How do Hong Kong fans choose their favourite overseas football club? Origins of transnational fandom in late modernity

Abstract

Despite the importance of transnational fans to the globalisation of European football, there have not been many studies that aim to understand why they support specific overseas clubs. On the basis of qualitative interviews with transnational fans in Hong Kong and supplemented by findings from an online fan survey, I argue that most of them lack genuine choices when choosing their favourite overseas clubs. Even when all English Premier League matches are shown live in Hong Kong and with information about many European clubs available on the Internet, transnational fans tend to support teams that they were familiar with when they were still young, and clubs that star players play for. Such clubs are usually the richest ones that can help them achieve success on the pitch. Also, family members and peers can be influential to the origin of football fandom, but there is little pressure to support the same overseas club as their family members or peers. The choices of transnational fans based in Hong Kong should also be understood by taking the historical context of the city into account. Such findings suggest that globalisation has freed Hong Kong football fans from geographical constraints, but the individualisation thesis in the late modern era needs to be qualified since the wealth of European clubs and fans’ immediate social context do often have important impacts on their decision to support an overseas club.