Sport on Short-form Video

Since its introduction in 2018, TikTok has emerged as a hugely influential, trend-setting social media platform in an increasing range of contexts. Like other cultural domains, sports are increasingly consumed through short, spectacular, highlight-focused formats, especially among younger generations. As part of the general digitalization process, social media platforms are increasingly involved in the production and consumption of sport content. In this context, short-form media have been viewed as a supplement, or perhaps a threat to TV's position as the undisputed main media for consuming and watching sport events. While this has potentially huge economic ramifications, this chapter takes an ethnographic, content analytical approach to investigate the main trends and topics involved in TikTok expressions of football culture by so-called “ordinary users” as an example of how sport is mediated on short-form video. Research on sports culture on TikTok is a profoundly under-researched topic. Hence, the aim is to build insights into ways short-form video platforms are involved in establishing entirely new expressions of football culture. The findings identify two main content categories: football fan montages and football (self-)presentations which in different ways demonstrate remediations of traditional fan behavior as well as novel forms of memefied fan expressions.