Abstract
In the last few decades, our exposure to sport has increased dramatically through advancements in television, Internet, and mobile technologies. This rise in exposure and accessibility has increased biological knowledge among sport “fans,” a concept I use broadly, and complicated our relationship with sport. Using Rose’s notion of biological citizenship, which draws on Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and biopower, I introduce “biological fandom” as a way to think about the intensification of bioknowledge in and around sport. As a problem space where various relationships of power intersect, biofandom creates new forms of knowledge, surveillance, and ethical problems. In this article, I sketch the relations of power that create biological fandom. First, I focus on aspects of the media that are concerned with quantifying the bodies of athletes and new biomedical treatments in sports medicine. Second, within this larger media context, I proceed to explore what I see as a particularly concentrated manifestation of biofandom, fantasy sports. Using examples from fantasy sports media, I argue that biological fandom perpetuates neoliberal norms that encourage self-work and individualism among “biofans,” while also fetishizing the individual athlete and creating undifferentiated athletic masses.
In August 2011, National Football League (NFL) player Arian Foster posted a picture of his then injured hamstring on his Twitter account. The picture, however, was not our “normal” view of an injured player, perhaps sitting on the bench with tape wrapped around some body part. What Foster had posted was a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of said hamstring, literally giving us a look inside of his body. With the NFL season about to begin, in-house doctors for ESPN (among other sports media outlets) were put on television to discuss the MRI, talk-radio debated whether Foster’s actions were a distraction for his team, and players of fantasy football wondered whether his draft stock should be lowered for their upcoming drafts. The image clearly showed something amiss at the back of the leg, and the experts emerged to tell (teach) us how to interpret and think about the severity of injury. In this moment, not only was Foster’s humanity and worth reduced to his injured hamstring, but the routine nature to which fans of sport are now confronted with biomedical information went unacknowledged.
This article focuses on the development of what I am terming “biological fandom” as a subconcept of Nikolas Rose’s (2007; also see, Rose & Novas, 2005) notion of “biological citizenship.” Originating in Foucault’s (1978) writings on biopower, biological citizenry describes the collectivizing and individualizing biopolitical strategies used upon state citizens. It also explores the concomitant development of citizens taking control over the very biopolitical controls exercised upon them by the state and corporations (Rabinow & Rose, 2006; Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005). I will argue that we can observe similar processes occurring within sport fandom—where fandom, discussed in greater detail later, is used broadly to articulate varying levels of interest in and exposure to sport media and marketing. Specifically, I am concerned with the relationship between sports media and fandom within the realm of fantasy sports. The episode concerning Foster raises a number of important questions. What does it mean for us as “fans” of sport to encounter such detailed biomedical information on an increasingly regular basis? Where does this knowledge come from and what impact might it be having for how we view both those playing sport and ourselves as individuals? And finally, what do these developments mean in the context of our larger neoliberal moment? These are broad questions and my aim here is to use biological fandom as a theoretical framework with which to discuss these matters. Subsequently, I begin by elaborating on the theoretical groundings of biological citizenry, as well as the language and concepts I will use throughout this article. I begin my analysis with a broad look at two interrelated areas of sports media pertaining to biological fandom, the coverage of bodies, and the coverage of biomedical technologies. The intensification of biological information in the media is an important contextual development for biological fandom. From there, I focus on biological fandom as being acutely manifested within fantasy sports, and how it is changing the way we relate to sport and athletes.
Biopower, Biopolitics, and Biological Citizenship
In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault (1978) briefly explains the historical convergence of two different—bipolar—technologies of power over life. The first, anatomo-politics (p. 139), is concerned with the body at an individual level. Anatomo-politics is interested in the disciplined and docile body. It sees the body as a machine to be trained and optimized for efficiency and insertion into the disciplinary spheres of, for example, the family, army, police, schools, workshops, and so on. Conversely, the second type of power, biopolitics (p. 139), takes human life at the species level as its primary focus. As opposed to the disciplinary concerns of anatomo-politics, biopolitics is a regulatory power interested in the processes of life such as birth rates, mortality, life expectancy, disease, and the factors that influence these aspects of life. For Foucault (1978), the development and proliferation of ways to control bodies and populations throughout the 17th and 18th centuries fused these two technologies of power, the anatomical and biological. The end result is what Foucault describes as the “great technology of power in the nineteenth century” (p. 140)—biopower.
As Foucault (1978) goes on to explain, the development of biopower was instrumental to the rise of capitalism in Western societies. Capitalism not only requires docile and disciplined bodies but also the methods of power to optimize and administer entire populations for the maintenance of economic relations. Hence, the shift from the “great bipolar technology—anatomic and biological” (Foucault, 1978, p. 139) to that of one “present at every level of the social body” (p. 141; biopower) is “complete,” insofar as we are concerned with advanced liberal democracies (Foucault, 1978, 2003; Rose, 2007). What we are left with is an essentially normalizing power centered on life, regulating and distributing the population around the norm. The norm is “something that can be applied to both a body one wishes to discipline and a population one wishes to regularize” (Foucault, 2003, p. 253). The perhaps unintended consequence of this rupture—from the perspective of capitalism—is that individual citizens of Western nations now think of their claim to life as a “right.” This claim—which ties in to my later discussion on the activities of biological citizens making claims upon the authorities—means that political resistance to the general system of power has been founded on the basic (vital) needs of human beings, not a return to earlier forms of (sovereign) power or “imagined ancestral rights” (Foucault, 1978, p. 145).
Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (2006) are quick to note that Foucault himself is somewhat imprecise with his use of biopower and biopolitics. They move toward using the term “biopolitics” today to refer to all of the “specific strategies and contestations over problematizations of collective human vitality, morbidity and mortality; over the forms of knowledge, regimes of authority and practices of intervention that are desirable, legitimate and efficacious” (p. 197). Thus, biopolitics today fuses the now interconnected political strategies that were formerly described as anatomo-politics and biopolitics. This politics of life occurs within the realm of biopower. Drawing on Foucault’s (1978) discussion of the development of biopower in the 19th century, Rabinow and Rose see biopower as a “plane of actuality” (p. 197) that has at least three main elements. First, it contains discourses of truth—and accompanying experts to speak that truth—on the biological character of human beings. The biological character of truth discourses may not necessarily be “biological” in the sense of the discipline. Rather, they may hybridize biological and demographic, or sociological, modes of thought as it concerns the concepts of risk and language of susceptibility. Second, biopolitical interventions upon the populace for the sake of life and health may no longer take the nation, or preexisting communities and social groups, as their starting point. Instead, they may originate or be focused on emergent biosocial groups, collectivities that have become linked with some disease or genetic disorder, either through their own consciousness raising efforts or those of the experts. The third element consists of different forms of subjectification, whereby “individuals are brought to work on themselves, under certain forms of authority, in relation [to] truth discourses, by means of practices of the self” (p. 197). These practices are performed for the individual’s own health, their family’s health, or even the health of the population (Rabinow & Rose, 2006). These three elements of biopower provide a starting point from which we can begin to think about various types of biopolitical activity.
It is here where Rose’s (2007) concept of “biological citizenship” (p. 131) becomes useful. For Rose (2007), biological citizenship refers to a new kind of citizenship in our age of biomedicine, biotechnology, and genomics. It is rooted in the debates over multiculturalism and globalization and indicates a shift away from the previous concept of national citizenship and its links to a single unified culture and national economy (Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005). Rose (2007) uses biological citizenship to “encompass all those citizenship projects that have linked their conceptions of citizens to beliefs about the biological existence of human beings” (p. 132). Citizenship projects refer to projects based on state thought and action as it pertains to “(some) individuals as potential citizens, and the ways they tried to act upon them in that context” (p. 131). Historically, many of such projects have relied on biological assumptions in some form, if not explicitly so. Political and social forms of national citizenship often delimit membership based on conceptions of who, or what bodies, could be citizens. Some theorists—most notably Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005), Zygmunt Bauman (1989), and Hardt and Negri (2000)—see contemporary state biopolitics as a threat to repeat the history of eugenic practices, racialized national politics, and racial hygiene (Rabinow & Rose, 2006; Rose, 2001, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005). This fear is usually rooted in the activities of the Nazis but also implicates various Western (specifically United States) policies of, for example, genetic counseling and forced sterilization. However, Rose (2007; also Rabinow & Rose, 2006; Rose & Novas, 2005) sees biological citizenship rooted in an economy of hope—that “[b]iology is no longer blind destiny” (Rose & Novas, 2005, p. 442)—and increasingly unbounded by national concerns as it relates to local, national, and global scapes.
In this formulation, state intervention is no longer a search for racial purity, rather a hope that the population may “provide a valuable resource for the generation of intellectual property rights, for biotechnological innovation, and for the creation of biovalue” (Rose, 2007, p. 133). The concept “biovalue” (Rose & Novas, 2005, p. 455) is a way to refer to the value that knowledge of our biological materials has for current and future generations of humans, both for ourselves and for the state. Rose and Novas (2005) draw attention to three specific dimensions of biovalue: (1) life as the production of economic value, (2) life manipulation for health improvement, and (3) ethics in the dual production of wealth and health (Rose & Novas 2005). Examples of these three dimensions can be seen in the search to cure genetic diseases, such as Huntington’s. This process involves: (1) the patenting of genes and the possibility of economic attainment through property rights, (2) the manipulation of genes and bodily tissues to treat or cure multiple diseases, and (3) the creation of new ethical forms involved in attaining genetic material and making treatments available to the masses (Rose & Novas, 2005). These dimensions of biovalue are again indicative of a power interested in the investment and guarantee of life (Foucault, 1978, 2003). However, they also point toward the capitalization of the life sciences by pharmaceutical companies and biotech enterprises (Rabinow, 1996). The life sciences are increasingly dependent on these industries for their survival, meaning that biovalue, as the creation of surplus out of life itself, is intricately tied to bioeconomics, the commodification of life at the molecular level (Rose, 2001; Waldby, 2000).
At the individual level, contemporary biopower has meant changes in how members of society think of themselves as citizens of the state. Rose (2007) explains that the projects of “biological citizenship in the nineteenth and twentieth century produced citizens who understood their nationality, allegiances, and distinctions, at least in part, in biological terms” (p. 133). More recent practices have emerged allowing individuals and collectives to define themselves and make demands on authorities in different (new) ways. Examples include selective abortion, embryo selection, cosmetic surgery, gene therapy, and so on (Rose & Novas, 2005). In sport, we can also add various types of doping and biomedical treatments for injuries to this list. These newer practices are introduced and debated within societal institutions and among biological citizens as to their acceptance or rejection in the dominant political order. What we once considered normal and unchangeable as it concerned our biological future is now open to modification—especially at the molecular level as it regard our relationships to ageing, procreation, and mental illness (Rose, 2001). This type of activity among biological citizens is what Rabinow (1996) calls “biosociality” (p. 99) or Rose and Novas (2005) term “active biological citizenry” (p. 448). For the biological citizen, often struggling to attain hegemonic norms and acceptance, self-responsibility within advanced liberal states has shifted from general health to include these new forms of biological and genetic responsibility (Rabinow & Rose, 2006; Rose, 2001). Elsewhere, Rose (2001) has likened biopolitics to a “risk politics” (p. 1) and “ethopolitics” (p. 18) as a way to point toward the ethical (self-)management of the asymptomatic or presymptomatic body. In short, individuals must be responsible with the knowledge of their biological future. Within these new collectivities and responsibilities is a move toward more biologically informed and labeled language, referring to how individuals and groups speak about and reference themselves (Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005). Basic examples include the language of hypertension, diabetes, or risks of various cancers. In addition, the increased ability, through technological means, to instantly access information or form and join groups around any given ailment has changed the questions we ask of science, medicine, and the state (Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005). With this literature in mind, I turn now toward applying these concepts to what I call biological fandom and its acute manifestation within fantasy sports.
Biological Fandom
Much in how biological citizenry encourages individuals to think of themselves, in part, through biological terms (Rose, 2007), biological fandom (biofandom) encourages fans to engage sport, in part, through biological terms. I am aware that my use of fans and “fandom” here is somewhat untraditional. I use fandom here to refer to a social space where fans, followers, spectators, and consumers of sport intersect. This approach is rooted in previous research that finds sport spectators (audiences) having different motivations and points of attachment for watching sport (Fink & Parker, 2009; Robinson & Trail, 2005; Rowe & Hutchins, 2014; Sutton, McDonald, Mime, & Cimperman, 1997; Wann & Branscombe, 1990; Wann, Melnick, Russell, & Pease, 2001). Thus, biological fandom articulates, for example, both the athlete who hates watching sport and the fan who only engages sport to be social with friends and family. Both of these individuals are inevitably exposed to the truth discourses in and around sport.
Further, my aim here is not to demonstrate all possible power relations or biopolitical strategies at work. Rather I wish to capture some of the processes by which sports media and fans take an active role in producing biological fandom through different aspects of biopower. In particular, I am concerned with the production of truth discourses and the forms of subjectification that fans are encouraged to partake in. Again, these discourses are not always explicitly biological (Rabinow & Rose, 2006). In fantasy sports, these discourses are often couched in the language of risk, responsibility, management, statistics, and performance enhancement. The rest of this article has two main parts. In the first, I take a broad look at the role of sports media, as fantasy sports are inextricably tied to this larger context. I also discuss some of the ways in which people are encouraged to engage in practices of the self. Second, I focus specifically on the relationship between fantasy sports and biological fandom. I discuss how “fantasy experts” create truth discourses of risk and management and what these discourses mean for us as fans of sport.
(Sports) Media: Consumerism, Athletic Biovalue, and Technologies of the Self
Fantasy sports exist within the larger context of sports media. The role of (Global) Media Sport (Rowe, 2011; Wenner, 1998), or the sports-media complex (Jhally, 1989), in our everyday lives and cultural practices has been well-established (Billings, 2011; Billings & Hardin, 2014; Raney & Bryant, 2006; Rowe, 2004; Whannel, 1992). Sports media is intimately tied to corporate marketing and economic gain while simultaneously being linked to technologies of self-governance via individual consumerism—the creation of desirable and normative identity forms (Markula, 2014; Miller, 1998; Miller, Lawrence, McKay, & Rowe, 2001). The conflation between citizenship and consumerism has created an environment whereby the failure of individuals and groups to make informed biomedical decisions or use “available” knowledge singles them out for social exclusion (Briggs & Hallin, 2007; Miller, 1998, 2009; Rose, 2007).
In the last 30 years, sports fans in Western societies and around the world have been exposed to a greater level of sports programming than ever before. The rise of the 24-hour news cycle in sport, largely attributable to ESPN and News Corporation (FOX), has made sports programming and information much more available and accessible (Rowe, 2004, 2011). For example, ESPN, majority owned by American Broadcast Company (ABC) as an indirect subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, consists of television programming on seven domestic (United States) cable channels, ABC (broadcast), regional, syndicated, pay subscription packages, and 24 international networks covering 61 countries and territories over the seven continents. On February 2, 2011, ESPN surpassed the 100 million homes mark in the United States, with ESPN2 following at a close 99.9 million homes. In 2012, ESPN produced close to 30,000 hr of programming across all platforms (ESPN, 2010, 2014).
Not only are sport fans exposed to more sport for longer periods of time, but also in order to fill airtime, mobile, website, and social media space, there are many aspects of sport that are of greater focus now than in previous decades (Bellamy, 2006; Brown & Bryant, 2006; Rowe, 2011). Concurrently, Internet and social media content, once on the fringes, have become integral to sport coverage. Social media, Twitter especially, continues to change the way sports news is covered and broken to the public (Bowman & Cranmer, 2014; Fry, 2012). In an era where fans are more socioeconomically distanced from professional athletes, social media allows an immediacy that did not exist before Twitter, Facebook, and blogs (Sanderson & Kassing, 2011, 2014). As my concern here is establishing the concept of biological fandom, I will only be focusing on what I see as the intensification of biological information in the media. There are two main—interrelated—areas I will focus on in this section. The first concerns media coverage where we are encouraged to watch and quantify the bodies of athletes. In the second, I examine coverage of biomedical treatments, the use of athletic biovalue to sell products, and technologies of the self.
Bodily coverage
Sports media creates and encourages a normalizing biological gaze upon athletes. This process is often highly individualizing and in line with our neoliberal norms of hard work and exceptionalism. Two brief examples will illustrate my point. First, ESPN’s Sport Science program examines the biomechanics of athletic movement within a highly dramatized production process. It is described by ESPN (2015, What is ‘Sport Science’, para. 1) as a series that “uncovers sports’ biggest myths and mysteries by using cutting-edge technology to measure momentum, friction and the laws of gravity.” Show segments usually focus on only one athlete and are now interspersed within a variety of other shows on ESPN such as SportsCenter. The forces each athlete produce in their given sport are quantified in a lab setting and compared to either similar athletes or the “average” human.
To be average is inherently reinscribed as something that we should work to avoid, yet the show often naturalizes the skill of the athletes being quantified. Although the naturalization of athletic talent has traditionally been troublesome in critical studies of sport—and rightly so—biological fandom provides a space where these discourses are somewhat less problematic. Through quantification and measurement, individuals are given—or can now easily find—the information they need to work (on the self) toward the performance of elite athletes. This information may take the form of a workout regime, nutritional supplement or, in the extreme, doping. A rereading of some of the literature on technologies of the self often demonstrates a process of internalization as it concerns these expanded networks of information, where individuals are getting information on “health” from multiple sources (Chapman, 1997; Henning, 2014; Johns & Johns, 2000). As biological citizenry allows individuals and collectives to find ways to overcome their biology with regard to disease, so too does biological fandom with regard to “natural” athletic ability (Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005).
My second example here concerns the overwhelming amount of attention and importance placed on the NFL Combine and NFL Draft process. That these two off-season aspects of the NFL are now legitimate media spectacles—what one reviewer termed “spectacles of biopower”—demonstrates not only the popularity of the league but a heightened level of athlete evaluation. (Indeed, the NFL Combine and Draft also hold special significance for fantasy football “dynasty leagues” as users of that format are allowed to “keep” players year-to-year indefinitely.) Poked and prodded in what has otherwise been called a “‘meat market” (McLane, 2008; Oates, 2007), players undergo a battery of medical tests and measurements, both physical—X-rays, CT scans, checking of vital organs, blood, urine and stool samples—and psychological, in order to place a value on their biological being (Oates, 2007; Oates & Durham, 2004).
This emphasis on the individual moves us toward a certain bodily aesthetics, an aesthetics based on how bodies should look when performing, and also measure on quantifiable performance indicators. For example, the desire for “prototypical” players is itself a conflation of aesthetics and (potential) performance. The prototypical player not only “looks” the part, thus fulfilling a certain normalizing gaze, but also “performs” the part through displays of individual skill often divorced from the actual sport setting. Scouting combines for NFL rookie hopefuls are an example of this phenomenon. Separated from an actual playing environment, athletes are graded on their measurables (height/weight) and performance in drills—such as the 40-yard dash, three-cone drill, broad jump, and bench press—in order to test speed, agility, power, and strength. Based on the resultant numbers, players may find their “draft stock” (value) has either risen or fallen (Oates, 2007; Oates & Durham, 2004).
The athletic combine, which we can conceptually expand to include the ubiquitous team “tryout,” is a risk management device that creates discourses of truth on what is an ideal (normalized) body. For athletic teams—and their varied array of ownership, coaches, trainers/doctors, and scouts—the tryout ostensibly helps them manage investment risk in the selection of athletes. In sports media, we see the creation of “experts” whose job it is to inform the viewer (biological fan or biofan) of the biovalue of the athlete. Concerning the NFL Draft and Combine, two of the most well-known experts at ESPN are Todd McShay and Mel Kiper Jr. These experts tell us about each player in a risk adverse fashion—highlighting physical and mental qualities—so that we can make judgements about both the individual athlete and the decision making of the team that drafts them (Oates & Durham, 2004). After the draft process, teams are traditionally “graded” by the experts as to how successful they were with their player selections. Although in Rose’s (2007) concept of biological citizenry companies might capitalize on biological knowledge by patenting actual biological materials, such a process is generally more abstracted within biological fandom. Currently, the biovalue of athletes—the economic value of their athleticism—is capitalized on by “owning” them until they are no longer needed or their biovalue (body) is used up (Oates, 2009). This ownership makes the (self-)management of athletes a great concern to the owners of sport, as well as related (invested) industries and occupations.
Biomedical coverage
Media coverage of new forms of biomedical treatment often resonates with the political economy of hope concerning medical advances in biological citizenry (Rabinow & Rose, 2006; Rose, 2007). Treatments such as stem cell therapy, Regenokine, or platelet-rich plasma injections are often discussed as potential saviors for an athletic career in decline. The basic idea behind these “biologic medicines” is that an individual’s own tissue (usually fat, blood, or bone marrow) is removed, manipulated, and reinserted into the body to rapidly heal an injury (Vrentas, 2014). Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant are two of the most well-known athletes, among hundreds of others, to reportedly undergo such procedures (Assael, 2011; Lehrer, 2012; Vrentas, 2014). The work on technologies of the self and cyborgification (e.g., see Butryn, 2003; Chapman, 1997; Cole, 1993; Johns & Johns, 2000; Markula, 2003) often speaks to the multitude of biomedical information and technologies surrounding athletes as they attempt to maintain or enhance their performance. Athletes negotiate an athletic world where their bodies are under constant and increasing surveillance, particularly in the realm of doping (Park, 2005; Sluggett, 2011). Unsurprisingly then, many athletes refuse to answer questions about undergoing these and similar procedures, fearing negative sanctions (Assael, 2011; Lehrer, 2012; Vrentas, 2014).
Although the governing bodies of sport and doping agencies have so far allowed these biologic procedures—as they are not considered performance enhancing—there are questions as to whether or not they even work (Caulfield, 2012; Caulfield & McGuire, 2012). Despite the media being overwhelmingly positive about these practices, scant clinical research, mostly done on animals, backs up the successful claims (Caulfield, 2012; Dave, Nyland, McKee, & Caborn, 2012; Hogan, Walker, Cui, Fu, & Huard, 2015). Indeed, there is a feeling that governmental regulatory agencies are too slow to approve these procedures for mass use, and that athletes—in the United States—must go to Europe or elsewhere for the most effective treatments (Assael, 2011; Caulfield, 2012; Caulfield & McGuire, 2012; Lehrer, 2012; Vrentas, 2014). With both professional and recreational athletes seeking these treatments, we see that biofandom encourages individuals to be active in their health choices (and to believe in clinically untested cures).
Of course, we often see a grasp by the public for the latest trends among athletes. This activity challenges the authority of the medical field and the controls that have been put in place to ensure safe practices. For example, androstenedione—a sex-hormone precursor, categorized as a steroid—sold out after the supplement was found in former Major League Baseball (MLB) player Mark McGwire’s locker during the 1998 season (Rovell, 2010). McGwire would go on break the record for single-season home runs that same year and “Andro” would eventually be banned by MLB in 2004 (Bloom, 2004). That the biovalue of athletes—in a simple sense, their athletic “being” or status as an elite athlete among other athletes—is often used to promote and advertise products from clothing to nutritional supplements is not unproblematic. The ubiquity of brands such as Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and Gatorade speaks to their usage of premier athletic talent as sponsors. More recently, companies such as DNAFit have begun offering genetic testing, starting around US$200, to determine if an individual—or their child—is “predisposed” for certain athletic activities (Atlas, 2015; DNAFit, 2015). Using athletic sponsorship for validity—DNAFit has used “DNAthlete” British Olympian Jennifer Meadows on their website—these companies promise to tailor exercise regimes that “work” for each individual based on their genetic markers.
Media and corporate interests often valorize (commodify) biovalue to the point where it is separated from scientific knowledge and potentially damaging to the individual. Rose and Novas’ (2005) use the example of (pharmaceutical company) Eli Lilly’s online efforts to emphasize the benefits of “real” Prozac over generic versions of the drug in order to discuss how corporations often ignore the needs of consumers (the public good) for profit. They argue that Eli Lilly sets out to create a specific, brand driven, kind of biological and scientific literacy in order to retain their market shares. I suggest that within biological fandom, there is a similar valorization of biovalue over public (health) value. Whereas governments and corporations have an interest in “making up” the biological citizen—producing manageable and “known” individuals—the sports-media complex also has an interest in making up the biological fan (Rose & Novas, 2005). Biological fans are barraged with knowledge and advertisements featuring the biovalue of professional athletes in order to sell various products “necessary” to succeed in sport, or exercise, without any discussion of the impact on the broader issues of public health and ethics. There have been many unfortunate occurrences of deaths due to nutritional supplements.
Fantasy Sports: Risk and Management
It is within the larger context of sports media that fantasy sports exist. Fantasy sports are played by groups of individuals within a “league.” These individuals, often called “owners,” select players from a professional sport to create their “team” and then play that team against others within their league. An owner’s team wins through the production of the players on their team versus that of another team or the entire league. Ruihley and Hardin (2010) define fantasy sport as “an interactive team-management activity based on statistics accrued by athletes of real-life professional sport organizations and college athletics” (p. 233). Fantasy football (NFL) in particular has exploded in popularity over the last two decades. This is due in large part because of the availability of Internet and phone technologies which have increased the popularity of fantasy sports around the globe. Whereas fantasy sports were once a hobby isolated to close friends, the Internet has allowed a drastic expansion of social networks and possibilities for play (Billings & Ruihley, 2014; Drayer, Shapiro, Dwyer, Morse, & White, 2010; IBISWorld, 2013).
According to IBISWorld (2013), Fantasy Sports Services are the ninth fastest growing industry—largely due to its popularity among young (White) men—with an annualized growth rate (2008–2018) of 13.1% and US$1,231.5 million in revenue for the 2013 year. In the last 10 years, the industry has seen absolute growth of 241% (IBISWorld, 2013). The Fantasy Sports Trade Association ([FSTA], 2014a) reports that fantasy sports participation in has reached the 41-million mark (in the United States and Canada alone), a 25% increase from its 2010 survey. It is estimated that the average fantasy sports player spends an average of US$111 annually on fantasy-related expenses and 8.67 hr/week consuming fantasy sports—with an additional 17.89 hr/week spent consuming nonfantasy sport (FSTA, 2014b). Significantly, Ruihley and Hardin (2014) find that sports media consumption among “fantasy sports users” (FSUs; Ruihley & Hardin, 2010, p. 233) is triple that of the average consumer and that FSUs heavily consume sports content found on the Internet and television.
The massive popularity of fantasy has fueled demand to know more about individual players and has resulted in many sport broadcasts having to include something about fantasy sports—especially in the NFL. This has led to the creation of fantasy-specific television programming, such as ESPN’s Fantasy Draft Special and Fantasy Football Now. These two shows, respectively, help users of fantasy select their team before the NFL season and manage it every Sunday morning before the games begin. Most NFL broadcasts now also include segments on fantasy football as well as fantasy information on the “ticker” at the bottom of the screen (Billings & Ruihley, 2014). Such programming is among a plethora of other corporate and independent online content. When we consider popular social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, we begin to see the dense intertextuality and repetition (re-tweeting) of fantasy knowledge. The expertise of coaches and talent evaluators is now widely available and no longer limited to those small circles. One of the major shifts, of course, is that we are directed to focus (almost) entirely on the production of the individual athlete, not the relation of that production to the success of their team. Inherently, these programs and services are pedagogical instruments that teach us, the biological fan, not only about the bodies of athletes and how those bodies should behave in sport, but bodies in general. The success or failure of our own bodies to be disciplined, performative, or “healthy” is reinscribed as an individual venture, divorced from our social realities (Andrews, 1993; Maguire, 2002; Markula, 2003, 2004).
In fantasy sports, knowing the competition an individual athlete faces within a single game, across a season, or within their own team influences the use (value) of athletes on fantasy teams, both in the long and short term. Fantasy services are designed to manage risk for fantasy owners by offering statistic projections, matchup advice, injury information, and even weather reports. Fantasy football shows and websites have their own “fantasy experts,” such as ESPN’s Matthew Berry and Eric Karabell, to give “start/sit,” “add/drop,” “buy high/low” advice for players on game day throughout season and off-season (Billings & Ruihley, 2014; Ruihley & Hardin, 2014). Licensed physical therapists or doctors, such as ESPN’s Stephania Bell and Michael Kaplan, answer injury questions about player health and likelihood of production (often with physical anatomical models or computer-generated graphics). Fantasy websites gather even more information on a wider range of players, some of whom are not even relevant to every fantasy sports format. For instance, a look at the news feed for MyFantasyLeague—that is similar to Yahoo! Sports, Rotoworld, Rotowire, KFFL (Keweenaw Fantasy Football League), FantasyAlarm, or ESPN fantasy websites and services—shows a constantly updating collection of different NFL player news reports from other websites and news sources. Of the latest 100 news articles on the feed, it is not uncommon during the NFL season for every one of them to include biological—primarily biomedical—information of some kind. Most of the articles are general, naming the body part injured and evaluating how long the player may be out. For example, “Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz said he believes QB Matthew Stafford (shoulder) can return this season if he is healthy and is able to make all of the throws, reports Dave Birkett, of the Detroit Free Press” (KFFL, 2010, para. 1). Yet some articles analyze further, Drew Brees said he’s unfazed by the selection of QB Garrett Grayson in the third round. Grayson isn’t coming for Brees’ job this year or next, but it’s still been a rough offseason for the veteran’s stock. The Saints traded away Jimmy Graham and Kenny Stills, invested heavily in the defense and run game, and have been talking up a less voluminous pass attack. Then they used a top-75 pick on a quarterback. Brees, now 36 years old, regressed to fantasy’s No. 6 quarterback last season and is a threat to fall even further back to the pack this year. He has weakened weaponry, declining efficiency and we can’t pen him in for his usual 650 attempts. (Rotoworld, 2015, Player News, para. 1-2) Lions RE Kyle Vanden Bosch (neck, injured reserve) has had successful surgery for a bulging disk in his neck and has already started lifting weights. Analysis: Dr. Craig Brigham removed K.V.B’.s disk and fused the C6 and C7 vertebrae in his spinal column. ‘Kind of the neat thing is there’s really no rehab to it’, he said. ‘(The doctor) said you can go in and start lifting weights whenever you feel good. I went in Saturday and was able to lift some weights already’. K.V.B. added that he would be at ‘full speed, full strength’ in 6-8 weeks. It’s great news for the Lions, as the surgery seemed to be something that could potentially be very serious. (Rotoworld, 2010, Player News, para. 1-2)
In the second example, we are told that Kyle Vanden Bosch had successful surgery for a bulging disk in his neck. However, not only do we also learn that the disk was removed and precisely which vertebrae were fused in the process, but we are additionally informed that there is “really no rehab” and that Vanden Bosch will be at full speed in “6–8 weeks.” For the biological fan, this level of information is normal if not “necessary.” (Corporatized) Sports media both fuels and responds to the demand for biological discourses of truth. Although not all injury or transaction reports carry this detail, it is certainly not uncommon to be confronted with such knowledge while casually watching sports or playing fantasy games. Indeed, those who play fantasy games would know that Kyle Vanden Bosch, as a defensive player, is not typically used in most fantasy football formats, yet the information exists for those who would use it nonetheless.
Oates (2009) examines the rise of fantasy sports and sports video games in regard to the changes their popularity has had upon the relationship between fan and athlete. Fandom, Oates argues, has become increasingly concerned with the “vicarious management” (p. 33) of Black athletes through fantasy and video games. This theme of management only reinforces broader social tendencies of discipline and control of Black bodies (Oates, 2009). Although I am here unconcerned with issues of racism, salient as they are, I am interested in the increasing levels of surveillance that fantasy sports necessitate in order to make athlete bodies more visible. It is the rise and normalization of such surveillance—complete with its statistics, slow motion, diagrams, measurements, grades, projections, drug testing—which ties directly into biological fandom (Oates & Durham, 2004). We can see this in the more recent development and popularization of Sabermetrics in baseball and statistics like “Wins Above Replacement” (WAR).
Sabermetrics is the “search for objective knowledge about baseball” (Society for American Baseball Research [SABR], 2015) and generally refers to the statistical efforts of the SABR. Among the organization’s varied statistical efforts, WAR is an attempt to quantify a player’s value in wins versus a “replacement” player. Essentially, WAR attempts to end any subjective debate about who the best players are. The popularization of WAR exists despite issues of validity, as it is an evolving statistic and there are currently multiple ways to calculate it (Caple, 2013; Passan, 2014; SABR, 2015). Although the WAR statistic is not usually used in fantasy, ESPN’s Player Rater performs a similar function in that it indicates the value of a single player against the entire league. Hence, while some athletes are highly exalted most become interchangeable victims of statistical analyses on their performances. The intense focus on the individual here is paradoxical in that it creates undifferentiated “masses” out of the athlete population. This is perhaps no better indicated by the unnamed and anonymous “replacement” player in the WAR statistic.
Biological fandom encourages seeing athletes as disposable. Athletes who fail to produce have not worked hard enough to deserve their opportunity and should be replaced—or are replaceable. The unattainable, or unsustainable, levels of performance expected by the biological fan are possible but for a few rare athletes. In what is truly a love of minor differences, biological fandom, through the truth discourses of the experts, magnifies the importance of statistics and measurables when evaluating any and all athletes throughout sport. The increased use of such quantification also pushes the development of elite sporting bodies to younger and younger ages through the professionalization of youth and adolescent sport (Coakley, 1992; Gould & Carson, 2004). Relatedly, biological fandom encourages the use of statistics to predict production and project bodies into the future. This means that there is an inherent impatience for “development” and structures that may be perceived as barriers to an athlete’s success. Two brief examples might include the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its stringent policies on practice time and player movement, and rule changes in the NFL regarding contact with wide receivers and quarterbacks that arguably “free” their bodies—their athletic biovalue and its economic worth—from defensive interference.
Finally, biological fandom presents us with novel ethical issues because athletes are becoming increasingly fetishized and abstracted from human concerns. At the same time, however, a politics of hope regarding biomedical advances promises us treatment for the body broken by sport. I want to return here to the beginning of this article and the episode concerning Arian Foster. Before posting the MRI of his injured hamstring on Twitter, Foster called fantasy players “sick” for solely caring about their fantasy teams and not his real health (Chase, 2011). Quite rightly, Foster admonishes his fans, but then further fetishizes himself by giving us a look inside of himself and his injury. In the risk-averse world of fantasy football, this was a very significant moment, and many discussed Foster’s fantasy stock in upcoming drafts (Karabell, 2011). The MRI, now forever public, was immediately subject to conversation and analysis from doctors, sports analysts, fantasy experts, fans, and even Foster himself. Yet Foster’s personal feelings about the matter remained irrelevant because he only further made himself available for consumption in what was regarded as an undisciplined and “distracting” manner (Farrar, 2011). His biovalue, his “worth” to fantasy users (the biological fan), was discussed and contested in ways that were unique and novel in the public sphere, even apart from fantasy. Our ethical access (boundary) to another individual’s biomedical information (body) was challenged/pushed/crossed while at the same time a new competency, the ability to “read” an MRI, was developed within the realm of biological fandom. Just how normalized and in depth our access to the biological knowledge of athletes will become remains an important ethical question and will continue to be a salient boundary issue within biological fandom.
Conclusion
Biological fandom is changing the way we view and relate to sport. In these pages, I have argued that fantasy sports are perhaps the most visible manifestation of this change within the larger context of sports media and biological citizenry. The normalized access to the biomedical information of athletes and the popularization of new statistics placing value on athletes, such as WAR, have become profoundly embedded in everyday ways of talking about sport. It should be no surprise that the fantasy industry is increasingly corporatized as many independent companies have been bought out—for example, Rotoworld is now owned by the National Broadcast Company (NBC) and KFFL is now owned by USA Today. The truth discourses created by this industry reinforce neoliberal norms of hard work, individualism, and self-surveillance, while also teaching us about (our) bodies and developing new competencies. These still early stages of biological fandom are perhaps only beginning to create a political economy based on athletic biovalue through the creation of experts and biofans. This process is certainly uneven in terms of geographical location, access to technology, and along dimensions of race, class, gender, and sexuality (RCGS). Although many of the issues regarding RCGS remain troublesome within biological fandom, there is also the possibility (or hope) that they will become less problematic over time. As Rabinow (1996) states, “these older cultural classifications will be joined by a vast array of new ones, which will cross-cut, partially supersede, and eventually redefine the older categories in ways which are well worth monitoring” (p. 103). How our understandings of race, gender, and sexuality in sport change over time will need monitoring as well.
Additional research areas worth monitoring are the ways in which the owners of sport, governing bodies, anti-doping agencies, corporations, and biomedical firms attempt to profit directly from athletic biovalue and/or the enhancement of it. Similar to the impulse within biological citizenry to create biological citizens, I argue biological fandom promotes the most efficient means to “create” elite athletes from the population (Rabinow & Rose, 2006; Rose, 2001, 2007; Rose & Novas, 2005). Biological fandom is where “best practices” for creating, developing, surveilling, quantifying, rehabilitating, and projecting athletic performance pervade everyday discourse (Rabinow, 1996; Rose, 2007; Rose & Novas 2005). How individual or collective biofans will try to use these practices on themselves or, more interestingly, for political resistance is worth our ongoing academic concern.
To conclude, the potential applications and future uses of biological fandom as a theoretical concept are diverse. As it speaks to the complex relations of power that exist between individuals, the state and a host of other actors, biological fandom should be a useful tool to think about sport now and into the future.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.