This essay classifies sports fans into distinct personality types, drawing a loose parallel to workplace and academic personality tests. The author identifies six categories: the HomeTowner, the Entitled Fan, the Romantic, the Bandwagoner, the Left Behind Fan, the Network Fan, and the Encyclopedia. Each type is defined by its relationship to team loyalty, geographic identity, and depth of sports knowledge. The essay acknowledges that, like mainstream personality tests, these categories often overlap, and invites readers to reflect on which type best describes themselves.
Have you ever taken a personality test, either for a job interview or even to gain entrance to a school? The results of those tests are designed to help figure out what makes you tick. An employer can determine how you would work on a team, or whether you'll be stealing pens from the supply closet. A school may be interested in how self-motivated you are. Usually these tests don't have clear-cut answers — each one of us seems to have a little bit of this and a little bit of that all thrown together.
What if there were a similar test for sports fans? How would we classify them, and what kinds of categories would stand alone versus overlap? Because there are so many different kinds of sports fans, this essay is devoted to just a few of them. As with mainstream personality tests, there is no single clear answer when trying to classify sports fans.
The first type of sports fan is the HomeTowner. This fan loves all the local teams and is said to "bleed" the teams' colors. HomeTowners either grew up in the city whose teams they love or had a parent who strongly influenced them during childhood. They don't care very much about a game if their home team isn't involved or directly affected by the outcome. HomeTowners also have a hard time seeing the deficiencies in their own teams.
If they're not careful, HomeTowners can easily become Entitled Fans. These fans believe their team should always win and that they are owed a championship title. The silver lining is that Entitled Fans are almost always optimistic.
HomeTowners also give rise to a third type: the Romantic. This fan keeps a special place in his or her heart for favorite players and teams of bygone eras. Over time, the facts about these players and teams become obscured by nostalgia, and the Romantic can spend many hours lost in the past. Be prepared to hear repetitive stories from the Romantic, especially when the current team is having a bad year. Sports fan behavior researchers have long noted that nostalgia plays a powerful role in sustaining long-term fan identity.
"Fans with shifting or outdated loyalties"
"Knowledge-driven super fans and media devotees"
Next time you're at the game, or watching at a sports bar, take a close look at the fans around you. Which ones fit into these categories? Is it easy to tell? Perhaps there are categories this essay missed — feel free to invent your own. Most importantly, think carefully about this question the next time you turn on the game: which type are you?
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