Pardon some of my stream-of-consciousness thinking here. It's a bit long, so apologies in advance. But I've had these thoughts in my head for a little while. And I am now at the point of thinking it might be good discussion fodder.
It concerns the changing nature of stadium attendance at matches, the role of tifosi and ultra groups, the proliferation of the Internet and of media access to matches, and how this community on Juventuz.com might fit into all of that.
Not entirely a new topic, perhaps. But here are some of my observations:
* Juventus match attendances are abysmal.
* Juventus has one of the most distributed fan bases in Italy (strong support in Southern Italy, for example), if not also the world.
* Match attendances are dropping all over the world. It has made a big stink in England this year. Meanwhile, I was watching a news report on Telegiornale 2 (Tg2) on RAI Intl last week, and the story was about the declining match attendances. Interviewees claimed the ticket prices were expensive. They went to sports bars more often to watch the game on a big TV, socialize with other tifosi, eat good food and drink beers in the comforts of the environment (instead of the stadium) for less than the gate prices...
* The media reach of football is getting better worldwide. I say this because 10 years ago it would have been unthinkable to get the access to Juve games that I have today. With satellite TV and international channel feeds, with video streams from China on PPLive and QQLive and PPStream, with BitTorrent copies of matches distributed widely on the Internet... it seems that access to watching the games seems to get better and better.
* The growth of virtual communities, like Juventuz, is part of a greater social change that the Internet is enabling. As a coworker told me at work (where we do this Internet business for our bread and butter): "This generation of users will be the first generation to regularly make and connect with lifelong friends that they will never physicaly meet." The social network is changing in what people can do, how they stay in touch, and how they interact.
*Ultras are social networks of tifosi built for the physical world, but more and more of what's out there is online.
*Juventuz.com and its members are, IMO, uniquely situated as one of the largest, most active congregations of tifosi in the non-physical world. The fact that we are talking in threads about posting our match reviews and commentary to the extent that we can supercede what the juventus.com site offers says a lot, for example.
Now I love the physical game, of course. And I will always recommend a pilgrimage to the delle Alpi and the Juvestore on Via Garibaldi for any juventino on this site. But so few of us get to make it. And those that do don't get to do it often enough.
But could something like Juventuz.com be the ultra group of the future? If so, what would it mean to be that? Stuff like... do we do things like take a collection to rent a locker in Torino where members can borrow banners to bring to the games, etc.? Or what of the existence more exclusively in the virtual, online world?
Has anyone thought about this and its possible implications? Football is changing, how people access it is changing, how fans organize around it is changing, and so much of what we do here seems intertwined with much of that change.
It concerns the changing nature of stadium attendance at matches, the role of tifosi and ultra groups, the proliferation of the Internet and of media access to matches, and how this community on Juventuz.com might fit into all of that.
Not entirely a new topic, perhaps. But here are some of my observations:
* Juventus match attendances are abysmal.
* Juventus has one of the most distributed fan bases in Italy (strong support in Southern Italy, for example), if not also the world.
* Match attendances are dropping all over the world. It has made a big stink in England this year. Meanwhile, I was watching a news report on Telegiornale 2 (Tg2) on RAI Intl last week, and the story was about the declining match attendances. Interviewees claimed the ticket prices were expensive. They went to sports bars more often to watch the game on a big TV, socialize with other tifosi, eat good food and drink beers in the comforts of the environment (instead of the stadium) for less than the gate prices...
* The media reach of football is getting better worldwide. I say this because 10 years ago it would have been unthinkable to get the access to Juve games that I have today. With satellite TV and international channel feeds, with video streams from China on PPLive and QQLive and PPStream, with BitTorrent copies of matches distributed widely on the Internet... it seems that access to watching the games seems to get better and better.
* The growth of virtual communities, like Juventuz, is part of a greater social change that the Internet is enabling. As a coworker told me at work (where we do this Internet business for our bread and butter): "This generation of users will be the first generation to regularly make and connect with lifelong friends that they will never physicaly meet." The social network is changing in what people can do, how they stay in touch, and how they interact.
*Ultras are social networks of tifosi built for the physical world, but more and more of what's out there is online.
*Juventuz.com and its members are, IMO, uniquely situated as one of the largest, most active congregations of tifosi in the non-physical world. The fact that we are talking in threads about posting our match reviews and commentary to the extent that we can supercede what the juventus.com site offers says a lot, for example.
Now I love the physical game, of course. And I will always recommend a pilgrimage to the delle Alpi and the Juvestore on Via Garibaldi for any juventino on this site. But so few of us get to make it. And those that do don't get to do it often enough.
But could something like Juventuz.com be the ultra group of the future? If so, what would it mean to be that? Stuff like... do we do things like take a collection to rent a locker in Torino where members can borrow banners to bring to the games, etc.? Or what of the existence more exclusively in the virtual, online world?
Has anyone thought about this and its possible implications? Football is changing, how people access it is changing, how fans organize around it is changing, and so much of what we do here seems intertwined with much of that change.
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