levels of solidarity and by a centrality for their identities. Unlike the flâneur, who supports a club

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that best fits her/his personality, the personality of these supporters is actually constituted, among other things, in their participation in the club’s culture.

Ultimately, the 2014 World Cup had similar effects in Brazil as the Taylor Report had in England. The Taylor Report was a turning point in the hypercommodified phase of football in England, especially because of the resulting adoption of the all-seater model. In Brazil, the World Cup was the tipping point that turned all the other changes already in progress into something larger and more visible. On the other hand, the depth of the broader transformations that the country has experienced in the last decade or so, which are overdetermining supporter practices and the organisation of the football sector, are similar to those experienced in post-war Great Britain. The increase in the purchasing power of working-class people and the related growing consumer culture are particularly similar. However, there is one significant difference: in Brazil, the leftist government is behind such transformations. In fact, the government involvement makes it easier to see the liberalising aspects of this process from the people’s perspective — in this case, the supporter, who may express himself/herself in diverse ways, making use of the products acquired in this mass market. However, it is important not to ignore the materialism of my analysis and recognise the massive exploitation, including in the football domain, of this ‘new working-class’. The members of this new class often spend more than they earn (remember, the average ticket price in Brazil is the most expensive in the world!), to follow, now less often than before (perhaps one match a month rather than a week), that cultural artefact that they, more than anybody else, made the most popular sport in the world. In the following sections, I stress the contributions to knowledge contained in this thesis, the limitations of this research and future research agendas. I conclude the thesis with a brief commentary about the current Brazilian conjuncture.

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Contributions%to%knowledge%and%core%findings%

Across this thesis, I developed a conjunctural analysis of modern-day football fandom cultures in Brazil. My theoretical framework started to be outlined in the Introduction and was later detailed in Chapter 2. After I reviewed both the international and the Brazilian scholarly work on football cultures, I argued that the separation — or disjuncture as Schimmel and colleagues (2007) put it — that has characterised the historical developments of traditions in both sports and pop-culture fandom has implied two particular and related constraints for football-fandom studies:

•! a relative absence of that radical contextuality and conjuncturalism that are peculiar marks of cultural studies

•! the frequent adoption of simplistic models of communication that are not able to apprehend our current media environment or to contextualise the way we communicate today within the conditions of modern life.

This historical review illuminated thus the first finding of this thesis:

(1)!The identification of the relative distance of football-fandom studies from the cultural studies field and some of the consequences that this separation has caused in terms of an absence of objects and approaches within football-culture investigations.

In previous research, there have been some significant gaps. One is that media technologies and communication are not properly addressed. Another is that the dominance of the resistance paradigm has meant that phenomena such as the projects discussed in Chapter 6, which involve an understanding of media production and consumption that goes beyond traditional communication models, are not conceived as research objects.)

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In Chapter 3, Inside the Industry: The Political Economy of Football, I properly started my empirical investigation, which, over the thesis, was interwoven with the related theoretical discussions. Chapter 3 involved a great deal of bibliographic review as well as re-readings of previous analyses of the Brazilian context. This long literature review, along with the analysis of emerging conflicts, shed light on one of the main findings of this work:

(2)!The indication of a new period in terms of organisation, values and modes of commercialisation in Brazilian football — what I called, using Giulianotti’s (2002) terminology, a hypercommodified phase.

This stage of the football sector in Brazil started in the early 2000s, with the Leftist turn in Latin America and the election of Lula in 2002. Brazil’s post-neoliberal government adopted a ‘modernising’ agenda in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games at the same time as the conditions for a stronger consumer culture were created. And this mass consumer culture has indirectly supported the new market-oriented model of the football sector. The Brazilian Football Championship adopted a new system, which is more lucrative and aligned with media systems. The revenues of the clubs increased 375% from 2003 to 2013, and the Sports Fans Statute officially defined, in legal terms, supporters as consumers of the services provided by the clubs. The all-seater model was adopted because of the World Cup, and the deregulatory framework developed during the 1990s led to a situation in which the clubs have unprecedented revenues and also debts. Furthermore, the centralisation of decision-making powers in the hands of Rede Globo and the abusive practices in the sector have unfolded alongside many dissenting voices that are emerging among supporters and even among players. Chapter 3 provided an overview of all these elements overdetermining the current Brazilian context.

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In Chapter 4, Collective Football Supporting in Brazil: Organised Groups, New Movements and Online Communities, I discussed the historical developments of groups of football supporters in the country. Grounded in bibliographical and documental analyses, interviews with football fans and social-media metrics, I explored four main themes:

•! the emergence of the first collectivisms in the 1940s (the symbolic-fan phase)

•! the foundation of the most active and bureaucratic organisations of fans in the peak of the repressive regime late in the 1960s (organised groups or TOs)

•! the recent appearance of the less hierarchical and institutionalised new movements and their non-violent, festive and family-oriented approach to collective supporting

•! the developments of the football-related online communities from their restricted formation through BBSs and mailing lists to their popularisation in the 2000s with Orkut.

This investigation of the modes of collective supporting was contextualised with the recent socio-political history of Brazil, detailing some of the elements that had been previously introduced in the political-economy chapter. Chapter 4, along with Chapter 5, Online Football Fandom: Networked Collectivisms, Opinion Leaders and Convergence Points, which approached the current shape of such networked collectivisms, were fundamental for another key finding of this thesis:

(3)!Online conversations and digital practices are interwoven with embodied and other mediated fandom practices, and the new supporting leaders that have emerged in such environments are key actors for the decentralised coordination and mobilisation efforts for traditional supporting practices within these cultures.

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Such a finding was only identifiable because in this thesis the online communities were approached and localised in context with other collective modes of supporting, which is an innovative approach in football-fandom research.

At last, Chapter 6, The Digital Productivity of Football Supporters: Formats, Motivations and Styles, is likely the main empirical contribution to knowledge of the thesis, for

(4)!Exploring the networks of collaboration and the original amateur productions of football supporters.

Very few previous works have approached the textual productivity of sports fans, and fewer still have discussed original content produced by football supporters.

After I reviewed the scarce literature about the topic, I explored the diverse formats, motivations and styles/approaches found among the popular projects within Atlético’s supporter base. Most of the enterprises I addressed are long-term endeavours or new projects of supporters that were involved in the past with other initiatives. From interviews done with fans that are part of popular blogs, vlogs, digital radio stations and so on, and analyses of the material they have produced, I identified how their work is particularly creative by providing alternative approaches that enrich and pluralise the sports-media environment. Less than an ‘imitation’ of the journalistic content, these projects offer:

•! new frames and narratives that place ordinary supporters at the centre of the stories

•! unconventional methods of reportage that challenge the journalism dependency on regular productive routines and that are able to address unusual and ordinary angles of sport-related stories

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•! particularly in Brazil, they are recreating that passionate and literary Brazilian sporting chronicle in a more postmodern fashion, bringing indeed a pinch of regionalism and authenticity to a hypercommodified and highly globalised culture.

The exploration of these projects and of the long-term communities that these supporters are part of led to the main finding of this thesis:

(5)!In the football context, at least in Brazil, we find the type of collective communities that Hutchins and Rowe (2012), for instance, were not convinced existed in the sports universe.

Atlético fans have, through a long-term process of collaboration and co-creation, continuously challenged professional media providers, media norms and the cultural authority of ‘legitimate knowledge’. Football supporters are using the affordances of new technologies to discuss their own experiences and practices, and to organise their cultures in ways that are meaningful for them. Some examples of activist interventions using new technologies were discussed in Chapter 3 — such as the campaigns #ForaRicardoTeixeira and #VergonhaMinasArena. And in Chapter 6, multiple projects were discussed that illustrated more ordinary uses of new media.

Limitations%and%future%research%agendas%

Most of the limitations of this work come precisely from the perspective adopted here. Not that this is a way to justify the aspects not addressed in this thesis, but it is rather a matter of pointing out how some of the choices made along the way generated both the strengths and weaknesses of this analysis. Specifically, my highly contextual approach means that in some way this work has more breadth than depth. The power of my analytical approach comes from the articulation of multiple contextual

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elements and of the ways they converge into practices, processes and forms of organisation of the football-supporting cultures in Brazil.

I found a way to make explicit how these cultures are intrinsically linked to the current conjuncture of the country. I explored how the political, social and economic situations were related to the changes in the political economy of the sector at the same time that they were transforming the living conditions of a large portion of the population, thus affecting discourses, practices and supporting formations. This conjuncture is also related to the popularisation of the Internet and social media, of multiple mobile technologies, and above all, within the portion of the population that has made football the cultural institution that it is in Brazil. The presence of these diverse publics in the online communities is what mainstreams as well as provides the necessary ingredients for the productions analysed here. The supporters’ creativity and innovation comes from a productive articulation of the necessary technological literacies and the appropriation of the aesthetics, styles and norms of these cultures in such content. The internal jokes, the particular myths, the informal and passionate language, ultimately, the vernacular creativity, as Burgess (2006) names it, is what makes these projects have such an intensive emotional impact with their audiences.

Therefore, I explored multiple elements, from economic to social, political and technological configurations that work together to create the conditions behind the formations and discourses found in this context. Nevertheless, each individual element may surely be investigated in more detail in studies that are dedicated exclusively to understanding each of them. In this case, the most important would not be the whole, as it was here, but rather the individual parts.

Beyond this intrinsic weakness, another limitation is definitively the concentration in most analyses on a single torcida as a representation of a multiple context. In the future, other works are necessary to understand

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the particular behaviour of each torcida in Brazil because the country is rich in regional diversity and each area is therefore likely to have distinct practices.

Finally, I would like to suggest some future research agendas that emerged as this work progressed. The above-mentioned exploration of the individual elements could be developed, for instance, through a work that investigated only the media projects of supporters from multiple clubs. The 12 clubs that I collected Twitter data on all have fan-run initiatives that are highly regarded by their fans. An analysis that focused on only the textual productivity of football supporters would be able to explore in more detail the diverse discourses and styles employed by fans from other regions of the country.

Furthermore, other studies could develop specific analyses of the social-network site profiles of these new supporting leaders. These fans are interesting entry points for theorising about the distinct forms of belonging, ethos and practices that characterise such collectivisms. The fact that there are few women who are part of these core groups of supporters could also be explored to comprehend the dynamics that demarcate gender relations within such football-related networked collectivisms.

Lastly, the lines between these amateur projects and professional media have started to blur significantly in Brazil, a topic worthy of further exploration. Moreover, the distinct models behind such projects deserve a more detailed analysis because some of them are hosted and managed by conventional media portals, such as ESPN’s and Rede Globo’s. In these environments, what are the relationships between fans and the editors of such organisations? ESPN, for instance, employs paid editors for its portal’s user-generated content area. So, how do these mediators (mostly, journalists) and collaborators, with diverse formations and values, interact with each other? These issues have been explored in other

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contexts — as in Hutchinson’s (2013) work, which investigates how the different interests of the stakeholders within an online community of an Australian public-service broadcaster are mediated. However, these issues are yet to be explored in the sports or in the Brazilian media-landscape contexts. Furthermore, the different types of monetisation of work involved in these projects also deserve further consideration.

Recent%conjunctural%developments%in%Brazil:%or%the%beginning%of%the%end%of%

the%pact%between%leftists%and%neoliberalism?%

Finally, I want to conclude this work making a brief commentary about the current Brazilian political conjuncture. Most of the developments I explored in this thesis occurred during what could be described as a moment of political consent in the country (Hall, et al., 1978). Since Lula was elected and implemented a post-neoliberal agenda, a type of alliance between the Left and the Right in which ‘everybody seemed to win’ took place, even though the beginning of the ‘moral panic’ that encompasses Brazil today has its roots in the Mensalão scandal (2005) and the attempt to undermine Lula’s re-election back in 2006. PT developed a vast range of innovative policies, some of them briefly discussed in Chapter 4. Nevertheless, such innovations were always based in a governability built through a pact with diverse parties in the Brazilian Congress.

Lula and his moderate discourse, radically different from his tone in the unsuccessful electoral campaigns of 1989, 1994 and 1998, established a dialogue and proximity with Brazilian elite sectors; as a result, the reduction of poverty, hunger and inequality was constructed without contradicting industry or agribusiness interests. The growth cycle of the GDP, the inflation control, the low levels of unemployment and the increases in the real basic wage made everyone walk ‘hand in hand’ in the country, with consumption being stimulated and Brazil facing the 2008 crisis with its ‘foot on the accelerator’. In 2010, after the good results of the economy and the social gains created by Lula’s policies, he guaranteed the

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permanence of PT in the presidency with the election of his Chief of Staff, Dilma Rousseff, the first woman to govern the country.

Dilma was part of Marxist urban guerrilla groups in the 1960s, and was persecuted, arrested and tortured during the military dictatorship. Her ascent was a continuity of something that was working well because she was already part of the preceding government and adopted a discourse rather aligned with Lula’s. Even though she has been recently re-elected for a second term (2014), the current Brazilian environment is completely different from that of her inauguration in 2011. For the right-wingers, whose most representative medium is the weekly magazine Veja, the culprits of the crisis are the public expenses, the size of the state, the interventionist model PT has adopted, or the welfare policies that only transfer means and discourage the creation of riches104. The welfare policies are criticised despite the fact that PT flagship redistributive program Bolsa Família, for instance, consumes only 0.47% of the Brazilian GDP (Pinheiro-Machado & Goveia, 2014). For the Left, whose greatest expression is the weekly magazine Carta Capital, the problem is Dilma’s economic policy — more conservative than Lula’s, which led to the country being more affected by the 2011 crisis — and the exhaustion of the consent between the Left and neoliberal policies105.

What we have now in Brazil is somehow similar to the ‘moral panic’ created by the mugging reaction in the 1970s in England; however, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!104

#These#causes#for#the#crisis#were#suggested#in#multiple#occasions.#Examples:#Gasto#Público#e#intervencionismo:#

os#dois#grandes#vilões,#Veja,#2014.#Retrieved#from:#http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/rodrigoB

constantino/economia/gastoBpublicoBeBintervencionismoBosBdoisBgrandesBviloes/#(accessed#February#15,#2015);#

Gastos#públicos#subiram#de#14%#em#1997#para#19%#do#PIB#em#2013:#precisamos#falar#sobre#Kevin!,#Veja,#2014.#Retrieved#from:#http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/rodrigoBconstantino/politicaBfiscal/gastosBpublicosBsubiramBdeB14B

emB1997BparaB19BdoBpibBemB2013BprecisamosBfalarBsobreBkevin/#(accessed#February#15,#2015);#Governo#é#

irresponsável#nos#gastos#públicos:#postura#eleitoreira#leva#a#pior#resultado#fiscal#em#18#anos!,#Veja,#2014.#Retrieved#from:#http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/rodrigoBconstantino/economia/governoBeBirresponsavelBnosB

gastosBpublicosBposturaBeleitoreiraBlevaBaBpiorBresultadoBfiscalBemB18Banos/#(accessed#February#15,#2015);#and#

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#Causes#suggested#in#this#particular#piece:#Ajuste#fiscal#e#de#ideais,#Carta1Capital,#2015.#Retrieved#from:#

http://www.cartacapital.com.br/economia/ajusteBfiscalBeBdeBideiasB9837.html#(accessed#February#15,#2015).#

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form seems to be peculiar: the Petralhas106 and the ‘horror’ to corruption — supposedly our biggest premodern defect. The crisis started to be gestated in the massive spectacularisation of the Mensalão scandal and in the consecration of PT as ‘the most corrupt party ever’ in the social imaginary. This is despite the evidence that PT is actually the first party to let its members be investigated by the Federal Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Federal Office while in power (Menezes, 2012).

Since 2013, the critiques have increased and the atmosphere of social chaos has been amplified through the Right’s strategy of ‘hijacking’ protests and the dissatisfaction of sectors of the Left with the hybridity of the state from a conservative point of view (Rolnik, 2013). The 2013 Confederations Cup protests are a portrait of this: they started with progressive agendas that focused on public transportation issues and that were broadly related to the urban reform cause. However, over the days, the demonstrations were co-opted and reinterpreted by conventional media and assumed an extremely conservative character; the demonstrations became a march against ‘corruption and everything that is out there’, reaching even a fascist discourse disguised as politicisation. The initial non-partisanship became an anti-partisanship, with the federal government ultimately paying the price (Secco, 2013). An anti-PT discourse gained momentum, and this transition from consent to dissent ended up stamped in a simplified way in two covers of The Economist. In the first one, in 2009, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ of Redeemer statue is drawn as if it was taking off107. In 2013, on the other hand, the iconic representation of the country is plummeting108. As expected, the causes/solutions for the crisis in the 2013 article revolved around Brazil’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!106

#‘Petralhas’#is#the#name#that#the#conservative#journalist#Reinaldo#Azevedo,#who#was#for#years#a#columnist#at#

the#magazine#Veja,#a#radical#Brazilian#rightBwing#publication,#used#to#refer#to#politicians#of#the#Workers’#Party#in#

his#book#O1País1dos1Petralhas#(Petralhas’1Country),#published#in#2008.#‘Petralhas’#is#a#neologism#with#the#party’s#

acronym#PT#and#the#Irmãos1Metralha,1the#name#in#Portuguese#of#the#Beagle#Boys,#a#Walt#Disney#group#of#

fictional#characters.##107

#Brazil#takes#off:#Now#the#risk#for#Latin#America’s#big#success#story#is#hubris,#The1Economist,#2009.#Retrieved#from:#http://www.economist.com/node/14845197#(accessed#February#15,#2015).##108

#Has#Brazil#blown#it?#A#stagnant#economy,#a#bloated#state#and#mass#protests#mean#Dilma#Rousseff#must#

change#course,#The1Economist,#2013.#Retrieved#from:#http://econ.st/18rqInQ#(accessed#February#15,#2015).##

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burdensome tax code for companies and the country’s ‘absurdly’ generous pensions.

In the football context, the most crucial issue is also a type of ‘hijacking’ of the mega-events agenda from a conservative interpretation (Vimieiro, 2014). Since 2007, when Brazil was chosen to host the FIFA tournament, until mid-2013, alternative media (the only ones giving some space to the discussion until then) often framed the topic from the urban issue and the gentrification and social sanitation logics that they instil — with indeed the eviction of thousands of dwellers in low-income areas during the preparations. At the peak of the 2013 demonstrations, however, the video of the US-based Brazilian Carla Dauden, No, I’m not going to the world cup109, became an Internet hit and it is the perfect example of what I analysed elsewhere as framing the issue through a ‘scarcity perspective’. If before, the World Cup and the Olympics were questioned by what they represented, their irresponsible organisation strategies and their acultural execution, where the particularities of each country are disrespected in favour of a ‘McDonald’s’ logic (the same product either in Brazil or Japan), now they were a problem because of the Brazilian incapacity to organise them. Fundamentally, the causes of the matter had been inverted. Brazil was the problem and the World Cup was basically ‘not for us’. In the end, not even the event’s success freed Dilma from being booed by the São Paulo elite in the opening match of the World Cup in an act that some observers noted started in the VIP sector of the stadium, where each ticket cost R$5,000 (Dilma é hostilizada durante abertura da Copa do Mundo em São Paulo, 2014; Fifa abre pré-venda de ingressos VIP para a Copa-2014; final de R$ 9 mil esgotada, 2013).

Currently, the atmosphere is of scepticism in the political and economical domains as well as in the football context, with the growth predictions of the sector being rethought and with 2015 possibly becoming a year of recession. The ‘modernising’ discourse, an old acquaintance, may gain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!109

#Available#at:#http://youtu.be/ZApBgNQgKPU#(accessed#February#20,#2015).#

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even more traction since the 7–1 defeat to Germany seems to have established a new crisis. According to football insiders, the Brazilian football model, which is highly dependent on individual talent, is out-dated and we are sorry when we do not have a particularly skilled generation (Cecconi, 2014; Lima, 2014a; Miranda, 2014). Even if such a diagnosis is correct in terms of productivity and management of the sector as an important component of the economy, the issue is to what extent such a ‘modernising’ agenda has any political or administrative implications. And furthermore, to what extent this agenda only serves the purpose of pressing for further neoliberal measures that both constrict the ties between supporters and clubs to mere consumer relations, and intensify the deregulation of the sector.

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Appendix%A%

SemiZStructured%Interview%Guide%

General$questions$

1)! Personal details such as age, occupation, schooling level, marital status, and where she/he was born.

2)! What is your personal story of involvement with Atlético-MG? a.! How did you become a fan? b.! Who influenced your decision to become involved with this

particular club? 3)! How often do you go to the stadium?

a.! With whom do you generally attend Atlético’s matches? b.! Are you a season ticket holder? c.! Do you attend away games?

4)! How do you keep updated with the news about your club? a.! Which types of media content do you consume? b.! Are you a pay-per-view subscriber? Since when?

5)! How and when did you start to use the Internet and social-media platforms to get information and talk about your club?

6)! What do you think about the material produced by traditional media outlets?

a.! Do you like or dislike any particular channel? Why? 7)! Do you consume content produced by other fans?

a.! Which type of content do you generally consume and how often?

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318!

b.! Do you like/dislike this type of content? c.! Is there any type of content that you prefer and why? d.! Do you see any difference between the content produced by

fans and by the traditional media? 8)! In which social-media platforms do you have an account?

a.! Which spaces do you use for football-related conversations? b.! For which type of conversation/s do you use each platform?

9)! Do you know other bloggers, vloggers or supporters who are also highly active in Atlético’s online community?

a.! What type of contact do you have with them? 10)! Have you been a member of any formal association of fans?

a.! Which one? b.! When? c.! If you are not longer a member, why did you leave?

11)! What do you think about Brazilian football in general? a.! What championships do you value and why? b.! And about the quality? (In terms of players, structure, rules

etc) c.! Have you seen any recent changes? d.! And about Galo’s supporter base? Is it the same as when you

were younger? Or have you seen changes? 12)! What do you think about the new stadiums?

a.! Do you like Independência? Is it very distinct from the old one? If so, how is it different?

b.! Do you like Mineirão? Is it very distinct from the old one? If so, how is it different?

c.! Could you describe your experience of attending matches in the old and new stadiums? Have you seen any change in terms of the experience before, after or during the matches?

13)! Do you have any complaints about the way football matches are organised in Brazil? Is there any particular thing that you feel should change?

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14)! Is there anything you would like to highlight about Brazilian football that you think is special or singular, and is significantly appreciated by you and other fans?

15)! What is the importance of football in your life? And in broader terms in Brazil?

16)! What, in particular, does Atlético mean to you?

Specific$questions$(regarding$each$fan’s$project)$

1)! When did you create your blog/podcast/vlog/video channel etc? 2)! How did you come up with the idea? Tell me about its history. 3)! How do you maintain it financially? 4)! Do you have help from other people? 5)! Could you please describe your activities? How much time do you

spend producing content and how often do you do this? 6)! Why do you do produce content? What is the importance of it in

your life? And what is its importance in broader terms? 7)! Have you been involved in other projects?

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Appendix%B%

Detailed%Description%of%Chapter%5%Data%Analysis%

The data sets explored in Chapter 5 were collected separately, using two keywords for each club. The keywords, as I explained earlier, are usually nouns in Portuguese or expressions in other languages. The data was collected with the yourTwapperkeeper application, which uses the Twitter API to capture the messages. With my dedicated web server running 24/7, the archives very quickly became too large to manage and yourTwapperkeeper becomes unstable when a data set reaches more than 1 million tweets; therefore, it was necessary to collect many small files that were later unified in one archive per expression (24 data sets in total, two for each club), and later, one for each club (12 data sets).

As an example, Atlético-MG’s data set was formed by multiple archives that cover each file from five to seven days of scraping — at first, I had 20 files with the keyword ‘atletico’ and 16 with ‘galo’, and all of them together comprised the three months of data analysed in Chapter 5. Each term originated a total data set for that expression — in Atlético’s case, one archive combining all 20 files collected with ‘atletico’ and another archive combining all 16 files collected with ‘galo’. At the end, the total data set for ‘atletico’ was combined with the total for ‘galo’, generating the final archive for the club.

In this process, however, many precautions had to be taken so that (1) repeated messages (i.e. posts that were collected with both keywords) were eliminated, (2) the start and end times of all final data sets of each club

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were the same, and (3) non-related messages were excluded. Below, I discuss in detail the scripts that were used and also the terminal commands that made it easy to undertake many of the necessary operations. This work was developed in a Mac OS, so the commands are those used in this system. To execute the scripts and commands adopted in this study, and to generate the charts and tables presented in Chapter 5, the computer must have not only the script files, but also the following applications installed:

Gawk, Perl, Python, Curl, R and R.Studio.

(1)$Planning$

During the planning, many keywords were tested for each club and the two expressions that collected the best and largest archives were used for the final collection. For instance, for Corinthians, when ‘corinthians’, ‘timao’ and ‘coringao’ were tested individually, ‘corinthians’ and ‘timao’ each produced archives that were larger and better (i.e. most messages were related to the club) than ‘coringao’.

(2)$Collection$

The following keywords were used for each club:

Atlético-MG (‘atletico’ and ‘galo’), Botafogo (‘bota’ and ‘fogao’), Corinthians (‘corinthians’ and ‘timão’), Cruzeiro (‘cruzeiro’ and ‘raposa’), Flamengo (‘fla’ and ‘mengo’), Fluminense (‘flu’ and ‘nense’), Grêmio (‘gremio’ and ‘gremista’), Internacional (‘inter’ and ‘colorado’), Palmeiras (‘palmeiras’ and ‘porco’), Santos (‘santos’ and ‘peixe’), São Paulo (‘são paulo’ and ‘spfc’), and Vasco (‘vasco’ and ‘crvg’).

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(3)$PreKprocessing$

This stage required the use of many scripts created by Bruns (2011) and a couple of other scripts created for this research, along with simple commands that were introduced into the command-line interface. This pre-processing phase is necessary, especially when the analysis involves long periods and the archives are collected separately. These substeps were adopted here:

a)! All archives collected using one keyword were combined in the same file. It was important to use an appropriate system to name the files when downloading the data sets, such as ‘keyword_date.csv’. This made it is easy to know the order and relative date of the posts included in each file.

b)! The oldest and the latest files were filtered with the exact time and date that the analysis started and ended. For that:

i)! I used the script timeframe.awk (Bruns, 2011). Example of a command:

gawk -F ‘\t’ -f timeframe.awk start="2013 09 01 00 00 00" end="2013 09 30 23 59 59” atletico_130910.csv > atletico_130901_00h00m00.csv

c)! As each archive collected with yourTwapperkeeper has a headline for the different types of data extracted together with the messages (such as user and time), it was necessary to eliminate the headline of all archives except the first, so that the head would not repeat itself over the total data set of each keyword. This process was needed because the combination of the subarchives was done in the exact order, in such a way that the files were ‘glued’ one below the other. For this step, the following commands were used:

i)! wc –l, which counts the number of lines of an archive.

Example:

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324!

wc -l galo_130920.csv

ii)! After the system counted the lines of the archive, the command tail was introduced in the terminal, using the

total number of lines minus one, so that the head of the given archive was eliminated. Examples:

wc -l galo_130910.csv

The program returned something like this:

249269 galo_130910.csv

Thus, it was necessary to use tail:

tail -n249268 galo_130910.csv > body1.csv

d)! After using tail for all files except the initial archive (the latest

needed to keep its headline), I then used the command cat to

combine all subarchives into one data set that would be the total data set for that keyword. Example:

cat head.tsv body1.csv body2.csv body3.csv body4.csv body5.csv > galo_final_nofilter.csv

e)! Following that, it was necessary to eliminate those messages with non-UTF-8 characters and the excess columns that the existence of these characters caused. The script that deletes duplicates and checks the order (next step) did not work with non-UTF-8 characters. This script was useful because the file needed to be in order (date of the posts) to have its metrics processed. Then:

i)! To check if there were lines with more columns than they were supposed to, the following command was used:

gawk -F ‘\t’ "BEGIN{i=0} {i++; if(NF !=13) print i, NF}” galo_final_nofilter.csv

Observation 1: In the case of data collected via the Twitter API, the number of columns was 13.

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Observation 2: This command printed on the screen the lines that had more than 13 columns.

ii)! To delete the lines with non-UTF-8 characters and convert the possible remaining ones this command was used:

iconv -c -f UTF-8 -t UTF-8 galo_final_nofilter.csv > galo_final_filteredUTF.csv

perl -i~ -pe “s/\0//g” galo_final_filteredUTF.csv

Observation: The latter changed the original archive into arq.csv~ and kept the original name in the new file, already converted.

iii)! NOTE: If the command continues to generate lines with more or less than 13 columns, it may be necessary to use the following command, which creates an archive with only the lines that have 13 columns:

gawk -F ‘\t’ "BEGIN{i=0} {i++; if(NF ==13) print \$0}” galo_final_filteredUTF.csv > galo_final_filteredUTF-C.csv

f)! Next, I used the script filterTweets.R, created for this project, to delete duplicates and order the archive:

i)! With this script, it was necessary to change the name of the input and output files in the script file and then run it. The command to run the script:

R --slave --vanilla -f filterTweets.R

g)! Following that, it was necessary to filter messages that were posted by users who set their language as Portuguese. A simple command in the terminal sorted this out:

gawk -F ‘\t’ "BEGIN{getline; print \$0} {if(\$6==\"pt\"){print \$0}}" galo_final_filteredUTF-C.csv > galo_final_filteredUTF-C-PT.csv

Observation: This command was used to filter other attributes in other columns. The ‘6’ was the language column in the archives collected via the Twitter API. It was possible to use this very same command to filter other columns, for instance, messages from a single user.

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326!

h)! Following that, I used both the scripts filter.awk and filterinverse.awk, developed by Bruns (2011). The former removed from the archive all messages that did not include particular expressions. The latter removed from the data set all messages that included particular expressions. The first was used to filter messages that had at least one of a list of terms and expressions commonly used in football or related to each club’s squad. The second was used in Atlético-MG’s case to remove messages related to its namesake Brazilian club: Atlético-PR.

i)! The steps described above were used to combine the subarchives of each keyword used for each club. They had to be used again (tail, cat, and later, the script filterTweets.R) to combine the

two total archives of keywords used for each club. That was the way that the final data set for each team was generated.

(4)$Processing$

a)! Following that, I used the script metrify.awk, developed by Bruns (2011). It generated most of the metrics used in Chapter 5. It was used here with the division by day (even though it is also possible to explore the data sets by hour or month). Example:

gawk -F ‘\t’ -f _scripts/metrify.awk divisions=90,99 time="day" skipusers=0 input file > output file

b)! To process the URLs, the first step was to use the script urlextract.awk, also developed by Bruns (2011), to create an additional column in the archive to store the URLs included in each message. This script also removed tweets with no URLs in their output file.

gawk -F '\t' -f _scripts/urlextract.awk input file > output file

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327!

c)! Following that, I used the script unshortenURL.py, developed for this project. This script turned the short URLs into long ones, which was important for getting the total sum of each domain.

python unshortenURL.py -n 30 input file > output file

Observation: To run this script, an Internet connection was necessary. The larger the data set, the longer it took to conclude the process because each short URL had to be loaded in a web browser, so that its long URL could be collected.

d)! Later, the output file of unshortenURL.py was used as an input file with the script urltruncate.awk, developed by Bruns (2011), to turn the long URLs into domains. The output file of urltruncate.awk was used to calculate the total ocurrence of domains by club and the total for all clubs.

gawk -F '\t' -f _scripts/urltruncate.awk input file > output file

(5)$Visualisation/analysis$

After processing the metrics for all clubs, this data was combined with contextual information about each club. This combination generated a table with which it was possible to find the patterns explored in Chapter 5. The analysis of the patterns was done using R.Studio: a table similar to Table B.1 (below) was loaded and it was possible to quickly calculate the averages, medians and standard deviations for each category. The leftmost columns of the table were created with information collected elsewhere and the rightmost columns were generated with the output file of the metrify.awk. The charts were developed on R.

Table&B.1:&Contextualised&Twitter&metrics&(part&of&the&table&built&with&context&information&and&Twitter&metrics).&

day$ club$ comp.$ type$ place$ stadium$ opponent$ freetv$ paytv$ result$ score$day$of$the$week$ time$ ladder$

opponents$ladder$ attendance$ tweets$ users$

3/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PR$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Tuesday$ NA$ 9$ NA$ NA$ 4694$ 2807$4/09/2013$ atletico$ B$ M$ H$ independencia$ fluminense$ freetv$ NA$ D$ 2K2$ Wednesday$ 21h50$ 10$ 16$ 6529$ 7943$ 5417$5/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PT$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Thursday$ NA$ 10$ NA$ NA$ 8264$ 4911$6/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PR$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Friday$ NA$ 10$ NA$ NA$ 3415$ 2122$7/09/2013$ atletico$ B$ M$ A$ barradao$ vitoria$ NA$ paytv$ D$ 1K1$ Saturday$ 18h30$ 10$ 13$ 9211$ 12503$ 6045$8/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PT$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Sunday$ NA$ 10$ NA$ NA$ 5606$ 3678$9/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ I$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Monday$ NA$ 10$ NA$ NA$ 5016$ 2840$

10/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ I$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Tuesday$ NA$ 10$ NA$ NA$ 6249$ 3671$11/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PR$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Wednesday$ NA$ 10$ NA$ NA$ 6619$ 4194$12/09/2013$ atletico$ B$ M$ H$ independencia$ coritiba$ NA$ paytv$ W$ 3K0$ Thursday$ 21h$ 8$ 9$ 9567$ 14062$ 7208$13/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PT$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Friday$ NA$ 8$ NA$ NA$ 9187$ 4721$14/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PR$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Saturday$ NA$ 8$ NA$ NA$ 6336$ 3780$15/09/2013$ atletico$ B$ M$ A$ arena$gremio$ gremio$ NA$ paytv$ W$ 0K1$ Sunday$ 18h30$ 6$ 3$ 33304$ 15323$ 8375$16/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PT$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Monday$ NA$ 6$ NA$ NA$ 6750$ 3602$17/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PR$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Tuesday$ NA$ 6$ NA$ NA$ 5980$ 3497$18/09/2013$ atletico$ B$ M$ A$ morumbi$ sao$paulo$ freetv$ paytv$ L$ 1K0$ Wednesday$ 21h50$ 6$ 14$ 28503$ 14197$ 8173$19/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PT$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Thursday$ NA$ 6$ NA$ NA$ 10385$ 6486$20/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ I$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Friday$ NA$ 6$ NA$ NA$ 4739$ 3198$21/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PR$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Saturday$ NA$ 6$ NA$ NA$ 5324$ 3173$22/09/2013$ atletico$ B$ M$ H$ independencia$ vasco$ NA$ paytv$ W$ 2K1$ Sunday$ 18h30$ 5$ 18$ 12834$ 12487$ 6830$23/09/2013$ atletico$ NA$ PT$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ NA$ Monday$ NA$ 5$ NA$ NA$ 2874$ 1812$

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