Journal of Southwest Petroleum University(Social Sciences Edition) ›› 2026, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (2): 128-138.

• Theoretical Exploration • Previous Articles    

The Characterizations,Contemporary Causes and Solutions of "Fandom Frenzy" in Sports

LING Xiaoxiong1,2, LIN Zixi1   

  1. 1. School of Marxism, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou Gansu, 730070, China;
    2. Training and Research Center for Ideological and Political Work Teams in Colleges and Universities under the Ministry of Education(Northwest Normal University), Lanzhou Gansu, 730070, China
  • Published:2026-04-16

Abstract: When the nation prospers, sports prosper; when the nation grows strong, sports grow strong. The 15th National Games, guided by the hosting philosophy of "green, shared, open, and clean", aligns deeply with the strategic deployment set forth in the 15th Five-Year Plan to "coordinately advance the development of mass sports and competitive sports and accelerate the building of a leading sporting nation", marking the construction of China into a leading sporting nation moving into a new historical position. However, the "fandom frenzy" in sports — extending from the Paris Olympics through to the present National Games — is, with its powerful capacity for emotional mobilization and its distorted value orientation, profoundly eroding the healthy fabric of the sports ecosystem, constituting an unavoidable fandom problem on the road to building China into a leading sporting nation. Taking sports-related cases from the 15th National Games as an observational window, this paper systematically identifies four characteristic manifestations of the "fandom frenzy" phenomenon in sports: the boundary dissolution of emotional subjects, the conformist alienation of group behavior, the inversion of priorities in value judgment, and excessive consumption under the dominance of capital logic. This paper traces the underlying temporal causes — the structural incentives of the traffic economy, the value infiltration of the trend toward pan-entertainmentization in sports, the emotional amplification mechanisms of platform algorithms, and the weakening of identification with the Chinese sports spirit under the impact of consumer culture. We then construct a systematic remediation pathway centered on multi-stakeholder consultative co-governance among "individuals, fan circles, society, and the market", with the aim of returning sports to its ontological significance as a forge of the national spirit and a ground for cultivating civic virtue.

Key words: sports fandom, traffic economy, Chinese sports spirit, the 15th National Games, pan-entertainmentization

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