Ostatni bastion antykonsumeryzmu? Kibice industrialni w dobie komercjalizacji sportu
The Last Bastion of Anti-Consumerism. Industrial Die-Hard-Fans and the Commercialization of Sport

Summary/Abstract: The paper provides an analysis of socio-cultural consequences of the commercialization of football. The authors aim to show that as a result of the commercialization of sport football clubs have been detached from the local community. No longer can they perform functions of social integration in local communities, to which they were initially established. Instead, they become a part of the commercial world of show business and adopt its rules of supply and demand. This transformation involves the advent of a new type of sports consumers. In place of „industrial die-hard fan”, associated with sport for decades, the commercialized sport introduces consumers who seek nothing but entertainment in football. The industrial fans traditionally make strongly integrated „inclusive community”, typical for the modern times, while consumers of sport form an „affiliation group” which in contrast is formed and ruled by principles characteristic for the late modernity. The paper attempts to define and compare these two worlds, and to show the social and cultural consequences of inevitable collision between them. The article also sketches the main areas of dispute between the traditional world of industrial fans and commercial policy also referred to by a catchy phrase modern sport. This dispute is an example of the social „movements of dissent” against the global process of standardization and commercialization of all forms of social life.

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