Harri Heinonen: Football, fandom and flow. On postmodern passions and media-mediated communities The article is an attempt to analyse football fandom within the framework of post-modern culture. In a world where traditional ties have detoriated, fandom fosters a new kind of community of the kind described as neotribalistic. The article argues that sports consumption is not just a passive diversion, but also an active production of cultural meanings. The paper studies the Finnish Everton fans, a group of people (almost exclusively men) who support the English football team Everton, mainly in their homes, in front of their TV sets, where they try to imitate the ‘carnivalesque’ atmosphere of the stadium. The study is based on eight long interviews with representative members of the group, and the data is analysed with a hermeneutical method. The author also participated in gatherings of the Finnish Everton fans. The flow experience, as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, seems to capture the essence of the experience. In flow, the enjoyment comes from the intensive psychological input in the activity itself, in this case fandom. The pleasurable flow experiences may in certain cases transform into something that features similar to addiction. Fandom can be interpreted as a kind of ‘positive addiction’, where the fans has considerable control over the repetition of the behaviour. Whether Everton fandom is a flow activity or an addiction, it is anyhow an essential activity in the fans' construction of their own good and meaningful life. The role of alcohol as a part of the watching experience is also considered. True fans consume alcohol in front of the TV only for ritual purposes, to strengthen an already pleasurable experience. After the match, or during the fans' yearly gatherings, the drinking can take on the form more typical of Finnish male drinking behaviour.