Part Two
Practices, virtual spaces and the REDaction group
The collective practices of supporters that have emerged on match days draw on a loosely composed set of spatial resources that include online spaces, the seated areas especially in the new north stand (Bank) and the socializing spaces inside and outside the stadium. Much of the collective activity is organized through the Arsenal ‘REDaction group’, which work closely with facets of the club itself but stress they are an independent organization with the mission statement ‘to bring Arsenal back to its faithful fans and buck the trend of growing indifference in English club football’.
70 A key aim is to bring more atmosphere, fun and noise to Arsenal on match days, which many of those posting on the igooner website feel could be improved: ‘it is right that the atmosphere in Club Level is shocking! You get the dirtiest looks aimed at you for basically supporting your team and having a sing as if it's wrong’.
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Some of those posting on and maintaining the REDaction group website meet in ‘The Rocket’, a public house close to the Emirates Stadium, which is REDaction's ‘official’ pre- and post-match bar. It is through this social meeting place and the group's website that events and activities are coordinated to try to inject a sense of atmosphere to the new stadium. By working in conjunction with the stadium managers, one of REDaction group's first initiatives was the creation of around 550 seats in the stadium designated for REDaction registered members to encourage practices involving waving scarves, flags and chanting to create more noise and identity expression. However, this appears to be an evolving process that involves an engagement with a range of different other socializing spaces. After an Arsenal home game in September 2007, REDaction planned a ‘meet and greet’ inside the bar area close to the Redsection with the intention of encouraging singing and getting feedback about how fans in this area can improve atmosphere. The REDaction group practices, despite being in a designated space, have encountered restrictions arising from complaints to stadium staff from some supporters sitting in the section regarding people standing. The REDaction group feel that there has been a zero tolerance approach from the authorities within the stadium on issues such as singing and standing up, with this issue being presented to club management at an official supporters' consultative forum held at the stadium.
72 Some supporters have been thrown out of this section for persistent standing, and clearly regulation and control remain central to the management of the match day spectacle.
REDaction have continued with their activities and tried to make waving scarves a regular feature for all night games. The use of chants and songs has declined in the new stadium compared to Highbury, and for the 2008/2009 season a ‘chant of the month’ was introduced by REDaction and there is a ‘drawing board’ on the website where chants and songs can be learned. The group also now organize the regular pre-match and post-match ‘Rocket March’ between the stadium and the public house, giving a visual and vocal demonstration of their presence. To show the continuing activity of the group, prior to certain matches in the 2008/2009 season, meetings were organized within ‘The Rocket’ pub to try to come up with new ideas to take to the club themselves, if necessary, or if they are workable without the club's assistance to promote new activities through REDaction's own members. One such idea that REDaction took to the club themselves was to bring the former Highbury Stadium Clock End clock back into the stadium from its current position from high up on the outside of the stadium. In a partial result for fan activism, a new Clock End clock, which is similar but larger in appearance than the old Highbury timepiece, has been introduced into the new Clock End of the Emirates Stadium, with its reintroduced Highbury named stands, for the start of the 2010/2011 season. The quote below acknowledges the role in these changes of supporter collectives and online discussion:
The new clock is far larger so that it does not look like a wrist watch in terms of the size of the stadium. Well done to all who campaigned so long and hard to get the clock back. REDaction are producing some commemorative T-shirts to be given out prior to the Blackpool game.
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The ongoing development of the REDaction group's activities and ideas illustrates how the attempts to build a sense of place and collective identity within the new stadium spaces are a central concern of supporters, and similar issues are keenly felt at other new British soccer stadiums.
74 The resources the group draw on involve virtual spaces and a range of spaces internal and external to the stadium but their practices are still significantly constrained by the match day controls and management in the stadium. Their goals of injecting colour, noise and identity in new stadium all-seater spaces would no doubt be shared by the stadium institutions but practices that involve standing and singing are often restrictively managed. The power relations that emerge mean the REDaction group often seek to develop activities jointly with stadium management but equally their members come into conflict with stadium staff who manage seating areas on match days to prevent people standing. The authority of the stadium institutions is asserted by crowd control, codes of practice for behaviour and the threat of ejection from the ground.
Conclusions: power relations and compromise
The 500-meter relocation from Arsenal's old venue at Highbury to the new Emirates Stadium indicates the complex power relations and modalities that may emerge in the new stadiums and the need to develop a power perspective on the contemporary stadium that does more than view it as a panopticized space run by owners and managers intent on using authority and domination to manage either passive, consumer-supporters or resistive hooligans. The comments made by fans discussed in this paper indicate a recognition that power relations are different in the new stadium compared to the former Highbury. Prior to the early 1990s when Highbury became an all-seater stadium, there were substantial areas of terracing where standing supporters could develop certain practices and rituals as they were not confined to a seat or so closely monitored by CCTV and stewards. At Highbury, the architectural features of the stadium developed over a long period of time and were not so specifically designed using the power resources of the owners and managers of the stadium to encourage certain approved types of supporting and consumption behaviours. Furthermore, Highbury was named after the part of London where the former stadium was located and the power modalities reflected in the naming of the Emirates Stadium were yet to emerge.
In the new Emirates Stadium, there are shared and conflicting desires amongst supporters and stadium institutions that result in geographically specific sets of power relations, which result in continual changes in the spaces of the new stadiums. Supporters may lack power in influencing many aspects of modern sport
75 but they can draw on a range of resources to attempt to shape new stadium spaces. In the case of the Emirates, the stadium institutions through their use of authoritative resources
76 based on property and product ownership have sought to incorporate historical reminders, artefacts and signifiers of the old Highbury in the new stadium spaces, thereby not only reinforcing a collective memory amongst supporters based on the traditions and histories but also generating income through activities linked to executive suites, business conferences and visitor tours. The practices of supporters indicate that many share aspects of this agenda and value the new spaces that contribute to their sense of attachment to the club and the collective memory linked to Highbury. Indeed, the ongoing contestation of the selling of the stadium naming rights to Emirates airline was based on the supporters' desire for a new name that maintained the past links to Highbury. Similarly, fans have developed colloquial names for parts of the new stadium that draw on the names of spaces in Highbury. The supporters' contestation of some aspects of the memorialization process in the buildings and spaces of the new stadium cannot simply be seen as an act of resistance because for some the process could have been extended and involve, besides artefacts and signifiers, the use of the old stand names from Highbury in the new stadium.
Clearly, some of what has taken place at Arsenal FC is distinctive to the club's history and the stadium's location but it offers an example of how stadium institutions and supporters use the same resources in different ways to develop a sense of collective belonging, suggesting that new stadiums are perhaps more complex spaces than the placeless homogenized arenas Bale suggested would emerge.
77 In addition, both the stadium authorities and the supporters at Arsenal had recognized the potential negative implications for attendances and supporter willingness to pay some of the highest ticket prices in the Premier League if match days in the new Emirates Stadium lacked atmosphere. Thus, collective supporter groups have emerged that, through practices involving online and physical spaces, seek to ensure that atmosphere, colour and noise are enhanced in the new stadium spaces. Their actions can bring them into conflict with stadium staff seeking to maintain match day conformity, especially in relation to supporters standing in all-seater areas.
The allocative, as opposed to authoritative, resources
78 that supporters draw on involve intersecting virtual and physical spaces including the viewing and hospitality areas in the stadium, social spaces in and outside the venue and websites hosting blogs, chat rooms and fans forums. The resulting power relations that emerge highlight the authority of stadium institutions over the physical spaces, design, architecture and management of the new stadium. The supporters, however, may value many of these controlled physical spaces for their historical resonances or spectacular features but they can also draw on a range of resources to change or challenge the memorializing and controlling aspects of the new stadium by using their own names for new spaces and encouraging their preferred practices for match days. In this way, new collective groupings of fans have emerged that replace old networks of fans often based on kinship, friendships and community connections.
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In such a situation, the process of naming power modalities encouraged by theories of power
80 becomes challenging. In the new stadiums of British soccer, the monumental architecture and technologies are the setting for continually evolving power relations based on supporter and institutional agendas that are both shared and conflicting. The power modalities of authority and domination are clearly evident in the practices of stadium managers and owners asserting authority over space through surveillance, crowd control, stewards and policing. Co-present with these practices, stadium institutions seek to use resources linked to naming and memorialization in the new spaces to encourage a sense of attachment and collective identity amongst supporters. Supporters will be closely involved in this process not simply as consumers but as active individuals and collective groupings that include formal organizations liaising with stadium institutions and informal collectives often using online spaces to interact. At the same time, supporters utilize online and physical spaces to develop their desired spatial practices, distinct remembrances and sense of belonging. The actions of supporters are not encapsulated by notions of power as resistance as they often share the agendas of stadium institutions. Allen's power modalities of seduction and negotiation only partly capture the power relations that emerge.
81 Supporters are acutely aware of the seductive dimensions to the practices of stadium institutions and are prepared to negotiate these through their own practices and use of resources. In keeping with notions of power as both conflictual and consensual,
82 the power modality that emerges in the new stadium might be better described as compromise. Not only do the supporters and stadium institutions negotiate but also they seek to influence practices and spaces through joint agreed actions and at other times through contestation. The outcomes can involve stadium institutions asserting authority, such as preventing supporters standing in seating areas, but also involve compromises over naming and the use of spaces in and around the stadium. Untangling power relations in major new stadiums, therefore, requires identifying co-present power modalities whilst also understanding how resource mobilization involves the interactions between physical spaces and the online worlds that are implicated in the spatial practices of supporters and stadium managers.
