World Cup fans are in their own category, but Kansas City feels ready to connect
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Dan Wann earned his doctorate at KU and is a Murray State professor.
- World Cup fans top Wann's scale for fan identity and show intense attachment.
- Kansas City hosting teams and fan events may foster cross‑cultural contact and ties.
Through nearly four decades consumed with a psychological and cultural phenomenon, Shawnee Mission North High School grad Dan Wann has been dubbed “Dr. Fandom” in an ESPN TV short documentary and co-wrote “Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Fandom.”
When Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur wanted to test premises for their recent book, “Big Fan,” they turned to Wann, the Murray State professor who earned his doctorate in social psychology at the University of Kansas.
And it’s been my great pleasure to call Wann a bunch over the last few years to try to get a grasp of the meaning to fans of the Chiefs’ remarkable run.
All of which is why I knew he’d be an illuminating voice on what Kansas City is about to experience as we host the FIFA World Cup, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to visit.
That includes many from the seven nations that are guaranteed to play here, three of which (Argentina, Algeria and The Netherlands) also are conducting their base camps in the area — along with England.
As ever with the gregarious and eloquent Wann, what began with my perhaps vague premise — how are World Cup fans different than what we know, and what should we expect? — inspired a surge of thought-provoking perspectives.
First things first.
For all the commonalities to fandom, from its figurative (and literal) shared languages and stuff like BIRGing (basking in reflected glory) together and CORFing (cutting off reflected failure), the fact that all fan groups do have some differences, Wann said, “is absolutely a point that needs to be made.”
And the fever of might be considered a typical World Cup fan is something beyond what we’re used to here ... no matter how into it you might be.
Per a scale he developed a years ago, Wann said, if he asked World Cup fans arriving here about how much they perceive their identity to be that of a sports fan, it would top the chart.
“There are countries around the globe that refer to us as fairly pedestrian amateurists in our fandom,” he said, laughing. “I think that’s going to be neat for sports fans who attend some of these World Cup games — they will get a taste of just how intense the love is and how strong the attachment.”
By way of example, he added, “It’s one thing to say, ‘Hey, I’m a die-hard Royals fan. I’ll show you how, because I went to St. Louis and watched us play the Cardinals.’ As opposed to, ‘I endured a 12-hour coach-seat plane ride (here) from who-knows-where.’”
There are a lot of reasons for this intensity, including, of course, that the World Cup takes place just once every four years.
While that sequencing is the same as the Winter and Summer Olympics, Wann said it’s a “bit different dynamic,” since there are so many sports at the Olympics and fans are more apt to be focused on particular events than the collective.
Generally more apt to just want to see something, as opposed to … “football (soccer) is life.”
“Soccer is literally the international sport,” he said, “so it brings everybody together with the one passion.”
This builds toward a quadrennial unlike the year-in, year-out that gives us structure but doesn’t feature quite the build-up. Like former Dallas Cowboy Duane Thomas put it when he was asked about playing in the so-called ultimate game of Super Bowl VI, “If it’s the ultimate game, how come they’re playing it again next year?”
Or as Wann pointed out, how many World Cups would it take to have as many games as there are in a single MLB season?
“You’re literally talking centuries,” he said. “So it is a different entity.”
Including, of course, that the more infrequent the event, the more powerful emotional impact it might have.
All the more so, naturally, when national pride is part of the formula.
No doubt, Wann said, that “adds to the equation. … What bigger point of attachment is there than national identity?”
But other points of attachment will make for a fascinating aspect of what we have ahead here in Kansas City. Because there are going to be any number of ways to feel engaged with all the teams playing and staying in the area.
That could be through attending matches, connecting with visitors — consider how Riverside has embraced The Netherlands, which is training at the KC Current’s facility there — or at events such as the FIFA Fan Festival.
And then some.
Perhaps an attachment grows merely from admiring one player who is right here in KC, such as Lionel Messi of defending World Cup champion Argentina.
Maybe it can stem from the way Algeria has been greeted warmly in nearby Lawrence.
Or perhaps by rooting for, say, Curacao, which is playing Ecuador here on June 20; Curacao is the smallest nation ever to qualify for a World Cup tournament and has been likened to the Jamaican bobsled team of “Cool Runnings” by KC2026 CEO Pam Kramer.
Particularly since Team USA won’t be playing here, Wann said, many Kansas Citians are likely to choose a team to adopt.
Heck, maybe even more than one. And maybe not just for the time being.
“If you’re a sports fan, you live in Kansas City, and you go to a World Cup, you’re not going to just sit there and idly watch,” he said. “We just have this tendency to pick a side, right?”
Perhaps you’ll be drawn to a favorite … perhaps to an underdog. Maybe you’ll gravitate to a team whose colors remind you of the Chiefs. Or one that conjures something that makes you think of the Royals, Sporting KC or the Current. Or, say, the Jayhawks, Tigers or Wildcats. Could be you’d even buy some gear.
And that could all become a lasting feeling, like what residents in Arizona and Florida might feel for the baseball teams that hold spring training nearby.
The Royals, for instance, hold their spring camp in Surprise, Arizona, which in certain ways is a Royals town not just for a few weeks, but all season long.
Because that kind of exposure, Wann said, creates a deeper allegiance that might be duplicated with the World Cup legacy here.
“I can certainly see situations where people will continue to follow these teams,” he said, “and isn’t that like the point behind the NFL going to different countries?”
No doubt you could see evidence of those seeds being planted when the Chiefs went to Germany and Brazil over the last few years.
Most likely, plenty of that has held up.
“Once a fan makes a strong connection to a team, it’s like the team has to try really hard to get that fan to stop,” Wann said. “It’s amazing how strong these connections are.”
Meanwhile, through the lens of what he jokingly called “silly, googly eyes,” he’s also echoing my fondest hopes for a different sort of connection here in the weeks to come.
“OK, there’s a winner and there’s losers,” he said. “But also I think one of the points of these international competitions is that it’s not just supposed to be our country versus your country. Like the Olympics, it’s sort of a celebration of multiple countries.”
In fact, he added, social psychology research shows that the contact hypothesis works.
Simply put ...
“If you bring different people together … you can have contact that can facilitate warm feelings among those individuals,” Wann said. “I would certainly hope that by exposing individuals to persons from other cultures that we can learn from each other.
“And maybe you find out that, ‘Oh, you know what, maybe we aren’t all that different after all?’ … “I think there’s evidence out there that that can happen.”
No matter how different the nature of the fandom might be.