Why Do We Love Being Fans?

While studying in Czechia in the mid-2000s, Ben Matchett, BComm’06, BA’06, landed tickets to Canada’s quarter-final against Finland at the world hockey championship in Prague for himself and three friends. Their seats were numbered one, two, four and five. Sitting between them was a fellow Canadian from Vancouver, who joined their celebrations when Canada won. More than 20 years later, they still occasionally keep in touch.

Why do we get so invested in people we’ve never met playing a game or performing a song? For Matchett, director of Dinos Athletics, that encounter offers part of the answer.

“Community, community, community,” he says. “When you feel like you’re part of something – not a passive viewer but an active participant – the switch flips and the ‘they’ becomes ‘we.’”

For Dr. Dawn Johnston, MA’99, PhD’05, some of those connections live in a Sarah McLachlan T-shirt and a collection of Taylor Swift friendship bracelets. The shirt was a souvenir of attending three of the McLachlan-founded Lilith Fairs in her early 20s (a female-centric series of music festivals). The bracelets were gifts from “two young kiddos” in her life and a 50-year-old high school classmate.

“I think that one of the most powerful aspects of any kind of fandom is being part of a community — the sense of connection we get through a shared interest or passion,” she says.

A University of Calgary graduate and former associate dean in the Faculty of Arts, Johnston brings a scholarly and personal perspective, with teaching interests that include gender and sexuality in media and popular culture.

Together, Johnston and Matchett can give us a glimpse into why a team’s loss can spoil an evening, a performer's choices can feel personal, and wearing a jersey can become part of our identity.

Finding Your People

Long before that encounter in Prague, Matchett was discovering what a team could mean to a city. He was seven when the Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup in 1989, a year after Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics. His dad took the family to City Hall to see the trophy and have a photo taken with it. 

“At that age, it stays with you for life,” he says.

Those moments can also draw in people who have barely followed a sport. Matchett sees the much-maligned “bandwagon” as a way for newcomers to join something that suddenly seems to matter to everyone around them. His own introduction to baseball came through one of those moments, although his loyalty eventually landed elsewhere.

“I’m a baseball fan largely because of being introduced when Toronto won its first World Series – though I’ll proudly say I rep the Yankees,” Matchett says.

A championship run might give someone a reason to start watching. Johnston sees something more significant when that interest becomes part of how we identify ourselves. 

“When we move from quietly enjoying something to publicly declaring that interest through clothing or social media posts or joining fan communities, we are acknowledging that our fandom is a significant part of our identity,” she says.

That declaration can feel particularly deliberate when the people around us support the other side. For Matchett, this is where the connection between a sports fan’s jersey and a music fan’s friendship bracelets becomes clear.

“If you’re wearing your team’s jersey in ‘enemy territory,’ you’re making an outright statement about the community that you’re choosing to associate yourself with – even if you’re not in the majority at that particular event,” he says.

Those outward signs help fans find one another. Gather enough of them in the same place, and the crowd becomes part of the experience.

You Had to Be There

There is a name for the energy that can emerge when people share an experience: collective effervescence. Associated with sociologist Émile Durkheim, the idea describes the heightened emotion and sense of unity that can develop when people gather and participate together. A review of 59 studies on live music events found recurring accounts of connection, shared identity and belonging, including relationships that continued beyond the event itself.

It's why hearing your favourite song at home and singing it with thousands of strangers can feel so different.

Even a good livestream may not reproduce every part of that feeling. In a 2026 study comparing live and livestreamed concerts, researchers randomly assigned audience members to watch jazz or classical performances in the auditorium or a professional live broadcast in a separate room at the same venue. Put enough fans together, and something else happens. 

Matchett has spent much of his career helping create those opportunities at UCalgary. At the Crowchild Classic, the Dinos and Mount Royal University’s Cougars take their hockey rivalry to the Saddledome, giving students and alumni a stage on which to show their school pride.

“That’s been the magic of the Crowchild Classic – there are so many connections between the two schools, students who have attended both, families split, alumni of one who work at the other … but, for one night, they will put on their red or blue and cheer for the hockey teams,” he says.

Wearing Your Loyalties

Choosing a side can be part of the fun. It can also affect how we see people whose loyalties lie elsewhere. We may readily understand our attachment to a team while wondering why someone else cares so much about a pop star.

“I think people are more inclined to ‘judge’ other fans for what they are a fan of than how they practise their fandom,” Johnston says.

Swifties making friendship bracelets and costumed Star Trek fans at a convention may have little in common, Johnston notes, but their enthusiasm can come from much the same place.

For Matchett, rivalry becomes a problem when it turns personal. He wants Mount Royal to lose the Crowchild Classic every year, but that doesn't diminish his respect for the colleagues he works with there. They'll still shake hands afterward.

But rivals aren’t the only ones who test a fan’s commitment. Sometimes it’s the team itself, through a losing streak or another season that falls short of expectations. Matchett believes teams have a responsibility to keep working toward success while maintaining that connection that brought supporters together.

“As a team, you want to create that sense of community so that no matter what the result on the playing field, the community lives on,” he says.

When Our Favourites Let Us Down

Losing is one kind of disappointment, but what happens when a team or performer lets us down in other ways?

For Johnston, an artist’s values can be part of what draws her in. Her interest in Swift deepened as she watched the communities of girls and women forming around her concerts and followed the singer’s public discussion of feminism and political involvement.

“I’d liked her music but hadn’t felt particularly interested or connected until I started paying attention to her impact,” she says.

Not every fan draws that line in the same place. Johnston acknowledges that something she finds unacceptable might not change another person's enjoyment of an artist's work. 

“For me, it’s a real problem,” she says. “I have walked away from the music and books and movies of musicians, writers and actors I’ve enjoyed for years when they’ve done something that fundamentally misaligns with my values. I’m not great at ‘separating the art from the artist.’”

Social media complicates those expectations further, giving fans access to athletes' lives well beyond the playing field. 

“We have more insight than ever before into the personal lives of our favourite athletes, but I’d argue that sometimes the connections aren’t as deep and it can too easily become performative,” Matchett says.

Something That Stays with Us

For Matchett, the strongest communities continue long after a particular season, championship or graduating class.

“To me, every single student who attends this university is a Dino for life, whether they are the captain of a team or have never stepped foot inside a sporting venue,” he says.

Alumni gatherings are among his favourite days on the calendar because they reveal how much those connections still mean. Former students return to people and experiences that helped shape their lives, carrying an affiliation that has outlasted their time on campus.

For Johnston, those memories live in a concert shirt or a friendship bracelet, reminders of the people and experiences that helped shape her. 

“Those kinds of memories are powerful, not just in terms of our connection to an artist, but also in terms of who we were in the moments when those things and people came into our lives,” she says.

A favourite team or artist gives us something to gather around. Over time, the people who join us become part of the attachment. Sometimes they were friends long before the music started. Sometimes, they were just a stranger in seat three.

And sometimes, long after the final whistle or encore, those connections are why we stay fans.