Beyond Matchday: Enabling Everyday Identity Integration Through Football Merchandise Understanding Merchandise Design and Female Fan Inclusion

Sammanfattning

Football clubs have increasingly expanded beyond their traditional role as sports organisations,becoming lifestyle brands embedded within everyday consumer practices. This study exploreshow FC Porto merchandise operates, focusing on the relationship between merchandise design,identity expression and everyday consumption. The study adopted a qualitative researchapproach combining merchandise analysis with semi-structured interviews conducted with FCPorto female supporters. The merchandise analysis examined distinct product categories ascontext of use, gender orientation, style orientation, symbol visibility and colour palette, whilethe interviews explored the fans’ impression on current merchandise.The findings reveal that FC Porto’s merchandise offering remains dominated by traditional fanmerchandise designs, combining highly visible identity markers suitable for matchday contexts.While certain products demonstrate a shift toward a subtle design, the overall merchandise showslimited integration into broader social contexts. Participants expressed a desire for more discreetand versatile products that allowed everyday integration. The findings also highlight tensionsaround the persistence of male-coded design and stereotypical approaches to women’s products.Additionally, the study identified inconsistencies in the merchandising strategy, where subtleproducts exist with outdated merchandising designs dominating the overall strategy.This study contributes to broader discussions surrounding football fandom, footballmerchandising and consumer identity by demonstrating how football merchandise functions as atool to display fan identity. The findings also provide managerial implications from clubs seekingto expand merchandise integration beyond matchday contexts