The football star: celebrity, culture and consumption in the English Premier League

John Harris

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This chapter looks at the changing face of the football celebrity in the English Premier League (EPL). There had long been famous footballers, of course, but the rapid increase in the commercialisation and commodification of English football following the inception of the League created new opportunities and opened the game up to wider markets. Some players became part of an expanding ‘celebrity’ culture as football became fashionable and more closely linked to other areas of popular culture. The rapid increase in wages paid to elite football players in England afforded them a wealth and status unimaginable just a decade before. One such player, David Beckham, married one of the Spice Girls and became one of the most famous human beings on the planet. Yet the evolution of celebrity football players, and celebrity football managers, has not been a smooth process for, as an individual becomes more famous, questions are often asked about his commitment to the game. As the earning power of these men places them ever further away from the ‘average’ football fan, there is a changing dynamic in the game and a dislocation of traditional football identities. Starting this chapter with a quote from The Diary of Darren Tackle may seem strange, for this work of the journalist Jim White, as was also the case with the popular television series Footballers’ Wives (see later in this chapter), is a largely ‘tongue in cheek’ fictitious take on the contemporary football world. But this is part of the same world where a player posts a picture of their new luxury sports car (that costs many more times the amount that an average football fan would earn in a year) as their team battles relegation or uploads snaps of a jewel-encrusted bathroom after a national team has been knocked out of a major competition. These were not dreamt up by a journalist or a television producer, but were part of the real world of professional football in England during 2016. The development of the EPL in the last quarter of a century has contributed to a very different place for football and the men who play it within wider cultural contexts in English society. Before moving to focus specifically on some of the key figures and important developments here, the next section briefly considers the world of football in the time before the EPL.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe English Premier League: A Socio-Cultural Analysis
EditorsRichard Elliott
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter6
Pages97-111
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781317265801
ISBN (Print)9781138640351
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2017

Publication series

NameResearch in Football
PublisherRoutledge

Keywords

  • football
  • English Premier League
  • celebrity culture
  • identity
  • EPL

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