2008 was the year when soccer became an interest, which would spiral to a passion. Liverpool FC were the team that would ultimately cause mix emotions of happiness, sadness and anger for the rest of my life.
A rule becomes apparent when supporting the club, you must see your team play at the home stadium, the club even provides a guide to visit the stadium. Judging by the countless jersey and my extreme lack of sleep when match day is on I don’t think I had any plastic in me.
2015, Liverpool announce that they are going to be hitting the land down under. We left for Adelaide ASAP.
The interconnectedness of the fans coming to South Australia was mental. Being apart of an audience has drastically changed over the last century. This is what I learnt when we arrived to Adelaide in 2015. We have a YouTube channel for audiences to engage with media and use it to do things with their own lives, in accordance to the lecture. In accordance to the book Colours and Scarves, football fans identify with their team through buying merchandise. Evident when the audience engaged with the club in SA through the purchase of merchandise associated with Liverpool’s trip to Adelaide.
“the relationship between media concern, public interest and government action is a familiar one”- Turnbull 2010, “Imaging the audience” page 71. Boy oh boy does this statement ring true to the game. The South Australian government used the die hard Liverpool fans to advertise like crazy. Posters EVERYWHERE, and I mean EVERYWHERE, even in toilets advertising the game. This show a relationship between authority and individuals as they work together to ensure the overall success of an event through advertisement and profit.
I met Divock Origi, the Barcelona comeback hero, and Joe Allen, who although isn’t in the team currently, still has the best beard in world soccer. You don’t believe me? here’s proof:
As audiences work together to ensure everyone gets the most out of their experience, this doesn’t spark truth in some fans of the team. I remember, I could hear yelling, almost as if the players were right there, but, they actually were. I ran. I was stopped. My little heart was shattered, even more when this lady told me I wasn’t getting through. My persistence prevailed however, and my scarf was signed by Joe Gomez and Mamadou Sakho.
By far the best thing about the whole experience was creating a different audience. Whilst I attended the game as an audience, my video and photo footage on social media was viewed by other audiences, who were viewing me as an audience member. Some audienceseption here! Me singing, well more like screaming, the clubs’ song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ for the first time in a stadium was 100% the highlight, I lost my voice and that was hard to explain to my school teachers once I came back from school.
So, if you want to be apart of a sports audience, just have a look at this experience, and understand the growth of audiences, media attention and that soccer really is the world game! The slogan of Liverpool ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ really does ring true within the audiences of soccer, as they are connected through the sharing of a passion of the sport.
Bibliography
Derbaix C., Decrop, A. and Cabbosart, O., (2002), Colors and Scarves: the Symbolic Consumption of Material Possessions by Soccer Fans, Catholic University of Mons, Belgium.
Liverpool FC, Plan Your Visit to Anfield, Liverpool FC. Available at: https://www.liverpoolfc.com/corporate/partner-experience/plan-your-visit-to-anfield
Turnbull, S.E, (2010), Imagining the Audience,Crows Nest, Australia, The Media and Communications in Australia, p. 71.
Mavro Productions 