“It’s Fantasy Football Made Real”: Networked Media Sport, the Internet, and the Hybrid Reality of Myfootballclub

Abstract

MyFootballClub (MFC) is a popular computer game, Web site, online networking experiment, business model, and an actual soccer club. This article uses MFC to address the question of how networked media sport is reshaping the media sports cultural complex (Rowe, 2004). Our aim is to show how the professionalization and mediatization of sport has created a longing to reconstruct a kind of communitas around supporter participation in the ownership and running of their team. We conclude by suggesting that it is now time to think less in terms of the longstanding relationship between sport and media, and more about sport as media given the increasing interpenetration of digital media content, sport, and networked information and communications technologies.