Is Being a Sports Fan a Waste of Time?

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Where were you when you heard that Kobe Bryant died?

About one year ago, Kobe’s death made the world stand still in a way that few deaths do. “Kobe was our king,” one Lakers fan told a reporter the day Kobe’s plane crashed. “He stood for L.A.” While thousands poured into Los Angeles streets in a show of solidarity, tributes weren’t contained within the city. Dedicated murals popped up on walls in both New York and Naples. Sand sculptures were erected in Kobe’s memory in California and India. Even the Empire State Building lit up in the Lakers’ purple and gold.

But wasn’t all this a little much, some might say, for someone who ultimately was just really good at basketball? Isn’t this a sign of a culture much too obsessed with sports?

For many, watching sports is seen as a sad and dangerous waste of time. As sports sociologist Garry J. Smith noted, some members of the social elite see sports fandom “as lowbrow culture because it is for the masses and therefore lacking in refinement.” Instead, such elites suggest, people would be better off “visiting an art gallery, attending an opera, or listening to a symphony concert.”

In another charming example of this elitism, George Elliott Howard, an early 20th-century sociologist, declared sports fandom “a singular example of mental perversion, an absurd and immoral custom … From every aspect it is bad.” Admittedly, this is not a good look for the 60 percent of Americans who consider themselves sports fans, according to a 2015 Gallup poll, or for those who grew up passionately watching Kobe and others play.

Luckily, psychologists and economists have begun testing the effects of sports fandom, and the evidence so far has not been kind to all the moralistic finger-wagging. Being a sports fan, it turns out, can bring about a good deal of joy and well-being into people’s lives.

In their recently published textbook Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Fandom, Drs. Daniel L. Wann, and Jeffrey D. James, professors at Murray and Florida State University, have documented the growing evidence for sports fandom’s benefits. Being identified with a sports team is reliably related to higher levels of happiness, well-being, and even meaning in life, they report.

But how can something as seemingly trivial as being a sports fan contribute to well-being? Part of the answer may lie in how it connects us with others. Like other sorts of social institutions, sports offer people a reason to come together. A reason to talk up a stranger at a bar. A reason to gather the family for a Sunday night ritual. A reason to message an old friend when your team finally starts playing well.

Sports can also rally people around a common cause, creating a sense of community. In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Sport Management, Drs. Bob Heere and Matthew Katz explored how a new university football team impacted students. The introduction of the football team was associated with students experiencing a higher level of engagement with others and a greater sense of team-identity over a three-year span.

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From having pre-game parties, to the intoxicating buzz of game day, to seeing team jerseys popping up across campus, the new football team might have helped make students feel like they were part of something greater, thus leading to this increased sense of unity through team-identity.

In the wake of the American Civil War, creating sports fans was even explicitly seen as a tool for unity. National leaders looking to unite a fragmented country bet on baseball as a unifying national pastime. As noted by Yale Ph.D. student Zachary Brown, baseball “became a common interest that united both North and South. The game broke down social boundaries of class and rank, providing an oasis of equality, prioritizing athletic ability rather than social standing, and allowing officers and soldiers to play as equals.” Some of the benefits were, of course, limited to white men, but the point remains: Sports have long been thought to foster unity.

And there is some research to suggest that it does. A study with more than 2,000 German participants found that over 66.6 percent of them reported feeling a sense of happiness and national pride when German athletes won medals at the Olympic Games or World Championships. Importantly, this pattern was not limited to the privileged: Women, those with lower education and income, and migrants were the people who felt the biggest boost. A similar study that followed Dutch citizens over two years found that they also reported feeling a boost in national pride and belonging when Dutch athletes did well.

Personally, I don’t need to look far to find examples of sports-fueled jubilation in my own life. Walking the streets of Toronto after the Raptors booked their ticket to the 2019 NBA finals, I found myself being high-fived by random strangers, being yelled at triumphantly from passing cars, and witnessing spontaneous singing and dancing in the streets. Usually, you need a war to end or a political regime to topple to create such scenes. It was electric and I couldn’t help but feel a buzz for days afterward.

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To be sure, sports are not an unmitigated good. The economic benefits of sports can be oversold to capture government subsidies. Riots do break out from time to time. People sometimes go overboard and obsess over sports to the detriment of everything else. Like anything that makes people feel like they are part of a group, things can go wrong.

But sports may, at least, offer a more benign way to get people engaged, a less destructive alternative to political partisanship or religious radicalism. And beyond high-minded goals of unity or belonging, sports can just be inherently enjoyable. The departure of live sports during the COVID pandemic made many realize how much they missed it. Its return marked a much-needed sense of normalcy and distraction.

Why, then, do so many see sports as a contemptible waste of time? Why is it any less valuable than passively consuming an art gallery, an opera, or a musical performance? Is the joy of watching your team score any less valuable than the joy of hearing a singer hit the perfect pitch?

Some might argue that enjoying art or literature provides inspiration, fuel to engage with life more fully in a way that sports doesn’t offer. But sports offered up Kobe Bryant. Kobe’s tenacious work ethic—what he called his “Mamba Mentality”—inspired millions, and it likely played a big role in why so many were devastated by his death. His legacy transcended sports, but it was rooted in it. Watched by millions, Kobe brought legitimate joy and meaning to their lives.