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‘Black and whiters’: the relative powerlessness of ‘active’ supporter organization mobility at English Premier League football clubs

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-06-17, 09:11 authored by Jamie Cleland, Kevin Dixon
This article examines the reaction by Newcastle United supporters to the resignation of Kevin Keegan as Newcastle United manager in September 2008. Unhappy at the ownership and management structure of the club following Keegan’s departure, a series of supporter-led meetings took place that led to the creation of Newcastle United Supporters’ Club and Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust. This article draws on a non-participant observation of these meetings and argues that although there are an increasing number of ‘active’ supporters throughout English football, ultimately it is the significant number of ‘passive’ supporters who hamper the inclusion of supporters’ organizations at higher-level clubs. The article concludes by suggesting that clubs, irrespective of wealth and success, need to recognize the long-term value of supporters. Failure to do so can result in fan alienation and ultimately decline (as seen with the recent cases of Coventry City and Portsmouth).

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

Soccer and Society

Volume

OnlineFirst

Pages

1 - 15 (15)

Citation

CLELAND, J. and DIXON, K., 2014. ‘Black and whiters’: the relative powerlessness of ‘active’ supporter organization mobility at English Premier League football clubs. Soccer and Society, 16 (4), pp. 540-554.

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Soccer and Society on 25th February 2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14660970.2014.891988

ISSN

1466-0970

Language

  • en