Your passion for your favorite sports team may influence your weekend plans and game-day wardrobe, but research suggests it’s more than just fun: Sports fandom can boost your mental and physical health, too.
“Being a sports fan can be a powerful tool in supporting well-being,” says Daniel Wann, PhD, a professor at Murray State University in Kentucky who studies the psychology of sports fandom.
Here’s what researchers have discovered about the impact of strong ties to a team.
1. Sports Fandom Gives You a Sense of Belonging — and That’s Powerful Medicine
Sports fandom offers an immediate connection to a larger group, fulfilling psychological needs, according to Dr. Wann. “It’s a way of belonging,” he says — a conclusion his research supports.
Humans thrive when they work together, notes Aaron CT Smith, a researcher and a professor of sport business and innovation at Loughborough University London. “Our ancestors didn’t survive by going it alone,” he says. “They survived in groups, and the brain still remembers.”
Connecting with fellow team fans can lead to fewer feelings of loneliness, more trust in others, shared meaning, and a useful outlet for sharing positive and negative feelings, Smith says.
“The mortar between fans goes well beyond the sport itself,” Smith says. “Long-term fans end up using each other as a support system for everything else like births, deaths, divorces, mortgages — all of it. The football or whatever sport is really just the excuse to keep showing up.”
2. Sports Fandom Can Boost Your Self-Esteem
Identifying with a team can cause a trickle-down impact that can make you feel better about yourself after wins, Smith says. This is a psychological phenomenon known as “basking in reflected glory” or BIRG. (There is an opposite phenomenon, known as “cutting off reflected failure” or CORFing, where people will distance themselves from a team that isn’t doing well, Wann says.)
“Watch any fan: It’s ‘we’ after victories and ‘they’ after losses,” Smith says. “It’s a brilliantly efficient way to borrow a slice of someone else’s triumph. You didn’t put in the training, you didn’t take the hits, but the win is partly yours because you’re in the tribe.”
This can support self-esteem immediately after wins, or by associating with a team that’s had long-term success, Wann says. “We like to look good and affiliate with others who are good,” he explains. “If we keep company with successful teams, we look good.”
The intensity of a person’s sports fandom matters when it comes to basking in reflected glory, though. Wann’s early research suggests that people are more likely to BIRG and less likely to CORF when they more strongly identify with a team. But those who are moderate or lower-level supporters of a team are less likely to BIRG and more likely to CORF.
Ultimately, Smith refers to basking in reflected glory as “self esteem on the cheap.”
3. Sports Fandom May Protect Against Depression and Social Isolation
Researchers stress that being a sports fan won’t cure clinical depression, making it important to rely on medical professionals — not a sports team —if you’re struggling.
“But three of the heavy hitters in depression risk are loneliness, hopelessness, and the sense that life lacks meaning,” Smith says. “Fandom is suspiciously well aimed at all three.”
Sports fans inherit a community and acquire a renewable supply of hope and a feeling of purpose beyond the daily grind, he points out. “None of that is therapy. But it’s not nothing, either,” Smith says.
Wann says sports fandom’s impact on mental health tends to be more indirect. “Sports fandom is very much a social endeavor and a connection to other fans,” he says. “I’m not saying that there isn’t going to be a relationship with sports fandom and depression, but you’ll find stronger links with social connections.”
4. Sports Fandom Provides Ritual and Routine to Counter Life’s Uncertainty
This is a “huge” impact of being a sports fan, according to Wann. “One of the reasons sports fandom is so popular is that it helps people meet basic psychological needs — the need to belong and establish connections, along with the need for structure and routine,” he says. “Sports fans are so good at that.”
An analysis of 444 surveys from sports fans found that rituals people engage in around their team helps them to feel a stronger sense of attachment to the team and even to the places where the team plays.
Rituals also help people manage uncertainty, Smith says. “The world is chaos,” he says. “Your match-day routine isn’t.”
5. Sports Fandom Is a Healthy Outlet for Intense Emotion
Sports fandom creates a unique environment where it’s socially acceptable to let out big emotions, Wann says. “If you take emotion away from sports fandom, you basically take fandom away,” he says. “We have, for whatever reason, decided that sport is one of those avenues where individuals are allowed to express their emotions.”
Adults don’t have a lot of opportunities to cry, hug strangers, and scream at the sky, Smith points out. Sports fandom provides that outlet. “It’s a sanctioned arena for emotions that would otherwise be socially catastrophic including grief, ecstasy, rage, hope, despair all packed into a usually 60- to 90-minute window with no lasting consequences,” he says. “You get to feel things at full volume and then go home to dinner. As emotional release valves go, it’s a lot healthier than most of the alternatives a person could choose.”
6. Sports Fandom Can Strengthen Your Real-World Relationships
Sports fandom creates a shared passion that can foster and support relationships — and it can cross generations and personality types, Smith says.
“Grandparents take grandkids to games. Parents bond with surly teenagers … people with nothing else in common still share an opinion on the coach/manager,” he says. “Shared joy and shared misery are powerful glue and are much stickier than shared opinions about, say, the weather.”
Wann says it’s a “great myth” that people who are high-level sports fans have bad relationships with others. “I’m not saying that’s not the case, but it’s incredibly rare,” he says. “For most individuals, being a sports fan has a positive impact on their relationships.”
Wann notes that a mutual love for a sports team can start relationships and help them last.
7. Sports Fandom May Motivate You to Be More Physically Active
Not everyone who is a sports fan actually played that sport, but Wann says many either have a background in youth sports or continue to play. A survey published in 2023 found that people who played a sport were consistently more likely than those who didn’t to engage in a range of sports fandom, including watching games in-person and on TV, and buying sports memorabilia.
“The greatest predictor of sports fandom is whether that individual actually participated in that sport,” Wann says. “Sports fans are much more likely to participate in sports. It encourages people to remain active.”
Can Your Enthusiasm for a Sports Team Go Too Far?
While there are plenty of benefits to sports fandom, a person who is overly invested in the success of a team may run into issues with stress and anxiety, Smith says. “Every psychological strength has a tipping point, and fandom is no exception,” he says.
“Fandom is brilliant as one of several anchors in a life. As the only anchor, it gets heavy quickly,” Smith adds. That’s why he recommends treating sports fandom as a “color on your life’s canvas, not the whole painting.”
The Takeaway
- Being a sports fan can influence health in multiple ways, such as by creating a sense of belonging, reducing feelings of isolation, building trust, and providing a socially acceptable outlet for strong emotion.
- Sports fandom can alleviate risk factors for depression, but it’s not a substitute for appropriate treatment.
- Watching a favorite sports team may inspire someone to be more physically active themselves.
- Being overly invested in the success of a sports team can have negative effects.
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