In today’s media landscape, the way sports teams are portrayed has a profound impact on how the public perceives their identities influencing not just fan loyalty, but also broader cultural meanings. Media coverage does more than report scores: it styles narratives around teams, frames their meanings, and shapes how they relate to communities, regions, and values.
Building Critical Awareness of Media Influence in Sports Culture
Narrative framing and team identity
When a team consistently appears in media narratives as the “underdog,” the “dynasty,” or the “rebirth,” those labels become part of its identity in the public mind. For example, a club hounded by past failures may find media portrayal emphasising redemption arcs, thus shaping how fans and non-fans interpret its journey.
Research on sports media emphasises that the coverage of athletes and teams often builds simplified “identity schemes” present players and clubs as symbols rather than fully-complex organisations. These frames affect how audiences believe the club “stands for” certain values perseverance, underdog glory, dominance, or community roots.
Social identity, fandom and group membership
The notion of identification is central: people don’t just watch a team, they belong to it. According to social identity theory in sports context, fans’ sense of self is tied to the teams they support.
Media portrayal of a team helps define that “we” what it means to be a fan, what the club represents, and how it connects to wider social categories (class, region, race, etc.). When media emphasise a team’s local roots or working-class heritage, that becomes part of its public identity. Conversely, if the coverage highlights billionaire ownership and commercialisation, the image tilts the other way.
Media as mirror and shaper of public perception
Media doesn’t just reflect reality it also shapes it. By selecting which stories to tell (heroic comebacks, scandalous failures, star-player journeys) and which images to circulate (the proud captain, the underperforming coach, the fanbase celebrating), media influence how teams are viewed.
One source notes that the sports press regularly assigns “identity assignments” to athletes and by extension their teams, often through stereotype, myth-making or territorial representation. As these frames enter the public discourse, they shape how a team is “branded” in popular culture.
Implications for the public’s understanding
When the public consumes media portrayals over time, they may come to accept certain things about a team that go beyond the pitch: “this club is gritty,” “this club is elitist,” “this club represents the community,” or even “this club is ‘ours’.” These perceptions influence how non-fans view the club, how prospective fans decide to engage, and how the club itself leverages its identity in marketing and fan-engagement.
Further, when a media narrative around a team ignores or downplays certain aspects (such as a less glamorous fan-base, or smaller resources), the public understanding becomes skewed or incomplete.
A NOTE on how research supports this
Scholarly work shows that how fans are portrayed matters: negative media depictions of a fan-base lowered fans’ identification with the team and even their self-esteem. Additionally, studies link media use to sports participation and team‐affiliation behaviour, underlining the media’s role in shaping meanings around sport.
Finally, media representation of national and regional sports network is tightly bound with identity construction meaning how a team is talked about visually and verbally helps anchor it in public consciousness.
Why this matters & what to watch for
For team management, recognising how media narratives shape identity is vital: how you’re portrayed can enhance or erode your brand value, your fan-base allegiance, and your cultural relevance.
For fans and the public, being aware of media framing helps evaluate whether the identity you believe a team holds matches its broader story (history, values, community). Even for casual audiences, being critical of how teams are presented what is emphasised, what is omitted can lead to a more nuanced understanding of sport media culture.
If you’re interested in deeper media studies around sports identity and how niche teams manage their image, check out this research site: this website.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the media portrayal of sports teams acts like both mirror and mould: reflecting team identity while simultaneously shaping it. The public’s understanding of a team. what it stands for, who it represents, how it behaves is influenced heavily by the stories journalists tell, the images broadcast, and the narratives repeated.
In a sport ecosystem where identity matters almost as much as performance, paying attention to media portrayal is more than just background noise it is central to how teams are seen, supported and remembered.
