The measure of a fan: Social patterns of voracious sports following in Canada.

Abstract

Sociological studies on the manifestations and reproduction of inequality through cultural consumption have focused on few domains of culture and have mostly neglected intensity in consumption. Using large-scale survey data about professional sports following in Canada, we investigate how socioeconomic position is associated with intensity of professional sports following ("voraciousness"). Our multinomial logistic regression analyses suggest that social class, gender, and geography are predictors of voraciousness in each of the major professional sports leagues. Our latent class analysis (LCA) reveals seven sports following profiles marked by differences in range and intensity of following. We find that the most voracious sport followers are also the most omnivorous but are not distinctively the most privileged group. Findings suggest a distinct sport following profile of the predominantly male and economically dominant group in the field of social classes and point toward groups of sport followers with different styles of aversion and passing knowledge, perhaps in a type of deployment of Bourdieu's (1984) disinterested aesthetic. Overall, however, gender and region appear to be stronger predictors of voraciousness in sports following than social class in the Canadian context.