SALON: Sports Fandemic: The Ethics and Possibilities of Sports Fandom During Times of Crisis

What does it mean to be a sports fan during a global pandemic? During times of urgency and unrest over social injustice? As fans, what is our responsibility to athletes? To each other? In this salon, we will weigh in on the ethics of sports fandom during a time when athletes’ health and well-being—always precarious and subject to the biopolitical control of capitalist enterprises—is further endangered by COVID-19 and the necessary bodily proximity of athletic competitions themselves. Furthermore, at a time when such capitalist enterprises have embraced “Black Lives Matter” as a corporate mantra to be plastered on jerseys, how can we best support athletes working actively for social change? In addition, we seek salon participants who consider the possibilities that this time of crisis presents for reshaping the world of sports and sports fandom. How might we transition to a mode of sports narrative consumption that better empowers athletes to improve their labor conditions, particularly at the collegiate level? How might we reformulate our conversations about looming medical crises like the concussion crisis in football in light of the epidemiological understanding of athletic precarity induced by the pandemic? Can we develop a more ethical way of participating in the sports industrial complex, or might we, in some small way, contribute to tearing it down? What does it mean to access sporting competition only in mediated spaces? What can this moment tell us about future developments for sports spectatorship and fandom?

Participants: Noah Cohan (Washington University of St. Louis), Alex Kupfer (Vassar College), Kasey Symons (Swinburne University of Technology), Elise Vist (University of Waterloo) (moderator: Lesley Willard)

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