Anger, remorse, conspiracy theories: how sports fans cope when their club does wrong

Manchester City, one of the world’s biggest sporting clubs, has been found guilty by the English Premier League of 114 breaches of its financial rules. The amount in question is close to a staggering £1 billion (A$1.9 billion).

Dyed-in-the-wool fans are acutely sensitive to slights against their teams. So, when caught up in a major sport controversy, their response is often visceral.

Sport communication researchers describe a process of “moral uncoupling” through which those fans who identify most deeply with their team separate themselves from its most troubling transgressions.

While some Manchester City fans say they accept there might have been wrongdoing and are “devastated”, “angry” and “sad”, many passionate supporters find forgiveness easily for their team while not extending this understanding to competitors.

The saga and the fallout

The Sky Blues are majority-owned by Abu Dhabi United Group through its City Football Group subsidiary, along with ten other clubs (one in partnership) around the world, including Melbourne City.

Much has been written about the financial and legal implications of this long-running scandal. Manchester City’s owners deny wrongdoing and have appealed against the ruling.

But what about the dedicated fans who shell out for stadium tickets, travel, accommodation, TV subscriptions and merchandise?

When sports fandom gets intense

There is a large body of research on sport fandom. It reveals many types of fan, including hardcore supporters, those drawn to fashionable sport celebrities and clubs, and others who switch allegiances according to time, place and personal circumstances.

Most people’s sporting preferences do not have a major impact on their lives.

But the smallest and loudest species of sport fan lives and breathes their team. For these “superfans”, obsessive fandom is more than an oxymoron. They dress themselves and, as in the case of the Newcastle Knights rugby league team, even paint their houses in club colours.

They travel huge distances as supporters and communicate constantly about favourite players, terrible owners and prospects of victory.

There are various ways of becoming a so-called “superfan”. In English soccer it was traditionally based on place, class, gender and generation. Fandom, particularly for working-class men, was a matter of social being rather than choice.

Notoriously, its territoriality sometimes tips over into violent hooliganism.

In all cases, the more intense the sport fan engagement, the greater the mood swings in response to winning and losing.

The shamed and the shameless sport fan

But in sport as in politics, the maxims “never apologise, never explain” and “my team, right or wrong” apply among the most shameless of fans. This response to scandal resembles how right-wing populist movements like Make America Great Again (MAGA), Reform in the UK, and One Nation in Australia deal with issues such as lying, disinformation and financial irregularities.

In such cases, conspiracy theories can circulate. In the case of the Manchester City cheating scandal, some supporters spread ideas about how the club and its players have been targeted by nefarious forces within the game.

City’s own chief executive officer, Ferran Soriano, fuelled these suspicions by alleging an unspecified “Premier League conspiracy theory” leading to the guilty verdict. Long before the verdict, City fans complained that UEFA, Europe’s football governing body, “have always had it in for us”.

A journalist who has covered the City story for more than a decade described the “vitriol and hatred from a section of the club’s partisan fanbase, which is in denial that Manchester City have ever done anything wrong”. His treatment included doxxing, a brick through the window, and heartless baiting after the death of his wife.

The uglier aspects of digital sports fandom are emphasised in social media spaces designed for consequence-free expressions of opinion by both fans of a club and their hostile opponents.

As with their family members, it is difficult for loyal sport fans who may be internal critics to accept external condemnation of their beloved.

Crime and punishment

When a club like Manchester City is consumed by scandal, their fans must come to terms with potentially severe punishments: huge fines, trophies taken away, points deducted, compensation for other clubs, relegation to lower leagues, and even liquidation.

Read more: Stripped titles? Compensating rivals? How the Manchester City cheating scandal could play out

There is a striking precedent of such drastic punishment.

In 2012, Scottish Premier League club Glasgow Rangers experienced administration and then liquidation after failing to discharge bank loans and pay taxes. To the fury of their fans, Rangers were re-birthed and forced to start again from the fourth tier of Scottish soccer, before winning promotion back to the Scottish Premier League in 2016.

Were Manchester City to meet a similar fate, next season their fans might be forced to exchange plush corporate venues like Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium for the modest hospitality of clubs like League Two’s Accrington Stanley and Port Vale.

A fall from grace to dismay City fans and delight their struggling lower league counterparts in equal measure.