[Premiership in Malaysia: Media and Football Fandom]

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Chapter 8: Conclusion

This thesis seeks, therefore, to contribute to the field of football fans research in the form of English Premier League fandom in Malaysia. Its overall aim is to understand the reasons behind the passionate support of the top five English Premier League clubs, including the fans' elaborate routines and consumption practices, as well as the role played by the mass media and corporate branding in popularising the English Premier League in Malaysia.

In this chapter, I began by discussing the reasons why English soccer Premier League fans in Malaysia view the games from such places as bars. These supporters find that viewing the games from public places is exciting as it allows them to compete with fans of other teams through fan talk. The fans also appear to utilise group viewing as a way of concealing their own fear of losing, provided they watch the games with people that understand the game. Watching soccer in bars offers the supporters of the English soccer Premier League a chance to feel as though they are at the stadium. Through group viewing, the fans discuss the games via fan talk and as a result of such discussions, construct identities of how strong or weak a person is depending on the team that he/she has chosen to follow.

In this section the fans revealed that as they watch the game, they are immersed in a certain mode of thinking, which they abandon as soon as the games are over and move on with their lives. As such, the analysis here is that much as the fans are symbolically distanced into a foreign mode when watching the games, they clearly understand that soccer is a game and as such the fans may be argued to be thinking human beings who understand why they follow the English soccer Premier League. The fans' knowledge that they can make sacrifices in their economic situation in order to acquire their team's paraphernalia, as well as the knowledge that they can purchase such materials on credit, or buy imitations of the real items demonstrates that the fans understand the economic situation of their country. Further, the fans' capability of starting friendships with people that support rival teams is an indication that these fans know when and where to draw the line when it comes to rival enmity. Consequently, the argument advanced by the Media Imperialism thesis that third world countries adopt first world country practices by virtue of exposure through global television has been problematised.

With the evolution of both sport and media, and as seasons have extended and competitions proliferated in deference to media needs, the world of sport today can be talked about as a sports/media complex (Jhally 2009: 154, Rowe 2008: 108). There are two reasons why this is so. The first is that most people do the vast majority of their sport spectating via the media so that the cultural experience of sports is highly ...