CONCEPTUALIZING COMMITMENT: HOW COMMITMENT CAPITAL CREATES SOCIAL DISTINCTION IN FANDOMSCONCEPTUALIZING COMMITMENT: HOW COMMITMENT CAPITAL CREATES SOCIAL DISTINCTION IN FANDOMS

No other form of entertainment or pastime has held the attention of contemporary consumers quite like professional sports. Despite atypical longevity of sports fan communities and the intensity of its members, scholars have yet to fully explore how theories of taste and capital apply to this unique and novel context. As such, this study uses a qualitative approach to grounded theory to investigate and analyze how Saskatchewan Roughrider football fans use ritual performances to distinguish themselves within their fandom. Data was collected in three phases and consisted of observational field studies at Saskatchewan Roughrider football games, in-depth interviews with hardcore Roughrider fans, and field interviews with new and non-fans. The findings that emerged provided three theoretical contributions. The first is a novel conceptualization of ‘commitment’, which can manifest as the ambit of one’s personal investment, embodied as commitment capital in the extents of one’s ritual performances, and in the form of socially scarce symbolic capital. The second is a class-based structure of collective hierarchy, which differentiates fans into different hierarchical tiers of fandom according to their associated attitudes, preferences, perceptions, and embodied practices. The third is combines my findings and existing theory to produce a clear illustration of how fans can augment the social distinction they attain by orienting their ritual performances to garner greater ‘legitimacy’. My research adds to consumer behaviour literature by creating a model of constituent distinction by sustaining how fans, through their ritual performances, can more effectively acquire symbolic capital, achieve higher distinction within their constituency, and even ascend to higher tiers of social hierarchy within the fan community.