This Means More: Branded Solidarity at Liverpool’s Soccer Clubs

Abstract

Liverpool’s elite soccer clubs are at once carefully managed global brands and local institutions infused with community values. As billion-dollar companies, Liverpool FC and Everton FC deploy a tactic we call “branded solidarity”: leveraging the historical enactment of leftist politics in the city to appeal to a broader, global audience through value-laden marketing campaigns that frame the clubs as authentic representations of working-class solidarity. By reducing local traditions to marketable symbols of community, the clubs encounter resistance from fans, who periodically place limits on the capitalist endeavors of the clubs. In this paper, we offer a conjunctural analysis that focuses on the tensions and contradictions of branded solidarity through a close reading of each club’s marketing campaigns and discusses how these tensions played a role in the demise of the short-lived European Super League.