Fan Voices
What does it really mean to be a sports fan today going beyond the statistics or the standings, and into the origin stories, the rituals, the identity, the community? In a pilot project with Real Madrid, Harvard’s Weatherhead Center, and MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication, Cortico set out to find out. These are some of the voices they heard.
Sports fandom is a powerful force in human social life, but one that isn’t well understood. Teams know how and why their fans buy tickets, stream games, and wear jerseys. What they rarely know is why they’re fans in the first place. What draws someone in at age seven and holds them for a lifetime? What does fandom mean to a woman who has to prove her knowledge before she’s taken seriously? What does it feel like to wake up at three in the morning, alone, watching your team play seven thousand miles away?
The Project
In a collaboration between MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication, Harvard’s Weatherhead Global Sports Initiative, and Cortico, small-group conversations with Real Madrid fans and sports enthusiasts took place across five countries and five audience segments — from futbol superfans to casual sports fans. Conversations were designed to surface personal stories rather than opinions: origin stories, rituals, moments of connection, and the complicated feelings that come with loving something as unpredictable as a sports team.
Early Results
Some findings confirmed what sports organizations might already suspect: Family is the most powerful on-ramp to fandom, and rituals are everywhere. Others were more surprising. International fans emerged as what one participant called “sleeper cells”— deeply committed supporters hungry for engagement, facing real barriers like time zone challenges and pressure to prove their authenticity. Women fans told a consistent story across countries, having to demonstrate their knowledge before being taken seriously, in ways male fans rarely experience. A second medley drawn from those conversations is available here.
Where It’s Going
The pilot established that the Cortico approach — developed across hundreds of civic and community projects — translates naturally to sports as well. Fan Voices, the program that has grown from this work, is now available to sports organizations looking to understand their audiences in this deeper way, combining Cortico’s small-group conversation approach with the research expertise of MIT CCC and Harvard Weatherhead.
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