Abstract
The history of modern spectator sport has been defined by a wide range of labor struggles, from individual contract disputes to collective acts of workplace dissent, protest, and unionism. Unlike in many industries, the sports world’s labor relations have a mass audience. Not simply detached observers, fans have played prominent and critical roles in shaping the labor politics of sport.
This special issue of the Journal of Sport and Social Issues (JSSI) explores the role of spectatorship in contemporary sports labor from a range of new, critical perspectives. Each of the three contributions to the special issue advances our understanding of the contested and shifting place of fans and fandom. In “More Than Just Play: Unmasking Black Child Labor in the Athletic Industrial Complex,” Theresa Runstedtler reveals a racialized paradox of the consumption of athletic labor: despite the “hypervisibility” of Black athletes, the sports industry makes invisible the profound labor exploitation of African American youth. Drawing on their own firsthand experience, Zachary Androus and Lorenzo Giudici elucidate the historical roots and radical futures of fan-managed teams in “The De-Professionalization of Football: The People’s Football Movement in Italy.” Finally, in “Cruel Optimism in Sport Management: Fans, Affective Labor, and the Political Economy of Internships in the Sports Industry,” Matthew G. Hawzen, Christopher M. McLeod, John T. Holden, and Joshua I. Newman interrogate the internship as an emblematic site of affective labor, demonstrating the sports industry’s exploitation of fan sensibilities to staff entry-level positions with an underpaid workforce.
I would like to extend sincere thanks to CL Cole for the invitation to edit this special issue of JSSI. Most of all, I would like to thank the authors whose innovative new work appears on the pages that follow.