How Will COVID-19 Affect the Importance of Sports to Fans?

COVID-19 has impacted people's lives in ways both big (e.g., sickness and death, financial insecurity) and small (e.g., disrupted routines, restricted social lives). Early in the pandemic, many outlets such as sports were reduced or eliminated (e.g., March Madness and spring sports cancelled), reducing diversions at a time when the news was too often filled with disturbing realities.

Start of a basketball game at the Big 10 men's tournament.

Source: Allen R McConnell

Yet, sports have endured and evolved during the pandemic. Today, most conversations involving COVID and sports focus on whether fans should attend games in person. Less considered, however, is how the pandemic itself might impact sports fans and their relationships with the teams and the sports they love. Psychological literature suggests that the consequences of COVID on sports identities may be significant but complex.

Sports as a reduced priority

One possible outcome of the global pandemic is that sports may simply become less important to people as their lives become more focused on core responsibilities such as spending time with their loved ones. Most people report that family is their most important social group (McConnell et al., 2019) and that family plays a central role in a meaningful life (Nelson et al., in press), and thus, COVID will likely encourage people to focus more on key people in their lives than their favorite sports teams.

Indeed, the literature on post-traumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004) suggests that experiencing challenging crises can lead people to a greater appreciation of life, reconsidered priorities, and richer meaning. To be clear, people interpret stress in diverse ways that shape how challenging events are experienced (Crum et al., 2020), and many factors influence whether traumatic events result in efficacious or maladaptive responses (Barskova & Oesterreich, 2009; Michael & Cooper, 2013). However, it seems that the global pandemic could weaken the importance of sports for many fans who reconsider their life priorities.

Sports can support belongingness for the lonely

On the other hand, not everyone has family members or close others in their lives to embrace during the global pandemic. In fact, in the United States, more than 35 million people live alone (28% of US households), and the number of one-person households is increasing (US Census, 2019). Although living alone does not necessarily mean that people are less happy (DePaulo, 2007), COVID has certainly made it harder for living-alone people to experience social belonging.

The need to belong has been identified as a central human motivation, and people often experience a sense of meaningful social connection through group affiliations (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Thus, social distancing can make loneliness for those living alone more acute, which may make social connectedness through sports team affiliations more attractive to them. With sports fans having many socially-distanced ways to connect to their teams (e.g., watching games on television, online communities of like-minded fans), individuals who have limited direct social contact during COVID may pivot to their sports teams to experience greater belonging.

Sports as a needed self-esteem boost

Also, it is possible that COVID could lead some people to deepen their sports allegiances to support their self-worth. For example, following drops in one's self-esteem, people are often motivated to enhance their positivity about the self, and often this is done symbolically through group affiliations.

In a classic study, Cialdini and colleagues (1976) examined the clothing choices of college students attending universities with strong sports allegiances (e.g., Ohio State, Notre Dame) on Mondays following weekend football games. They observed that college students were more likely to wear university-related apparel following victories (63%) than following defeats (44%).

These researchers, in another experiment, asked students to describe the outcome of those games. Students were 77% more likely to use first-person constructions (e.g., WE won) than third-person constructions (e.g., THEY won) when describing their university's team following wins compared to losses. In short, students symbolically connected themselves to their university (clothing, describing team victories with first-person language) when their university's team provided an opportunity to boost one's self-esteem (i.e., associating the self with a successful sports team, but distancing the self from an unsuccessful sports team).

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When it comes to tournaments like March Madness, nearly every team entering the field has been successful and thus can attract interest and provide the possibility to boost fans' self-esteem. Further, because 2020 was viewed by most people as a draining and awful year (e.g., global pandemic, political conflict, social injustice), the need to find a "self-esteem boost" is quite pronounced, and thus, COVID could encourage people to identify more with their favorite team going into tournament play.

Sports fanship as a denial of death

Finally, one consequence of the global pandemic has been that it provides a very salient reminder of death. By March 2021, the United States had over 500,000 deaths attributed to COVID (New York Times). Terror management theory has shown that being reminded of one's death can have powerful influences on people's behavior, leading them to cling to symbolic identities that help them extend their own mortality, which often are those that are central to one's self-identities (Solomon et al., 2015).

Although this notion may seem far-fetched, there is published research supporting it. Specifically, Dechesne and colleagues (2000) examined soccer supporters in the Netherlands and college sports fans in the United States. These researchers either asked participants to imagine their own death (mortality salience condition) or to answer innocuous questions in a control condition. Afterwards, they either reported their expectations for their favorite soccer team (Study 1) or their preference for their university's successful college basketball team (Study 2). Compared to the control condition, those who considered their own death expressed more positivity toward their favorite soccer and basketball teams, presumably to offset the anxiety experienced by considering their own mortality.

Because COVID provides constant reminders of people's mortality, it seems reasonable that one way people can respond to the anxiety the global pandemic generates is to cling to successful sports teams to help mitigate the existential terror that thoughts of death generate. As a result, sports fans may be more likely to identify with their teams during the global pandemic.

Summary

Overall, it seems reasonable that the global pandemic could have a powerful effect on people's sports fan identities. In some cases, COVID may encourage people to reassess their priorities, leading them to focus more on important people in their lives than their sports idols. On the other hand, in the wake of a very tumultuous 2020 or in the face of constant reminders of death, sports fans may be more strongly drawn to their sports teams for self-esteem boosts or to buffer against concerns about their own mortality.