Chapter 3 Methodology
II. Methods
The chapter proceeds on the illustration of methods used in this research. Three methods are adopted in this research: field work, document analysis and interviews.
Each will be introduced and demonstrated in detail. Then I will elaborate on the data collection process, especially the reason why I want to collect data from different sources to answer my research questions: a combination of document evidence and semi-structured/in-depth interviews. In addition, data were not quantified at any stage, as the intention was to explore the issues of how.
As mentioned earlier, the research is trying to locate football heritage in the imbrications of football industry and football tourism. Both fans and visitors have played an essential role in each field respectively. However, in sports tourism, these two roles (fans and tourists) have integrated as one. By carrying out fieldwork, I aim at collecting first hand data as much as possible and trying to feel what people perceive during the experience so that I can better illustrate the production of the football heritage experience of Liverpool FC.
Fieldwork
Liverpool Football Club has provided an array of stadium tours, including Stadium Tour and The LFC Story, Matchday Tour and The LFC Story, Off Peak Stadium Tour and The LFC Story, Legend Tour and The LFC Story, The Anfield Experience and The
Ultimate Anfield Experience. After a detailed comparison between those tours (See Table 3.2) I have chosen the Anfield Experience as the main case study for the research.
The Anfield Experience contains the elements to compose a particular experience in its own niche such as having a luncheon in the executive box and having a chat about old times in company of fellow fans and former Liverpool FC players in an easily accessible fashion to the general public18. Take another type of stadium tour that the club offers for example, The Ultimate Anfield Experience. The visitors will engage a training session with Academy Coaches and Legends on the pitch, which could be a technical barrier that hinders visitors to enjoy the stadium tour fully.
Table 3.2 Types of stadium tours offered by Liverpool Football Club
Type of stadium tour Content of the tour Price (Adult)
Normal Stadium Tour and The LFC Story
(1) One hour exclusive behind the scenes access to Anfield - the home of Liverpool FC.
18 Neither Liverpool FC membership nor football skills is required for attending Anfield Experience.
out.
out.
(9) Opportunity for souvenir photos with your Legend guide.
The Anfield Experience (1) Welcome refreshments at Anfield.
(2) An exclusive guided Stadium Tour pitch and a visit from an LFC Legend.
(4) Opportunity for souvenir photos.
The research has chosen the Anfield Experience as a type of stadium experience to illustrate how football heritage performs as a new creative genre in sports tourism.
However, there is no guaranteed premise that sport tourists will share equivalent predilection as hardcore fans in experiencing Anfield and other Liverpool FC related heritage.
The price for the Anfield Experience is 75 pounds for an adult and 45 pounds for a child under 14 years old. It approximately takes five hours or so for each experience (Detailed itineraries shown in Table 3.3).
Table 3.3 Itineraries of two Anfield Experience the author has participated in
1st Visit on 27th July, 2013 2nd Visit on 29th August, 2014 Your legends on the day will be Ian
Callaghan and Alan Kennedy.
10.15 – Guests to arrive at The Centenary Stand Reception for welcome
refreshments and Check in.
10.40 – Briefing by a member of LFC staff before being escorted to LFC Museum and Tour Centre.
11.00 – Tour of the Historic Stadium and
Your legends on the day will be Jimmy Case and Alan Kennedy.
08.45 – Guests to arrive at The Centenary Stand Reception for welcome
visit the Museum and Megastore.
13.00 – Arrive back to Centenary Stand for a drink and lunch in the Executive Boxes.
13.15 – Enjoy a wonderful 3 course lunch in one of our Executive Boxes as your gift with your Legend for the day.
11.45 – Enjoy a wonderful 3 course lunch in one of our Executive Boxes
As shown above, we can have a rough understanding of the Anfield Experience, as for the debate on how sections leverage the production of representation and memory-construction will be analysed in later chapters.
I have visited Anfield five times for different types of stadium experience, including two ‘Anfield Experiences’, one Legends Tour, one football match (accessed from the membership ticket sale) and one football match with hospitality package. The
dates for five field works are: 27th July, 2013 (1st Anfield Experience), 17th August, 2013 (football match accessed by membership ticket sale), 18th August, 2013 (Legends Tour), 29th August, 2014 (2nd Anfield Experience) and 14th September, 2014 (football match with hospitality package). I have spent about 6 hours for each visit to Anfield on my own and participated different sort of programs as mentioned above.
Besides the environs of Anfield mentioned above, I have also capitalised on the sojourn in England to visit Hillsborough Stadium (The home ground of Sheffield Wednesday where Hillsborough disaster happened) in Sheffield, which is directly related to Liverpool Football Club’s history. Through a good friend of mine, Maurice Roche, I’ve got in touch with John Rutherford, Operations Manager at Sheffield
Wednesday FC and had an individual guided stadium tour (See Figure 3.8 and Figure 3.9) and the memorial site nearby the stadium in memory of the 96 victims in Hillsborough Disaster (See Figure 3.10 and 3.11).
Figure 3.8 Hillsborough Stadium19 Figure 3.9 View seen from the specific area for media and broadcasters
Hillsborough Stadium20
Document Analysis
The wider sense of belonging to a football club doesn’t isolate itself in the city where it situates, especially in modern times. The advent of technology has taken modern football clubs to another level, an era of all-time mediation. Thus, to keep updated with the latest news becomes extremely important in this case since the meaning and use of the stadium and its paraphernalia could be re-interpreted on a constant basis. Second-hand information such as journals, research papers, archival books and associated websites will also be included and used to support the discussion in the research. I will embark on, to begin with, journal articles and research papers on the key concept mentioned in the thesis as the preliminary step to build up the groundwork.
Besides the academic resources, I will also refer to sources such as press media reports, Liverpool Football Club official website, independent fan sites, blogs and
20 Photo taken by the author 22nd August, 2014.
21 Photo taken by the author 22nd August, 2014.
22 nd August, 2014.
Figure 3.10 Hillsborough Memorial in Sheffield21
Figure 3.11 Hillsborough Memorial in Sheffield22
magazines as archival documentation of news stories about the club, the stadium and the fan (Details shown in Table. 3.4) to support and verify the first hand data I have collected.
Table 3.4 Sources of data collection from media
Type of media Name
Website Visit Britain Blog
http://www.visitbritainblog.com/
Website Football Ground Guide
http://www.footballgroundguide.com/
Website Football Stadium Tours co. UK
http://www.footballstadiumtours.co.uk/
Website Trip Advisor UK
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/
Website Visit Liverpool
http://www.visitliverpool.com/
Website Liverpool FC Official Website
http://www.liverpoolfc.com
Website This is Anfield (Independent Liverpool FC fans
Website)
http://www.thisisanfield.com/
Website BBC Sport
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/
Daily Newspaper Liverpool Echo
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/
Broadsheet Newspaper The Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/
Online News Publication International Business Times UK www.ibtimes.co.uk/
Official Liverpool FC Monthly Magazine
English Heritage (2008) Ordinary Landscapes, Special Places: Anfield, Breckfield and the growth of Liverpool’s suburbs. English
Heritage.
Website Official Pub Guide
http://officialpubguide.com/
Interviews
A. Semi-structured interviews
The interviews carried out during the fieldwork were less formal, because they were conducted in situ (i.e. during the stadium tour or at a football match). Each
semi-structured interview began with a general question to inquire about interviewees’
visiting experiences of Anfield. The semi-structured interviews lasted for about 10 to 15 minutes. Based on their responses, interviewees were asked a series of questions to further the depth of the understanding of their perception of the experience and also encouraged to elaborate their views in an open-ended fashion. Moreover, I have also inquired about their previous experiences at Anfield whether the well-developed commodified types of activities cause conflicts about their identification with their home.
In fact, one of the advantages of these semi-structured interviews has actually created another concern in this case. Indeed, it is because the interviews were carried out in situ that the answers received are fairly emphatic. However, it may seem to be fragmental since I was experiencing the stadium at the same time, just as the other visitors. There were some moments during the stadium experience that people prefer to feel without engaging in any conversations. Thus, I have adopted structured interviews after I returned from England in order to have visitors recollect their experience in a more holistic and structured fashion.
B. Structured-interviews
Those structured interviews were carried out via emails and social network platforms, where interviewees have more time to talk about their experience in a better-structured context. The interviewees are consisted of visitors I had met during fieldwork or people
introduced by my friends and fellow supporters. The questionnaire contains thirteen questions (See Appendix A), and the answers from the interviewees will be kept in text form for further analysis.
I have interviewed nine people and they all share the commonality as Liverpool Football Club supporters: five British from England, one European, two British expatriates living in East Asian countries and one Taiwanese who lives in Germany.
Table 3.5 Profile of Interviewees
Name Nationality Residency Interview
Date
D.H. British England 16.02.2015
05.05.2015
E.G. British England 22.01.2015
J.R. British Liverpool, England 05.02.2015
A.C. British England 01.03.2015
V.S. British England 02.02.2015
M.D. French Paris, France 30.03.2015
S.P British Hong Kong 27.03.2015
S.H. British Taipei, Taiwan 22.01.2015
R.H. Taiwan Germany 18.02.2015.
With the profile of LFC supporters as the control variables, the different nationality and residency will be the independent variables so as to draw out the diverse interpretation one could perceive from the same football heritage and to see if the
proximity and nationality will influence the production of the stadium experience.
Besides their stadium experience, their commencement of their fan-ship and their thought about the expansion of Anfield are something will come in use in the discussion as well, because I would like to draw out from their answers to unfold how they value Anfield, especially when their home ground is undergoing a great transformation. As the old stand is being demolished, how the old meaning of home integrates the new one is something worth examining for the construction of football heritage from supporters’
points of view.
The interview is consisted of three sections: fan’s profile, stadium experience and perception towards Anfield expansion. From the commencement of being a Liverpool FC supporter, recollection of their stadium experience, finally to the reflection on Anfield expansion, a short memoir of their days as Kopites. The questions related to those themes are organised in a chronicle fashion so that the interviewees will be inclined to share their experiences more naturally. By taking advantage of a smooth and well-descriptive discourse, I aim at mapping out a trinity of football stadium-fans-tourism and derive the inter-connected and inter-dependent relationship from interviewees’ answers in the context of sport tourism.
One city, two clubs-but why Liverpool FC?
Indeed, Liverpool Football Club (LFC) is not the only one Premier League football club in Liverpool. Everton Football Club is the other important half of Merseyside Derby
(See Figure 3.12), the longest running top-flight derby in England. As mentioned earlier, we have entered an era of football brands. What are increasingly being produced are not the tangible objects but our corporal activities.
Comparatively, Liverpool FC tends to acquire better symbolic notions as a global club, with Everton as a more local club. In fact, we should never forget that LFC’s origin actually lies inside Everton Club (See Figure 3.13). The idea of ‘One city,
two clubs’ has been universal since then. Since the scope of this research is focused on football heritage as new creative genre of sport tourism, it is conducive to capitalise on LFC’s global identity to delve into the ‘new niche’ of football heritage by conducting fieldwork, document analysis and interviews in order to deepen the understanding of mechanism of sports tourism wherein football industry, football clubs and football fans interact with one another closely.
Figure 3.12 A painting hung in the lobby at Lord Nelson Hotel,
Liverpool:UK23
Figure 3.13 A street publicity near Albert Dock, Liverpool:UK24
23 Photo taken by the author 29th August, 2014.