Abstract
This study explores how women sports fans have engendered a boom of US advertising images and narratives that comply, confound and resist traditional gendered roles. Against the backdrops of the gender regime and hegemonic masculinity, this analysis interrogates female fan typologies to illustrate how female fandom is constructed and constrained through advertising. This piece focuses on five television advertisements broadcast throughout the 2015–2016 NFL play-offs and NCAA tournaments. This article also explores online responses to the ads to indicate how commercial interests reflect our popular imagination regarding female sports fandom. Often, these images reinforce female fans as mothers, love interests and objects while idealizing heteronormative, feminine physical attractiveness. These strategies position female fans not as agents but as fans in relation to the hegemony. Ultimately, this reasserts men as privileged, authentic sports fans even as women’s presence and access to sports is legitimized.
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