Fan Autonomy and Commodification in Norwegian Football PDF

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JSSXXX10.1177/0193723514541283Journal of Sport and Social IssuesHognestad
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Journal of Sport and Social Issues
2015, Vol. 39(2) 139–154
“Rimi Bowl” and the © The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0193723514541283
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Commodification in
Norwegian Football
Hans Kristian Hognestad1
Abstract
Football in Norway is facing similar challenges as other European leagues regarding
dwindling crowds and financial instability, in the wake of the neoliberal boom from
the 1990s and well into the new millennium. The years between 1990 and 2008
saw a doubling of average crowds for top-level games. Yet since 2008, there has
been a steady decline, even for the biggest clubs. Clubs and the Norwegian Football
Association (FA). respond differently to these trends, and a variety of initiatives have
increased the level of oppositional activism among groups of dedicated fans. A fresh
example of this was when the biggest club in Oslo, Vålerenga, decided to let their
main sponsor, the supermarket chain Rimi, use a game to celebrate the opening of
their 300th shop. With clear references to the razzamatazz of the Super Bowl, the
sponsor named the event “Rimi Bowl” and, in an attempt to attract new spectators,
sold tickets in their shops for just NOK50 (£5). However, with bands and various
artists performing before the game and during the interval, a lot of fans felt the “event”
was advertised more as a hyper commercial show than a football game. A storm of
protests was aired in newspapers and in Internet forums among fans of Vålerenga—
followed by individuals and groups who supported the initiative and made counter
protests. This article will provide a discussion of how commercialization is contested
among different fan groups in Norway.
Keywords
football fans, activist groups, identity, globalization
1Telemark University College, Bø, Norway
Corresponding Author:
Hans Kristian Hognestad, Telemark University College, Hallvard Eikas plass, Bø, 3800, Norway.
Email: hans.k.hognestad@hit.no
Downloaded from jss.sagepub.com at UNIV DO EST DO RIO DE JANEIRO on June 26, 2015
140 Journal of Sport and Social Issues 39(2)
Introduction
A dominant narrative about the development of modern football is that the game’s
mythical status as “The people’s game” in recent decades has been succumbed to neo-
liberal processes of commercialization and what Richard Giulianotti (2002) has
labeled hypercommodification.1 As a response to the commercialization of the game,
issues of identity and community control of clubs have in recent years been raised by
activist supporters, largely inspired by left wing political ideologies (D. Kennedy & P.
Kennedy, 2013), in several European leagues. The most famous protest is perhaps the
one made by a group of alienated fans of Manchester United, following American
businessman Malcolm Glazer’s takeover of the club in 2005, who formed an alterna-
tive club, FC United of Manchester.2 It may be argued that fans in many instances are
guided by interests, knowledge, and emotions which sit uncomfortably with the values
pursued by sponsors, investors, TV-channels, agents, club owners, and even players.
There is an awareness that without the passionate involvement of fans, the game also
becomes less interesting as an industry. However, the global commodification of foot-
ball has also changed the habits and practices of fans. They are also customers. This
means that fans often find themselves in a schizophrenic tension between the need for
a value-based autonomy and local identity on the one hand and capital demanding
wishes for player investments on the other. While groups of fans battle for greater
political influence in the game, others welcome any initiatives that can bring money to
the club, seeing for instance their own annual purchase of the new club shirt as a good
and necessary investment. In view of such contestations, how should we position and
understand morally imperative calls for a game that should be “true,” “genuine,” and
“real?” How does commodification affect experiences of the game and how are such
calls for authenticity contested in football?
Football in Norway is facing similar challenges as other European leagues regard-
ing dwindling crowds and financial instability, in the wake of the neoliberal boom
from the 1990s and well into the new millennium. The years between 1990 and 2008
saw a doubling of average crowds for top-level games. Yet since 2008, there has been
a steady decline, even for the biggest clubs. Clubs and the Norwegian FA respond dif-
ferently to these trends and a variety of initiatives have increased the level of opposi-
tional activism among groups of dedicated fans. An example of this was when the
biggest club in Oslo, Vålerenga, decided to let their main sponsor, the supermarket
chain Rimi, use a game to celebrate the opening of their 300th shop—an episode to
which I shall return toward the end of this chapter.
In the following, I shall give an account of how processes of professionalization
and commodification have affected fan practices and grassroots mobilizations in
Norway, a league on the margins of the bigger European leagues. Football in Norway
has a long history of British influences, but with a much shorter history of organized
local support dating back to the years when the game itself turned professional in
Norway, with the dawn of Tippeligaen, the Norwegian version of a sponsored elite
league in 1991. This entails a much more intertwined relationship between traditional
types of support and those we may see as more recent “neo-liberal” products of the
Hognestad 141
game, as outlined by Richard Giulianotti (2002). While traditionalist notions of

authenticity are evident in narratives about “true” or “real” supporters as opposed to
notions of fans of “modern football” (D. Kennedy & P. Kennedy, 2013), it is important
to contextualize such perceptions within an organized football support, which primar-
ily developed during the 1990s (Hognestad, 2013).
Stand Against Modern Football?

Although we might argue that football in general was commodified long before 1990,
there is sufficient evidence to claim that the early 1990s mark the start of a more dra-
matic transformation. This is evident in new ownership structures and stadiums
designed to meet new standards of comfort and safety. For the dominant European
clubs, we have also witnessed incredible hikes in sponsorship deals, salaries for top
players, and naming rights for stadiums, for instance, Allianz Arena (Bayern München)
or Emirates Stadium (Arsenal). Charged with class connotations it is often assumed
that a significant part of these processes has contributed to a shift in crowd culture as
the active participation of traditional working class fans has been displaced by wealth-
ier but more passive spectators. The so-called “traditional fans” are in this sense
threatened by that category of spectators Giulianotti labeled flaneurs, a category which
can be compared with the gaze of the tourist (Urry, 2000). The flaneur refers here to a
segment who are attracted to the football stadium because of the spectacle and moti-
vated more by a search for entertainment than out of social obligation and commit-
ment (Giulianotti, 2002). As the game has become more fashionable for the educated
classes who see knowledge about and affiliation with “the people’s game” as a way of
generating social capital and distinction, it is assumed that the less resourceful have
been marginalized and excluded. Admission to games was previously seen as cheap,
and more widely affordable. From a growing sense of cultural alienation, a number of
loosely organized oppositional movements in football have evolved all over Europe.
Since the turn of the millennium, this is evident in the pan-European movement
“Against modern football,” which can best be described as a loose network of fan
initiatives protesting in various ways against the commodification of the game.3 These
protests often have a nostalgic drive toward a glorious past but are also politically
motivated against speculative club owners, ticket policies, poorer atmosphere, flaneur-
like spectators, and a series of other issues relating to what they see as mismanagement
and marginalization of the “real fans.” Oppositional fans are largely driven by variet-
ies of “anti-globalization” sentiment as they see gaps between bigger and smaller
clubs and leagues gradually and steadily increasing, in terms of turnovers, crowd
attendances, and on-the-field competition.4
Changes within the game over the last couple of decades can partly be related to a
general political shift toward neoliberalism and less state or municipal intervention,
but also to football-specific conditions and incidents within stadiums. The Hillsborough
stadium disaster in Sheffield in 1989 released a debate on safety and security inside
football stadiums that contributed to a restructuring of the game with repercussions far
beyond England.5 This was evident in actions affecting not only the design of European
stadiums but also the rapidly increasing financial significance of sponsorship deals,
televised games, and the sale of club merchandise from the early 1990s (Bale, 1993).
Where the sale of tickets at the stadium previously had been by far the most important
source of income for clubs, commercial strategies coupled with new demands for
safety and security became much more important elements of football’s business strat-
egies. This interconnectedness is highlighted by Richard Giulianotti in his study of
Sport Mega Events such as the English Premier League as “securitised commodifica-
tion” (Giulianotti, 2011).
These developments have led some researchers to conclude that modern football
stadia are venues for an enforced “disenchantment” and rationalization, resembling a
normative application of Marc Auge’s depiction of the “non-place” (Auge, 1995). This
is evident in the analysis by Andrews and Ritzer (2007) who argue that sports stadia in
general have been transformed into amusement parks designed for television coverage
and global consumption rather than experiences and expressions of local particulari-
ties. From such visions, it is possible to question the conditions for being a “genuine”
or a “real” supporter, moral conceptualizations of authenticity common in the global
football vernacular. It is possible to highlight the symbolic and emotional significances
of the stadium as a place marked by a specter of sentiments, from topophilia to disen-
chantment (Andrews & Ritzer, 2007; Bale, 1993). Some modern stadia have sponsor
names,6 rather than names expressing local club identities, and in a few incidents the
name of the club has been changed to suit the name of a sponsor.7 Edward Relph’s
analysis of place and placelessness through notions of authenticity from the early
1970s sits well with the more dystopic views on how modern stadia may alienate fans
in their attachment to the stadium as a “home” ground. Relph (1976) argues that “. . .
an inauthentic attitude to place is essentially no sense of place, for it involves no
awareness of the deep and symbolic significances of places and no appreciation of
their identities” (p. 82).
Protests against the commodification of the game have resulted in more orga-
nized initiatives. In Britain, The Supporters Trust was given support by the ruling
Labor party from the late 1990s. This organization evolved into Supporters Direct,8
an affiliation of fans from a variety of clubs in and beyond Britain, seeking greater
influence and community control in the running of football clubs. Scottish club
Stirling Albion F.C. became one of the first clubs owned entirely by the supporters
and the local community, under a well-known slogan—“Real football, real fans”—
in which Supporters Direct have exerted influence in brokering supporter-based club
ownerships.9 However, we need to address nostalgic inspired assertions about how
things were better before the game was commodified, with a degree of empirical
evidence and criticism. Arve Hjelseth (2012) argues that the structural changes
within the game have not really altered the social capital of football to a significant
degree, as masculine and militant stadium practices and values continue to dominate
football.10 Furthermore, following the arguments of Gilmore and Pine (2007),
authenticity may also be a part of capitalism and consumerism, much in the same
way as the American philosopher Michael Novak argues that when existential con-
cerns are at stake in sport and in religion, commerce tends to move into the stadium
Hognestad 143
or cathedral (Novak, 1976). So, rather than claiming that tradition and commodifica-
tion are opposites, it is possible to argue, as Peter Kennedy does in his critical analy-
sis of the role of Supporters Direct in Britain, that within a capitalist system, tradition
and commodification are quite insolubly linked. The fan is a consumer, and the
object of desire (the club) is charged with a craving for authenticity via tradition. To
buy club merchandise and spend money on match days or in other ways is a way to
claim and confirm this traditional club allegiance. Following the taxonomy with
categories of football spectators made by Giulianotti (2002), rather than claiming
that traditional “supporters” are “liberated” from the market, it is from this perspec-
tive more reasonable to claim that they are an integral part of the football commod-
ity. By the same token, we may argue that, while it is easy to identify the casino
capitalism currently associated with clubs like Chelsea, Manchester City, Paris SG,
Monaco, and others as drivers of hypercommodification, commodification has been
an integral aspect of football much longer and even in smaller and less professional
leagues.
Stadium Reconstruction and a Sense of Place(Lessness)

In Scandinavia, every top-level football ground has been either refurbished or
demolished to meet new standards for safety and comfort since 1990. Many clubs
have left their old grounds and either built new stadia mostly in suburban locations
or entered into agreements for sharing facilities. Since the late 1990s, every current
premier league club (2014) has either built a new stadium or modernized an existing
one, to accommodate new standards. In 1998, the Oslo-based club Vålerenga entered
a ground-sharing agreement with their biggest local rivals FC Lyn, to play at the
national stadium Ullevål, following reconstruction of their old home ground Bislett.
Both stadia, incidentally, adhered to the tradition of being given names identical to
the locality in which they are situated. Ullevål stadium was built in 1926 after an
initiative by what was then called Ski- og Fotballklubben Lyn (The Ski and Football
Club Lyn). The stadium was designed in a classical oval shape without roofing, with
Lyn as the majority shareholder of what was to become the national stadium; in
1960, the Norwegian FA became the major shareholder, and a few years later (1968)
moved their administration to Ullevål stadium. Since then Ullevål has gone through
a series of transformations, the latest completed in 2014 with the construction of an
extra tier in one of the ends. However, the national football stadium went through its
most dramatic transformations before the 1990s and the breakthrough of profes-
sional football in Norway. The re-development, which was finished in 1986, included
selling naming rights to sections of the ground, hence the two ends of the stadium
were baptized Coca Cola-svingen (The Coca Cola end) and VG-svingen (The
VG-end11), while one of the main stands was named Japp, after a chocolate made by
a local chocolate factory. On the front of the stadium, facilities were built to house a
variety of shops and offices. In his book about European football grounds, published
in 1990, the English journalist Simon Inglis reviewed Ullevaal stadium in the fol-
lowing way:
Built by private developers in 1986, from the street one would hardly guess that the
building was part of a stadium at all. It appears to be a regular four-storey office, shop and
supermarket complex (suitably called Arena Mat [note: a grocery chain at the time]) clad
in black and red glass and steel. Only the old wooden Stadion Kro restaurant in the
forecourt and the sight of floodlight pylons pecking above the roof hint at what really lies
behind the hi-tech façade. (Inglis, 1990, p. 160)
The old restaurant mentioned, known locally by the name Liket (The Corpse),12
whose walls were covered by old and new photographs from football games at the
stadium and in many ways worked as a relevant and welcoming introduction for spec-
tators, was demolished in 1991 to give way for further development. The floodlight
pylons were removed in favor of floodlights integrated into the stadium roof, and a
new shopping center was built behind what was previously known as Hovedtribunen
(Main Stand). In recent years, a hotel and offices for the Norwegian Sports Federation
have been added to create a rather cramped location, which, from the outside, looks
much more like a shopping mall than a football stadium than was the case when Simon
Inglis made the review above. Apart from international games and cup finals, this was
the home ground for Lyn only until 1998 when a ground-sharing agreement was made
with local rivals Vålerenga, who had to move from Bislett stadium due to reconstruc-
tion work on the old stadium, which was in a poor state after having been rebuilt last
for the purpose of hosting the 1952 Winter Olympics. The decision to share grounds
with their fierce local rivals inspired a hot debate among sections of Vålerenga sup-
porters who found it unimaginable to play in “Lyn-land.” However, one strategy
adopted was to rename two stands of the stadium on match days and bring colors that
redefined it as the home ground of Vålerenga.13 Following years of financial decline,
Lyn faced bankruptcy in 2010, were demoted to Division 4 (Level 5), and had to move
from Ullevål stadium, leaving Vålerenga as the only tenant club. Lyn had to sell their
players and moved to Frogner stadium, a newly refurbished municipal ground, most
famous for its speed- and figure skaters from the early 20th century.14 A curious part
of this move was the phenomenal support the team continued to get. Lyn broke crowd
records for games at that level wherever they played, maintaining crowd attendances
from before the bankruptcy. The club currently plays in Division 2 (Level 3 in the
national league structure). Interestingly Lyn players carry a banner onto the pitch
before every home game, which carries the exact same message as at Stirling Albion,
noted above: “Ekte football, ekte fans” (Real football, real fans). Lyn is a west end
Oslo club, from where the majority of their fans hail. The decision to move to Frogner
in the west end of Oslo city center, right next to the Frogner park, was therefore gener-
ally both welcomed and supported by their fans. To match their ambitions to regain
their status as a top-level club, Lyn ironically adopted Bislett stadium, Vålerenga’s old
home turf, as their new home ground from the 2014 season.
The presumed and expressed bonding between club and fans, with fans agitating
against external investors and a general commercialization of the game, represents a
fairly recent trend in Norwegian football. Although it can be claimed that football
clubs have worked as icons for local communities in Norway since the early 1900s,
Hognestad 145
such identification was until the 1980s predominantly reserved for big occasions like
cup finals, play-offs for the top division or league title deciders. Before 1990, national
team football was focused on the occasional win over one of the bigger nations, with-
out usually being close to qualifying for a big international tournament, or against the
old enemy and most significant other, Sweden. Support was not organized and the
terraces were dominated more by spontaneous acts of stand-up comedy than the
orchestrated and collective chanting by a minority of dedicated fans, standing in a
specific part of the ground, which did not evolve until the early 1990s. These earlier
forms of terrace culture and sociability allowed more room for individual comments
and sometimes dialogue between spectators and players, linesmen or referees, which
more often than not included sarcastic messages. I remember vividly how, at a fixture
in the 1980s, an elderly supporter of my own team, Bryne FK, yelled “Send him to
Grødaland” when a player from the main local rivals, Viking FK, was lying injured on
the pitch. Grødaland refers to a factory at Jæren, a region in the south-western part of
Norway, where dead animals are transformed into cosmetic products. Such examples
of sarcasm meant that football games to a degree provided a stage for autonomous and
individual expressions. But spectators were not influential in any aspect of the running
of clubs and were not expected to turn up at away games or be active throughout the
duration of games. In other words, spectators did not become fans or supporters in the
contemporary sense of the terms until the 1990s. This was the decade when top teams
started pulling hundreds of their own supporters to away games in often far-flung
places. The rise in more organized support in Norwegian football evolved in tandem
with the gradual dawn of professional football during the 1980s.
Toward Professionalization
A gradual lifting of restrictions to accommodate professional structures was initiated
in 1984 with the introduction of non-amateur contracts, which meant the start of semi-
professional football in Norway. The introduction of Tippeligaen, in 1991, paved the
way for full-time professionals, although it has remained more lucrative for the best
players to play abroad in wealthier leagues. The decades between 1984 and 2004 are
arguably the most revolutionary in the history of football in Norway. Before 1984,
amateurism was the norm for football in Norway, on and off the pitch. Talented players
who wished to make a living out of football had to join a professional league abroad,
while chants, choreographed displays of support, or other forms of active fan partici-
pation evident at games today were previously reserved for cup finals or the odd local
derby game. Away fans did not exist as a collective phenomenon, tending instead to be
random individuals who happened to be there to support the visiting team. Active and
organized “fandom” in the shape of supporters clubs who would organize “away trips”
and sometimes demand an influence on club board decisions did not appear until the
1990s (Hognestad, 2012).
As the game turned professional, Norwegian clubs and national teams became
internationally competitive to an extent not witnessed since the relative successes of
the national team in the 1930s. Parallel to the professionalization of the game, it can
be argued that followers of clubs gradually became more committed supporters of

their local teams. During the 1990s, fans became more vocal during games and also
through texts published in numerous self-made fanzines, which had been inspired by
the flora of fanzines that popped up around football grounds elsewhere in Europe and
in Britain in particular.15 Meanwhile, average crowds at premier league grounds dou-
bled from around 5,000 in 1991 to more than 10,000 in 2007. Despite earlier warnings
about the negative effects of televised games from more glamorous leagues, this took
place during a period when most restrictions for showing live games on television,
predominantly from the Norwegian or the English Premier League, were lifted. By the
start of the millennium football had colonized public media space in ways that would
have been unthinkable in the 1980s. In 2005, the exclusive rights to screen games from
Tippeligaen were purchased by Norwegian TV2 for US$170 million, a figure that took
most commentators and football economists at the time by complete surprise). So,
during the years when the game became structured by neoliberal ideas, it seemed that
the football economy would just continue to grow. More money from sponsorship and
an incredible increase in the number of televised games were accompanied by growing
attendances inside stadiums. However, since 2008, the game has faced similar chal-
lenges as other leagues in Europe regarding dwindling crowds, financial instability,
and some of the less desirable effects of globalization. After the doubling of average
attendances at top-level games in the years between 1990 and 2008, there has been a
steady decline since 2008, even for the biggest clubs. Clubs and the FA respond differ-
ently to these trends, and a variety of initiatives have increased the level of opposi-
tional activism among groups of dedicated fans.
The Dawn of Organized Support in Norway

The history of the game in Norway is shot through with influences from English foot-
ball. The effects of these influences on local football fan culture are contested. Yet, it
is reasonable to argue that English football has figured more as a part of Norwegian
football history and fan culture than as an actual threat. I have analyzed elsewhere how
the global appeal of the English Premier League is particularly prominent in Norway.16
But supporter clubs for local Norwegian teams and supporter clubs for English teams
started appearing simultaneously in the 1970s, no doubt inspired by the immediacy
offered by live televised football matches from England which started on a regular
basis in 1969. However, Norwegian media have covered English football almost
throughout the history of the game in Norway ), and gamblers were betting on English
games right from the start of the State-run betting company Norsk Tipping in 1948,
two decades prior to the introduction of live televised football from England.
Restrictions meant that a highly limited number of games were televised throughout a
season (between 10 and 15 between 1969 and 1990), but English football magazines
such as Shoot! And Goal started to be on offer in newsagents and added to the popular-
ity of the English game among children, teenagers, and adults alike.
The supporter clubs for Manchester City and for Bodø/Glimt (a North-Norwegian
club who recently gained promotion back to Tippeligaen) were the first to be founded,
Hognestad 147
in 1974. Following the founding of several supporter clubs for English clubs, a united
organization for all supporter clubs was established in 1986: Supporterunionen for
britisk fotball. This organization has had a more or less continuous growth since and
currently (October 2013) has a total of 105,000 members divided between 45 sup-
porter clubs.17 Norsk Supporterallianse, founded in 1994, is the united organization
for supporters clubs for Norwegian football clubs, and has 40,000 individual members
by comparison, divided among 40 clubs in the top three divisions. Norwegian support
for English clubs grew gradually more collective during the 1990s. After the turn of
the millennium, fans of a Premier League club could watch every game together in a
pub. Thousands travel every week to see their teams live in England.18 While tandem
support for a Norwegian and an English club prevails as a dominant paradigm, a new
moral code has evolved that calls for a more monogamous loyalty and support for the
local club. On several occasions, this has led to activist fan groups demonstrating
against Norwegian fans of English teams, who are sometimes objectified as flaneurs
chasing the glamorous side of the game rather than committing themselves to support-
ing their local team. Such examples of localism mirror football cultures in England
and in Europe at large opposing the “casino capitalism” associated with the modern
top-level game, evident in fanzines and campaigns against owners mentioned earlier.
English football has been a dominant cultural paradigm in Norwegian football for
over 100 years.19 At times, this admiration has led to nose-diving imitations and
expressions such as the photograph of one supporter of the 1991 Norwegian champi-
ons, Viking Stavanger, celebrating after the title-winning game wearing a Manchester
United replica shirt. A lot of football songs were imported directly from Britain and
performed in English inside stadiums. However, during the 1990s, more local expres-
sions of club allegiances evolved, which meant that by the end of the 1990s, Norwegian
club fans would only sing songs in Norwegian. Fans of Brann Bergen and Vålerenga
from Oslo were generally regarded as protagonists and the most creative composers of
original football songs. When Vålerenga played Chelsea in the quarter finals of the
European Cup Winners Cup in 1999, around 4,000 fans traveled to the second leg in
London. They demonstrated a new style of support, part of which involved insisting
on standing up inside the all seated Stamford Bridge stadium—a practice that was
eventually accepted by the stewards. All songs were chanted in Norwegian while other
bodily actions, which included the imitation of cow milking, took the shape of a rather
surreal performance. One song aimed at Chelsea fans denigrated these cosmopolitan
opponents from West London as a bunch of peasants. The Independent’s report from
the game the following morning was titled “Bizarre Rituals in the Stand.”20
By the turn of the millennium, Norwegian supporter groups started to draw inspira-
tion from a much wider football geography than the United Kingdom. While the reper-
toire of songs and singing techniques owe much to British terrace culture, the songs are
in Norwegian and are often chanted in local dialects to give them a particular local fla-
vor. Themes are often drawn from local iconographies and often performed in humor-
ous, ridiculing ways. Since the end of the 1990s, anyone wearing Manchester United or
English club shirts at Norwegian club games would be the subject of ridicule by other
fans. The British influence is audible through the chants and tunes of songs. However,
so-called tifo-choreographed banners with slogans, drawings, and other visual messages
and displays of support are inspired by the “ultras” cultures of Italian, Spanish, and
South American football. Some fans also use drums, which are inspired more exclu-
sively by Brazilian terrace culture. Influences from Spanish and Italian ultras cultures
have led to the rise of self-proclaimed ultras groups in some Norwegian clubs, notably
Ultras Felt C (Lillestrøm SK) and Nidaros Ultras (Rosenborg; Fossum, 2012).
Contesting Commodification and the Story of “Rimi

Bowl”
Moral contestations around calls for local loyalty was evident in 1997 when SK Brann
Bergen met Liverpool in the quarter finals of the European Cup Winners Cup.
Norwegian fans of both Brann and Liverpool saw two worlds, which had previously
been seen as belonging to different universes, collapse into a schizophrenic dilemma
over who to support. This caused an intense debate among fans, with groups of Brann
fans insisting that even Liverpool fans from Bergen should remember where they
came from (Goksøyr & Hognestad, 1999, p. 207). Manchester United’s reserve team
played a friendly match against the Norwegian Premier League club Stabæk at Telenor
Arena just outside Oslo in January 2010. Norway’s most famous footballer of all
times, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, was at that time manager of the visiting United team. The
away stand of the new indoor stadium was packed with mostly Norwegian Manchester
United fans. Unknowingly, they stood behind a banner that read “anglophile losers,”
put there by Stabæk fans of many hours before the game; a statement that could be
read as a protest against the globalization associated with a club like Manchester
United.
While spontaneous actions by groups or individual fans before and during games
are commonplace, an important political dimension of the work of Norsk
Supporterallianse has been to seek influence in the running of clubs and also the
Football Association. There were nationwide protests in the top two divisions against
games being played on Fridays and Mondays, mainly due to the challenges faced on
week days by those away fans who wished to travel long distances to attend. These
protests led to live televised Monday-night games being dropped from the 2013 sea-
son. While it could be argued that this episode highlights how activist supporters have
exerted influence in the running of the game, such interventions have in recent years
not prevented Norwegian football from suffering a recession comparable with other
Scandinavian leagues and smaller leagues elsewhere in Europe. After a more or less
continuous rise in league turnovers, crowds and active fans since its inception in 1991,
Norwegian elite level football has faced significant losses in these areas since 2007.
Crowds and sponsorship deals have been dwindling, clubs have had to reduce their
budgets and, as noted earlier, one club (FC Lyn) faced bankruptcy.
Clubs and the Norwegian FA have responded in different ways to meet the new
challenges, causing a variety of fan responses, as some measures are seen as more
desperate than others. In June 2012, Vålerenga’s main sponsor, the supermarket chain
Hognestad 149
Rimi, wished to use a league game against local rivals Stabæk as an occasion to mark
the opening of their 300th shop outlet in Norway. With clear references to the razza-
matazz of the Super Bowl, the sponsor named the event “Rimi Bowl.” With perform-
ers like Loreen, the Swedish winner of the Eurovision song contest in 2012, in addition
to local musicians Karpe Diem and Alexandra Joner, ticket prices were reduced to just
NOK50 (£6) but had to be purchased in one of the Rimi shops. In a joint press briefing,
Chief Executives of Rimi, Thor Linge, and of Vålerenga Football, Pål Breen, stated
that the intention was to attract new spectators, fill the stadium, and celebrate Rimi’s
landmark growth.21
A storm of protests was aired in newspapers and in Internet forums among fans of
Vålerenga—followed by individuals and groups who supported the initiative, making
counter-protests. The club’s idea was to fill Ullevål stadium (capacity: 25,000 people),
but by transforming it into a sponsored event, many fans ended up boycotting the game
and, in the end, the ground was only half full. While many fans expressed disbelief at
this move by the club, others defended it beforehand by arguing that anything that can
bring people to games is a good move. The issue was hotly discussed on the Internet
forums of Klanen, Vålerenga’s independent supporters club, with some voices dismiss-
ing Rimi Bowl as a knee-jerk response to the commercial forces within the game:
What will be the next? Perhaps do as in ice hockey, jazz up the name a bit like for instance
“Oilers,” “Dragons” or what about, sometime in the past, “Spektrum flyers” (Rectum
Buyers).22 How about Vålerenga Football Warriors, Vålerenga Blue Rovers?? This will
of course be the same as shitting in the bidet, to steal a line from Lange flate ballær.23 I
understand that they’re trying to get new blood to Ullevål with circus and show games
etc. but this nonsense is something the average VIF 24-supporter gives a loooong beer
burp in. At the end of the day it is the product VIF-football which needs to improve
(Norwegian football as a whole really).25
However, it became evident in debates also on local radio and in newspapers that
opinions were divided between those who welcomed an initiative that could bring
more “bums on seats” and generate more income for the club and those who agitated
against what they generally saw as examples of an alienating commodification. In an
exchange on the same forum debate, two members who called themselves “Olenga”
and “Borettslagshurpe,” respectively, the dialogue evolved like something approach-
ing a rap battle with references to contrasting styles of support:
Olenga: Call me a fair weather fan, by all means, but I’ve been going to games
since 1978. I will always support Vålerenga, but can’t be bothered about this
circus anymore. Enga26 forever it will remain, even though I can’t be bothered
to watch Circus Breen27 [other than on the television].
Borettslagshurpe: Oh, poor you. I don’t feel sorry for you. Being a supporter is not
about how long you have supported the team, but that you actually turn up for
the club. The fact that you don’t like music and the show during the half-time
break is no excuse to turn your back on the club. Every action aimed at filling
the stadium and pulling people to Enga games, something which will give a
tremendous boost to our failing economy, should be applauded by members of
Klanen. It shows that the club at least tries to reach new spectators. Sitting on
your arse and complaining that everything was better before doesn’t help at all.
Therefore I think it’s fine that you stay at home. Open a beer, watch the game on
the telly and see how much fun we who actually attend the game are having!
Olenga: [replies briefly] You better paint your face and bring your clapper to the
game. Life is so wonderful with the modern football. Enjoy [smiley].
Borettslagshurpe: Wow, was this the best you could come up with? The modern
football? Jesus, this is not about seated stands and VIP boxes, but about a finan-
cially ruined club who desperately tries to generate some money by attracting
larger crowds. Has anyone here talked about clappers? Has anyone mentioned
face paint? I reckon you prefer a bunch of Burberry, Stone Island, and Lacoste
dressed men with caps, as they are more “real” supporters?28 Apart from that, it
is what takes place on the pitch which is important. It’s the game you’re paying
for. I suggest you go and have a cig and a hot dog while the “show” goes on.
Boycott is more stupid than drums at games.29
This dialogue provides but one example of how arguments over how the game
should be developed and how spectators define “real” fan identities are highly con-
tested. In this case, some argued that commercial activities on and off the playing field
are necessary to create finances for buying players and maintaining ambitious sporting
strategies. In his study of supporters of five Scottish football clubs, Giulianotti gives
an illustrative account of how commodification has affected the footballing lives of
supporters, showing how local club community identity and realizations that market-
ing endeavors are necessary create a complex landscape for supporters to navigate
within (Giulianotti, 2011, p. 404).
Left-wing-oriented supporters tend to argue that commercialism threatens the lives
of “authentic fans” who experience games containing razzamatazz as culturally alien-
ating. At the same time, falling attendances at games is experienced as a crisis for both
clubs and the different groups of supporters. Thus, overall, while politically motivated
actions for “taking the club back to the community” are currently spreading across
Europe, strategies over how clubs and the game in general should be run are highly
contested issues. Who should carry the cultural rights to a football stadium? While it
can be argued that commercialization in some nations has threatened the more “tradi-
tional” football cultural practices, they have in other places also to a large extent pro-
duced such practices and in a variety of ways also initiated a tradition. In Norwegian
football, it is certainly the case that discourses and identities relating to “tradition,”
and processes of commercialization, have evolved hand in hand.
Conclusion
Vernacular concepts of “tradition” and “commerce” tend to guide discussions about
the state of the game in Norway among football supporters. The kind of debate quoted
above could not have taken place 30 years ago, at a time when spectators were just
Hognestad 151
about to develop into a collective of more or less organized supporters or fans. As I

have shown in this article, global processes within a game ruled by increasingly neo-
liberal economic principles has changed the lives of supporters and other categories of
spectators within what Richard Giulianotti (1999) labeled the Soccerscape. A domi-
nant notion among supporters who call for a nostalgic return to “real football” is that
the traditional supporter turns up unconditionally to support his or her team while the
flaneur and his or her like only turn up when the weather is nice and the team wins. At
the same time, it is possible to argue that the expression of allegiance and loyalty in
football has become just as commonplace through the purchase of the latest club strip
or other commodities from the football fashion industry. Hence, attitudes to commodi-
fication of the game are also highly contested, with fans arguing for a financially
pragmatic model which declares that anything that can bring cash to the club and to the
game is for the good. While these processes and contestations have changed foot-
balling habits and also the subjective experiences of supporters, there are aspects of
football’s social practices that seem to change slowly. Conflict and local rivalry con-
tinue to dominate as platforms for generating identities, while socially, fans continue
to drink, sing, and sometimes fight around games. Hence, when we talk about how the
game has been “hypercommodified” it is still necessary to contextualize and particu-
larize both styles of activism and styles of support within the game.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. See also Hjelseth (2012), who discusses how the recent transformations of the game has
affected crowd practices.
2. See for example Millward (2011); FC United of Manchester are currently (April 2014)
playing in the Northern Premier, at Level 7 of the national football league system (pp.
94-116).
3. See D. Kennedy (2013) for a wider contextualization of these processes with respect to
various activist ultras fan groups across Europe.
4. See D. Kennedy and P. Kennedy (2013).
5. On April 15, 1989, 96 Liverpool fans were killed after crowd congestion in the penned
in Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield during an FA cup semi-final
against Nottingham Forest. Explain Hillsborough disaster in one line. See Darby, Johnes,
and Mellor (2005).
6. Arsenal’s Emirates stadium and Bayern München’s Allianz Arena are among the most
famous examples here.
7. P. Kennedy (2013) analysis of Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg is illuminating here
(pp. 142-143).
8. Peter Kennedy (2013).

9. The Welsh English Premier League club Swansea City F.C. are the biggest British club
with a significant degree of community control, as 20% of shares are owned by Swansea
City Supporters Trust. Following experiences with administration and poor management,
often led by speculative owners, several clubs are currently considering adopting a similar
model. See www.supporters-direct.org.
10. See also Robson (2000, p. x) who states that football has remained . . . “the practical
medium par excellence of the continuing expression and celebration of the core practices
and concerns of embodied masculinity in a specifically working class variant.”
11. VG is a Norwegian tabloid newspaper.
12. The myth behind this name was that a dead man was once found in the basement of the
restaurant.
13. Vestbredden (West Bank) and Gaza were names chosen for the stands containing active
supporters of Vålerenga. While it may be interpreted as carrying messages of solidarity
for Palestinians living in those parts of the Middle East, Vålerenga-fan Svenna explained
to me that “Vestbredden” was given that name because it is the old west stand and draws
on a play with words in Norwegian: “Bredden” has connotations toward “bred” which
means wide, and this particular stand runs along one length of the pitch and is therefore
wide/“bred.” The name Gaza, for the stand behind one of the goals, came up as a distinc-
tion and reply to “Vestbredden.” See also Reim (2012).
14. Speed skater Oscar Mathisen and figure skater Sonia Henie, among the most famous sport-
ing legends in Norwegian national history, competed here during the first decades of the
20th century.
15. See Haynes (1996) for one of the first analysis of fanzines in Britain from the late 80s and
early 90s.
16. See www.supporterunionen.com
17. I have written more thoroughly elsewhere about transnational connections between fan
groups (Hognestad, 2013).
18. See Goksøyr and Hognestad (1999) on the historic connections between Norwegian and
English football.
19. Tongue (1999).
20. See http://forum.klanen.no/showthread.php?29143-Rimibowl-det-g%E5r-faen-ikkje-an
21. Spektrum flyers was an ice hockey team founded in 1994 after a collaboration between
local Oslo clubs Manglerud Star and Furuset. The club took its name from an indoors con-
cert/sports venue called Oslo Spektrum, built in 1990 and located at the heart of Oslo city
center. The team was widely seen as a business construction to suit the needs of income for
the Oslo Spektrum owners, which is indicated by the derogative nickname provided by this
supporter (“Rectum Buyers”). The club turned out to be anything but a crowd puller and
was closed after 2 years in existence, in 1996.
22. A Norwegian comedy movie from 2006 about six men working in the same garage who
decide to travel to the World Cup in Germany in 2006. The title reflects the dialect of
Sarpsborg, a town 60 miles south-east of Oslo, and also contains a bit of famous football
folklore. It means “long, flat balls” and, according to myths, refers to an imperative in a
song written for Sarpsborg fans before the FA cup final against Skeid in 1949, referring to
Sarpsborg’s direct style of football with long balls along the pitch rather than in the air.
23. Abbreviation for Vålerenga Idrettsforening (Vålerenga Sports Club).
24. By “VIF-supporter.” Translated from Norwegian by the author. This quote and the fol-
lowing discussion taken from http://forum.klanen.no/showthread.php?29143-Rimibowl
-det-g%E5r-faen-ikkje-an
Hognestad 153
25. Nickname for Vålerenga.

26. “Breen” refers to Pål Breen, director at Vålerenga Football and one of the key men behind
the idea of a “Rimi Bowl”; see above.
27. This is a reference to brands often used as signifiers in casual football hooligan styles of
support.
28. All quotes translated from Norwegian by the author.
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Author Biography
Hans Kristian Hognestad is a social anthropologist and an Associate Professor at Telemark
University College, Norway. He has conducted numerous studies on fan cultures in Europe.

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Hans Kristian Hognestad1

1Telemark University College, Bø, Norway

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Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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25. Nickname for Vålerenga.

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