31 UNITED BY HOCKEY: EXPLORING THE FANDOM AND PARTICIPATORY CULTURE OF TORONTO M
31 UNITED BY HOCKEY: EXPLORING THE FANDOM AND PARTICIPATORY CULTURE OF TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS FANS
Bismanbir Singh
INTRODUCTION
Since the late twentieth century, sports fandom has been a popular area of research to study various aspects that are involved in the participatory culture of sports fandom (Wann & James, 2019). Looking at today’s world sports has made the biggest name when we consider doing something in our leisure time. Looking at the statistics that were showed in Professor Derek’s lecture slides sports like NFL and NHL had over 100,000+ viewers when telecasted in 2022 (Derek, 2023, week 10). Different countries have different sports where you see a more active fandom for a sport. For example, when comes to Canadian sports fandom, Hockey is the number 1 sport (Sidani et al, 2021). Researchers have found that many sports consumers have a fandom which is team-centered, and researchers should study that why fans pick up a team and cheer for only that team and maintain fandom for that specific team over the time (Sidani et al, 2021). National Hockey League is one of the most followed Canadian sports with 46% of the population claiming that they follow NHL (Bibby, 2015).
Toronto Maple Leafs is one of the most popular hockey clubs in the Atlantic division of National Hockey League (NHL). With 13 Stanley Cups to their name and their last title win which came in 1967 (NHL, 2023). Since then, the cup has not been into finals and had a 48-year drought between the championships which is currently the longest in the NHL. There is a large number of fans who are still waiting for the most valuable franchise to end their title drought. The studies show that the increase in fandom of a particular team depends on two factors mainly which are the geographic community and playing experience of the team (Mastromartino, 2020). In another study, the result came out that most of the people of Fort Erie supported Toronto maple Leafs because they were closer to the actual geographical location where the club had its home (Sidani et al, 2021). This shows how emotionally a fan is connected to a team which is closer to their home. these are only one type of fans which are termed as local fans, but other type fans are still waiting for the franchise to win the cup. There hopes once again got fire when the team qualified for the playoffs, won the first round and fans of Toronto Maple Leafs got a reason to celebrate after 20 years. But the celebration didn’t last long as they lost in the 5th round of the semi-final’s playoff series.
While looking at these fans and their fandom towards Toronto Maple Leafs, it shaped the research to move further exploring various parts of sports fandom, fan practices, their emotions and effect to the Leafs playoff run of 2023, reaction of anti-fans, how they got into team’s fandom, maintaining fandom, and understanding the fan culture. This paper aims to provide a detailed approach of Toronto Maple leaf’s Fans fandom during their 2023 s