Passion and market: the intertwining that makes the marketization of brazilian spectacle football

Abstract

Objective: The marketization of the different social instances has pointed the market as the main intermediary of the social and cultural constructions in contemporary society, including football. Therefore, this study analyzeshow the process of marketization takes place through the intertwining between football’s cultural dimensions and the market ideology. Method: Through an interpretative approach, we perform an ethnographic study in the universe of one Brazilian football club, Sport Club Internacional.Originality/Relevance: Contributing with previous studies on consequences of the marketization process, results indicate how marketing producers and consumers naturalize passion and consumption discourses around a market ideology, shaping the marketization process.Results: We observed that both marketing producers and consumers mix the notions of ‘supporting’ and ‘consuming’ in a single discursive structure. This intertwining involves the approximation of supporters’ passion to the notion of consumer, reinforced by discourses of professionalization e the creation of new products. This process is conducted under the influence of euroamerican spectacularization of sport.Theoretical Contributions: We use the lenses of cultural and market studies to analyze a football club, demonstrating that market ideology disseminates, among other possible forms, modifying specific cultural relations, as football passion. Football marketization involves, thus, the transformation of football as a consumption cultural phenomenon mediated by economic rationality.