The Fan Experience

Fandom is a lot of things. Fandom is a friend when you need it. Fandom is a social network. Fandom is an icebreaker. Fandom makes best friends of perfect strangers who will never exchange names.

Fandom provides joy. Fandom can provide some of the most intense, temporary, low-impact stress moments one could ever experience. A vast majority of the fan experience is filled with dread, worry, and loss.

Please, come along with me on our shared fan journey.

Here, you will find the stories that shape the fan experience. There is the game-to-game experience where players, tactics, and strategy determine the outcome of single games and sometimes my mood. As I’ve aged, I have worked on my mood being less affected by the outcomes of games, but I have four decades of love and affection for my teams, I care, and losing isn’t fun.

The teams we follow have stories within the game, but there are story arcs that span over seasons and specifically the length of player contracts. A team’s success is driven by the collective talent of a roster and the main driver is the performance of the stars of a team. Players can have contract disputes, get injured, or get traded away and all this adds to the season-long story that is the team’s roster. These story arcs have a variable effect on the outcomes of single games and live rent-free in the minds of the fan.

Outside of the games being played and the construction of rosters, there are the scars of history. “This team ALWAYS beats my team” is a line many a fan has uttered. While the facts may not prove one team ALWAYS beats another, it feels true to the fan, and that is all the evidence fans need.

I invite you to come along on this ride. We will have game recaps and discussions built around team strategies and broader “state of the game” topics. I think Fandom is a powerful tool that brings people together. I also think Fandom can bring out the worst in people, which we will talk about at some point. The focus, for now, will be the rollercoaster that is the fan experience from one game to the next, one week to the next.

I hope you come along and enjoy the ride as much as I do.

-CR