Football's New Age of Fandom: The Rise of Player Loyalty
The golden ticket to football’s new age of fandom arrived in flamingo pink.
Inter Miami’s shirt, wrapped around the slight frame of Lionel Messi, was never just a kit. It was a poster waiting for a bedroom wall in Buenos Aires, a billboard backdrop in Barcelona, a global status symbol that said: I’m with him.
The impact was instant. Inter Miami’s social media exploded, replica shirts vanished from shelves, and tickets for otherwise routine MLS fixtures went for absurd prices. But the surge wasn’t really about the Herons. It was about the man in number 10.
“People are walking around cities and towns in the UK and Europe wearing that flamingo pink of Inter Miami with zero affiliation to Miami, having never been there,” says sports brand strategist James Kirkham. “It’s quite a normal thing now. But it is the player who has done the job.”
Messi’s magnetism is no shock. Nor is the pull of his long-time rival in the bright yellow of Al-Nassr. Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Barcelona or Real Madrid. MLS or Saudi Pro League. The arguments have raged for years, from playgrounds with jumpers for goalposts to social media battlegrounds armed with memes and spreadsheets of stats.
But this is no longer just a Messi v Ronaldo story. It’s bigger than that.
From clubs to characters
The modern fan doesn’t always fall in love with a badge. They fall in love with a name on the back.
“It’s been happening for a while, ever since the sheer impact and influence of gaming, particularly on young fans,” says Kirkham, who recalls an earlier wave of devotion around Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Younger supporters, he argues, are “less rigid or tribal than they used to be” and carry a “more encyclopaedic knowledge” built through hours on EA Sports FC, Football Manager, and endless YouTube clips. Trading cards, highlight compilations, TikTok edits – all of it feeds into a relationship with individuals rather than institutions.
“Fans play as these players in games,” Kirkham says. “So there is a really thin line between virtual and real life. Following a player and buying them as part of your Ultimate Team and then wearing that player’s name on the back of your shirt, be that Atletico Madrid or Chelsea or Dortmund, kind of makes no difference.”
The old rulebook insisted you never change your club. To paraphrase Eric Cantona: you can change almost anything in life, but never your football team. For many, that first allegiance is inherited – passed down at the dinner table, tied to a city, a street, a stadium.
Yet the data shows something has shifted.
The rise of the “second club”
A study titled The Rise of the Second Club Fan, published before this summer’s World Cup, found that 80% of global supporters now also follow a second team.
Matthew Kyle, head of insights and author of the report for Engage and MTM, says this doesn’t mean fans are abandoning their childhood love. They’re adding to it.
In regions without a strong domestic league, that second club might be a European giant. Geography is no barrier. A story, a kit, a style of play – all can open the door.
“They are often looking for ‘who else can I support?’ It’s more natural,” Kyle explains.
Fans may connect with a club’s values or history. But the most powerful trigger, the research suggests, is a player. When that player moves, a chunk of their audience moves with them.
“For this audience, they are the club,” the report states. “These fans track individuals, not institutions.”
Griezmann’s misfire, Haaland’s moment
Football’s power balance between club and player hasn’t just tilted. It’s been yanked.
Back in 2018, Antoine Griezmann tried to seize control of his own story. Days before France launched their World Cup-winning campaign, he teased The Decision – a half-hour documentary on Spanish TV. Barcelona believed he was coming. So did most viewers, especially when Gerard Pique, whose company produced the show, posted a popcorn emoji.
At the climax, Griezmann stood outside Atletico Madrid’s Metropolitano and announced he was staying put. Two different endings had reportedly been filmed to preserve secrecy. The idea, borrowed from LeBron James’ infamous TV special in 2010, was to own the narrative. Instead, Griezmann and Pique walked into a storm of criticism.
Kyle believes that same stunt would land differently now if it were Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe fronting it. Griezmann, in many ways, was ahead of his time.
Today, top players run their own channels. Haaland, Ronaldo, Jude Bellingham, Ella Toone – they offer curated access to their lives on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and beyond.
“Players are becoming their own distribution levers, with some in particular taking a driving seat in terms of ‘how I project myself onto the world’ and building their own channels and audience,” says Kyle.
The result? Fans don’t just watch careers. They feel like they’re along for the ride.
“Players are far more culturally symbolic than they used to be,” Kirkham adds. Endorsements still matter, but they’re no longer enough. Supporters, especially younger ones, want to know what a player stands for.
He points to Marcus Rashford’s work during Covid, which helped force changes to UK government policy on free school meals. That kind of impact shifts a player from star to symbol.
“Young fans want to know players stand for something more – that gives them more chance to follow and pursue them, find a deeper connection with them,” Kirkham says. “They look for stuff that is aligned to them, who they are, their causes and where they’re from. I think we will increasingly see that.”
World Cup as global shop window
The World Cup in North America became a launchpad for personal brands.
Few embodied that better than Vozinha. The Cape Verde goalkeeper, largely unknown to many before the tournament, turned into a cult hero with his performance against Spain. His Instagram following surged from around 50,000 to nearly 30 million.
Established stars cashed in as well. Spain and Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal saw his numbers rocket. So did Bellingham. Even Ronaldo, already the most-followed athlete on Instagram, enjoyed another healthy bump.
The standout, though, was Haaland.
Norway’s forward saw his popularity explode as fans piled into his Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat accounts. His appeal wasn’t built on goals alone. It came from the persona: the cowboy hat, the moments helping Norway’s kit man, the willingness to reply to fans, the viral clips with Bellingham, the Russian model whose resemblance to him became a meme.
“Haaland was a massive winner from the World Cup,” Kyle says. “He gained more than 51 million followers since 1 July on his social accounts – bear in mind the first six months of this year he only gained 11 million.
“Obviously he had a good World Cup. But a massive part of it was the personality coming across, interacting with fans, memes, his stature and what he looks like, Norway being there [in the last eight] for the first time and the fans’ rowing celebration – all that kind of stuff.”
For clubs, the question is stark: what happens to those fans when the star moves on?
When the national hero moves
Some teams are finding out in real time.
Trabzonspor are riding a wave after signing Egypt’s national icon Mohamed Salah at the end of his glittering nine-year spell with Liverpool. Tottenham Hotspur enjoyed something similar for a decade with Son Heung-min, whose presence turned Spurs into the most-supported foreign club in South Korea, ahead of even Manchester United, before he joined LAFC last summer.
“Son is a great example,” says Kyle. “He wasn’t a global superstar when he arrived but he was a huge player from South Korea, and over the course of his time with them Spurs became the most-supported foreign club there, topping Manchester United.
“Now, when Son left, Spurs didn’t immediately lose millions of followers on their socials from Korea. But we did see a small spike on his new club.”
The trick, Kyle says, lies in what comes next. Those imported fans may have followed a player, but they’ll stay for something that keeps them emotionally hooked.
“It’s about trying to deliver content those fans still want to engage with,” he explains. “The easy answer is to say global superstars will do it on their own and these clubs without them will struggle. But every club has characters.
“Every player leaves eventually, even if they leave by retiring at your club. So it’s about using them as an asset while there and thinking about how all fans are also interested in stuff off the pitch.
“Behind the scenes content always does really well. Even if you’re not a fan of that club, you might stop scrolling and watch ‘a day in the life’ of a player because it might be good content.”
Think of Welcome to Wrexham, and how a modest Welsh club became a global storyline.
Following the star owner
Which leads to the next twist: it’s no longer just star players attracting fans. It might be the owners too.
“Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac would have been a huge draw for people who don’t know football,” says Kyle. “On the counter, there will be people in the football community saying ‘this will be interesting because what the hell do they know?’”
That tension is part of the appeal. Football, like a long-running TV drama, thrives on storylines. Heroes and villains. Transfers and fallouts. Seasons as cliffhangers.
“You’ve got the benefit of football being like soap opera – seasons of television, seasons of football, different stories,” Kyle says. “And football never ends.”
In a world where the badge is no longer the only anchor, where a pink shirt in a London high street can signal loyalty to a man rather than a club, the game’s biggest question may not be who wins on a Saturday – but whose story you’re choosing to follow next.
