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Consumption and Identity of Sports in Mexico

Professional sports are not just a way of entertainment. They are a great business
that involves a lot of different companies and organizations which go from the own
professional teams to the supermarkets that sells the snacks and food that sports
fans consume while they watch the games. That is one of the reasons about why I
find the consumption of sports a huge and very interesting topic to analyze. One
good way to do it is starting by how the sport fans feel identified with the teams or
with the society in general.

We have to take in consideration since when does a person start to support a team
or a sport in general and why. Tajfel (1982) argues that individuals are unable to
form self-images in the absence of social identities derived from group affiliations.
So we can assume that in sports sport fans make a special link thanks to the
environment where they were raised. For example the Mexican city of Guadalajara
hosts three football teams and the institutions are very different from the others. We
should take a look of why these teams are important for the fans in Guadalajara and
how they feel identified with the institutions and at the end they make a consumption.

Chivas team is one of the most important teams in Mexico if not the most. This team
has a long tradition and history in Mexican football. The institution with more than
one hundred years of existence is the second most winner of the local league. That’s
one of the reasons of why this team is the most popular and has the biggest fanbase
between all the Mexican teams. It’s important to remark two things. First that they
count with a huge amount of fans with Mexican precedence in United States and
second that in recent years they aren’t the winning team that they used to be in the
past. So how is possible that they are the most popular team? Probably the most
important reason of that is that the newest generations have been strongly
influenced by older ones. So a kid who is raised in a Chivas fan family who watches
every weekend the team games and have consumed official merchandising of the
club is more probable that he will became a fan too.

Atlas team is another historic club that has more than 100 years of existence. But
unlike Chivas this club has never been a winner team. The institution only has one
championship. However Atlas counts with one of the most loyal fanbase in all the
local league. It is not an exaggeration to say that almost the half of football fans in
Guadalajara support this team. And we are talking about a city which has a
population of around 5 million people. In this case is even more remarkable the way
the tradition in the families influences in the decision of supporting a team. But there
is one other important factor and it’s the connection of the team with the lower social
classes. In Guadalajara we say that “Atlas es el equipo del pueblo” which can be
translated as “Atlas is the team of the people” but meaning of people has a context
where we can say that is the team of those who hard work people who doesn’t have
big privileges in the society. Atlas fans stand there even when they receive
disappointments every tournament.
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Leones Negros is the last and less important team in Guadalajara. They don’t even
play in the first division in Mexican football. But they importance is related to their
precedence. They are the football team of the University of Guadalajara. This is one
of the biggest public universities in Mexico and it also has a big influence in
Guadalajara city at social and political level. Every semester the University of
Guadalajara admits around 18 thousand new students. With that amount of students
and graduates is easy to find a population who has a special connection with the
university and feels proud about it. That’s why probably Leones Negros doesn’t have
a loyal fanbase which attend every two weeks to the stadium, but it’s a team with a
lot of occasional fans and that’s because the sense of identity that students have
with the university.

We can agree that not all the fans live the sports and the matchdays in the same
way that’s why some authors have tried to classify them in groups. For example,
Smith (1988) made the distinction between “serious” and “normal” sports fans.
Kenneth A. Hunt in his work “A conceptual approach to classifying sports” (1999)
proposes a classification of five different type of fans: the temporary fan, the local
fan, the devoted fan, the fanatical fan, and the dysfunctional fan.
We can use the description that we can get from this work to each of the types of
fans proposed for evaluate how and why does these fans have a consumption
related to the sports.
The first type of fan that Kenneth propose it’s the temporary fan. He describes this
fan as a person who shows interest to one sport, team or sport event only because
there’s something that calls his attention. For example Mexico is the second country
in the world that consumes the NFL games. But every year when the Super Bowl
takes place a lot of temporary fans show interest for the game. Most of the people
watch the game or talks about it because is something trendy and they don’t want to
be seen as not “cool people” even when they don’t know or completely understand
the rules of the game. The NFL wishes that these fans to show a permanent interest
in the league in general.

The next one is the local fan. As the name says this type of fan is the one who
normally supports the sport team which is located in the fan’s city or even state. In
Mexico Atlas an important amount of their fans can be described as local fans,
because they don’t have many fans around other places of the country that are
interested in the consumption of the club.

The third one is the devoted fan. The author place this fan as one who unlike the
temporary fan and the local fan, the distance and the time doesn’t affect the support
that the fan can have for the sport, team or player. According to Ball and Tasaki
(1992), a person is attached to a particular object to the degree that the object is
used to maintain his or her self-concept. At this level the sport, team of player forms
part of the consumer identity. In my perception the average football fan in Mexico is
located between the local fan and the devoted fan descriptions. There are several
teams in several cities around the country, and with the exception of America,
Chivas, Cruz Azul and Pumas the other clubs have a high percentage of their fans
in their local cities and states. This fans at the moment of feeling an identity with their
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team tend to assist to the local games and to watch the matches in TV. Also consume
official and non-official products of the team, such as jerseys, hats and some other
kind of products.
The fanatical fan is described in the work as a person who is making himself to notice
as a special fan with something special. In Mexico National team is very common
that some fans go to the stadium paint their faces and also wear a custom like a
mustache and a hat. In the past some “las Chivas” fans used to take with them a
little goat, this is because the name of the team is translated as “the goats”. Some
other fans even paint their cars with the colors and the logo of the club which they
are fans of.

The last one that is mentioned is the dysfunctional fan. It’s described as those fans
who feel a very high level of identification with the team, sport or player. We all know
that supporting a team doesn’t bring you any profit. If the team lose nothing happens
to you and you don’t lose anything, if the team wins you don’t win absolutely nothing.
But this kind of fan really feels the wins of the team as their own and if the team lose
they feel very upset and it really affects the behavior of the fan. Sadly in Mexico
exists something called “barras” which have as a purpose to motivate and cheer the
football teams wherever they are. It doesn’t matter if the team is playing locally or
away. The problem with these “barras” is the very high level of identification with the
team and the fans sometimes become a hooligans. Returning to Guadalajara Chivas
and Atlas have one of the biggest rivalries in Mexico. It’s understandable because
these teams are from the same city and have a big amount of fans in it. That’s normal
in sports, the rivalry becomes wrong when the dysfunctional fans take it very
personal and start having an aggressive behavior against the other fans. A few years
ago when Chivas was winning the game by a 3-0 score some of the fanatics of Atlas
jumped to the court to try to attack not only rival players but also their club players.
There have been cases where persons result killed only because a match. This level
of identification with the team is completely insane and dangerous.

Without falling in dysfunctional fans. In Mexico there are some consumptions that
have been ritualized. For example in the north city of Monterrey where one of the
highest GDP per capita in Mexico exists, it’s a ritual in many fans to make a barbecue
with the friends and family every time that one of the local teams plays. This means
the consumption of all the items that are related to the preparations of barbecue plus
the drinks and also the pay television. Some other even bring all the stuff to make
the barbecue outside the stadium when the team plays in the city. This means a
ritual of every Saturday-Sunday.

Other example is in Mexico City where outside of the mythical Estadio Azteca take
place a lot of street stands selling a diversity of Mexican food, being the most popular
the world known tacos. So for some families is a ritual to attend to the stadium with
their children and eat in one of these stands where the food is even cheap.
Sometimes even buy some non-official merchandising of the team in order to bring
some color and support the team and feel identified with it.
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But in Mexico not all people is a football fan. Sometimes it depends about the level
of social class which the person belongs to. Bourdieu (1978) found that the French
upper classes were more likely to play golf and tennis and to go skiing than the
working class was, but less likely to be interested in boxing, rugby, bodybuilding and
football. In Mexico upper classes are similar to French in playing tennis and golf but
also horse riding and Formula 1. Mexican gap between high class and low class is
remarkable, this makes that the cultural consumption including sports that Bourdieu
(1978) mentions becomes very notorious. This is because the different levels of
access that Mexican population has mainly to education and the type of social circle
that it creates. Is not the same attending to a public school which only has football
classes to a private one where you can choose between different sports like
basketball, American football and tennis. It makes more easy to find a person in the
high social class that is able to recognize the deceased Brazilian Formula 1 driver
Ayrton Senna or the retired American tennis player John McEnroe than a person
from a low class. This difference in economic power and education makes that
people feel identified with different sports and players, or even if high and low class
people like the same sport they will live the experience of attending to a stadium in
a very different ways.
For example is not the same go and watch a football game from an exclusive balcony
with screens and food certain food service than go and stand with the team “porra”
where they will be chanting and jumping during all the day and only drinking beer
because is the only service that they are able to get. But it doesn’t mean that
someone is living the experience in a correct or better way. It’s just that they are
living it in the way that they learned and they have opportunity to.

In conclusion Mexico where there’s a big inequality between social classes and
where football is sometimes even more important than politics for the population in
general. There’s a huge difference of how people have their sport consumption. The
identities are almost all the time created thanks to the first and most important
nucleus which is the family and the opportunities that they are able to bring.
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