The movements are very graceful sometimes and you can actually see the moves on the pitch

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Television, in its unique capacity to distribute visual fifa 15 coins content across vast distances nearly simultaneously, has radically shaped the premises of football consumption and fandom on a number of levels. However, as demonstrated above, electronic mass media and television in particular must not be understood as an external corruption of the game because its proliferation is rooted in the same historical configuration as spectator sports. Moreover, in the symbiosis of spectator sports and television, arising out of their common socio-economic framing, each has grown into an innate aspect of the other. However, television – which to many theorists constituted the quintessential cultural form of postmodernity – has pro- pelled aspects and articulations of formal rationality in contemporary football to a degree that forces a shift of our focus from the analysis of television in its con- sequential nature to an analysis of television as social, cultural and technological form in the postmodern realm.

There are two important observations we must bear in mind in our analysis of football fandom and television. Firstly, most professional football is indeed con- sumed through television rather than in situ. Fans in the ground will hardly ever outnumber those following a game on television screens. Similarly, many fans will rarely or never attend live games:

I wouldn’t make any effort to go to a football match in London . . . the atmosphere at most of the London clubs I have been to is nasty and threat- ening . . . I am a television football fan generally speaking, and I read the newspapers, Guardian, and then I have a circle of friends whom I watch with.

Secondly, those fans watching football on television engage in a practice in line with the cultural and social framing of televisual consumption. This is a female Manchester United and Crystal Palace supporter from London:

[Football] is entertaining. I usually watch it on TV, so you tend to see a sort of an overview of the game. Sometimes it is a bit like watching ballet or something. I heard that sort of analogy used by the people. The movements are very graceful sometimes and you can actually see the moves on the pitch. But then also, there is the drama, what is going to happen, is your side going to make it, the really tense moments. It is very rarely boring, unlike some sports which can be. My husband is quite keen on cricket, but I can’t sit down and watch cricket for five days, whereas a football match, it is two or three hours, so it is quick and fast and you usually get an outcome . . . There is also the personalities of the players. I suppose there is a sort of slight, sort of element to like, to see the attractive male body, although I am not really into that, but you know, obviously it is nice to see athletic bodies moving around. And also the colours, things like the World Cup, you see all the colourful gear, the dress of the spectators and everything else. It is a quite colourful event sometimes, like a fairground scene or something.