Pipe dream or closed shop? Experiencing the Champions League from the sidelines

ABSTRACT The article explores how Austrian football fans, in a country outside the “Big-five” leagues and (semi-)peripheral to European top football, relate to the European elite competition. Our research builds on interviews with fans of Sturm Graz and Wacker Innsbruck. These clubs represent two different fan milieus at the sidelines of the Champions League: one for which European-level competition has been accessible at qualification stages, and one club with a remarkable European history, for which these competitions are currently far out of reach. Our analysis reveals that the positioning of the Austrian league detaches fans from the Champions League. The main division, however, is not along clubs, nor is there an overarching “Austrian” perspective of marginalization. Rather, we find a dividing line between those who affirmatively consider the Champions League a pipe dream and those who criticize its closed shop-structure and reject it as over-commercialized reality of “modern football”.