da bet sport： Why are so many people fans for life ?
da esport bet： Would you sign up for an insurance policy knowing that there was no chance of it ever paying out ? Or would you take out a life membership of a film club knowing that you would never see a film with a happy ending ?
So why do the vast majority of fans stick with their club even when they know the chances of them ever winning any silverware are less realistic than Scotland qualifying for a major tournament?
Speaking personally, in the 32 years I’ve followed my team, I’ve seen them lose two national cup finals, one semi-final and a couple of quarter-finals. And its not over the top to describe my feelings about that statistic as lack of fulfillment to say the least. Its also probably fair to say that most fans of most other teams would dream of that record.
Why do human beings – who during the week hold down reasonably responsible jobs and generally have normal, sensible hobbies like gardening, doing crosswords, DIY – put themselves through hell every Saturday afternoon, or whatever day TV companies dictate, and come back for more ?
And every other week they face a trip of anything from two hours to eight hours, often in the pouring rain or freezing cold, knowing that there’s a fair to middling chance that they’ll be disappointed yet again.
From a personal perspective, the hours spent travelling to and from away games are anything but counter productive as (a) during the journey there some element of anticipation usually washes away any lingering memory of the previous week’s despair, (b) the journey home often takes long enough that you can pretty well rationalise everything that went wrong before you get home, or (c) I fall back on the tried and trusted formula of falling asleep and waking up just in time to collect my jacket from my mate’s car and say ”see you next week”.
But I appreciate that many fans don’t have that luxury. If choosing/following a football club was decided on the basis of logic and statistics, there would only six or seven clubs with fans in England and one or two north of the border.
How many people would take their family of one wife and two kids to the pictures every week knowing that they wouldn’t get any change out of £100 by the time they bought their tickets and purchased their burnt to a crisp pies, cold tea and watered down soft drinks… and then end up being bored out of their skills for the whole 90 minutes?
Why do we put up with it ?
Is it that we have such boring, predictable lives that we need to let off steam at the end of the week ? Is it that we are so conditioned to the weekend routine that the thought of not enduring 90 minutes of frustration/ennui/tension (or a combination of all three) would create a seismic change that would see the earth spinning off its axis and disappearing into the nearest black hole? I apologise if I have mixed my cosmic metaphors up here, hopefully you’ll get my drift.
Or is it just that its easier to behave as we always have rather than try to find some other pastime to fill the void that might actually end up being worse? Nothing immediately springs to mind but I’m sure my other half could come up with plenty of examples.
Home games are trickier in that its difficult to avoid all mentions of a disastrous performance and/or result on social media, TV or radio unless you adopt a hermit pose and go into a darkened room from which you only emerge the next morning.
The answer may be quite simple. Is it simply that most fans would rather watch bad football than none at all?
Or is the typical fan – and by that I mean a supporter of a club with no realistic chance of winning anything – essentially an unhealthy mixture of masochist and optimist?
Personally speaking, I fall into both camps.
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