The National Football Museum reports on their new exhibition which celebrates the cheering effect of the beautiful game.
While this week contained the declared ‘most depressing day of the year’, research behind a new exhibition at the National Football Museum has proven that football is the perfect thing for cheering us up in the winter months.
Researchers have found out that going to games has a range of positive effects on football fans. And they’ve even found out what elements of the game make people happiest.
For fans in the UK it has been revealed that victories against a team’s main rivals, the development of youth players, and the scoring of ‘beautiful’ goals create most happiness.
In contrast to fans in some of the other European countries surveyed, UK fans take less pleasure from victories for the national team, and rank European competition victories as less joyous than those local derbies.
Winning is of course still all-important, with 97.1% of UK fans being ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ with a win for their team. Just 19.4% remain happy when their team plays well but don’t get the win. However while 70.2% of UK fans say their club scoring ‘a very beautiful goal’ makes them ‘very happy’, 16.6% still have the same reaction to seeing the opposition score ‘a beautiful goal’ AGAINST their team. That means half as many fans enjoy conceding a beautiful goal as much as they enjoy their team scoring a penalty (32.1%).
In the UK the question which caused the greatest percentage of fans to be ‘very happy’ was a win against “a big rival” (86.1%). And a good performance by a home-grown youth player makes 53.3% of fans very happy, compared to just 21.3% registering the same happiness with ‘A very famous and expensive transfer to my club’.
This data comes from the FREE (Football Research in an Enlarged Europe) (2014), European Fans Survey (Online).
A study into life as a football fan conducted across 5 European countries by researchers at Loughborough University as part of the FREE Project has revealed the positive effects that supporting football clubs and attending home and away games has on the fans.
As part of the FREE Project the National Football Museum is currently hosting the pop-up exhibition ‘Whose Game Is It? Football Through The Fans’ Eyes’, with stories, videos and photographs taken from the match-day experiences of 70 fans across Europe.
Dr Borja Garcia Garcia of Loughborough University also suggests the project has also revealed the importance of the social element for match-going fans:
“Football is mostly a social activity for the fans, who use the fixtures as an excuse to get in contact with fellow supporters. The build-up, anticipation and emotions prior to a game fill the supporters with optimism. This is irrespective of the results on the pitch, as fans look forward to the match-day as a whole experience, rather than the 90 minutes of play.”
While that may seem like a rose-tinted view to followers of some teams, this research and the accompanying exhibition show that football fans, despite how it may feel on a miserable January day, always find something to feel happy about.
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