During the COVID-19 pandemic, sports leagues reopening with empty stadiums turned to cardboard cutout fan services to fill seats for TV broadcasts and recoup some ticket revenue. Staff writer Michael Waters reports on the companies behind this trend, the fan motivations for buying in, and the Oakland Roots soccer club’s community-focused rollout — including his own experiment buying a cardboard cutout of his father for a live British soccer broadcast.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host, The Hustle), Michael Waters (staff writer, The Hustle)
Introduction: Cardboard Fan Trend [00:00:00]
Sam: Hey everyone. I’m here with Michael Waters, one of our staff writers. Welcome, Michael.
Michael: Hi.
Sam: I’m excited about a story Michael found this week. It’s about cardboard cutout fans. We’re at a moment where a lot of people are returning to business as normal — sports leagues are finally starting to announce plans and play games again, but mostly in empty stadiums. Michael’s got an interesting story about how teams are going to cope with the loss of ticket revenue and also try to add some color to the stadiums on TV. Tell us a little about how you found the story, Michael.
How the Cardboard Fan Business Works [00:00:40]
Michael: So I think, like a lot of people, I came across a few anecdotal cases of different sports teams in Germany and South Korea putting up cardboard fans to fill the stadiums. My immediate question was: who are the people actually supplying these cardboard fans, and why, and who’s buying them? That leads me down a very long journey through the world of cardboard fans.
The way the model works is basically that a fan of a sports team will take a photo of themselves and submit it to the team. The team partners with a startup company to print out your photo on cardboard and put you up in the stands. It’s a photo from your torso up, so you have these funny-looking cardboard cutouts of people smiling or cheering, just kind of frozen in different stadium seats throughout the world.
What I realized as I started reporting this is that I expected it to be a one-off novelty — I assumed just a few sports stadiums would do this. But it’s actually spreading throughout much of the world. There are about four or five different companies, especially in the UK, that are basically the brains behind creating cardboard fans. They’re partnering with teams — especially smaller teams — to print the fans, create an online portal, and people are buying them.
Most of the cardboard fans that exist are based outside the US, especially in England’s Premier League. But so far there’s one soccer team in Oakland called the Oakland Roots that is in the process of rolling out their cardboard fan system, partnering with a UK company to do that.
The Oakland Roots Model [00:02:10]
Michael: The way they’re approaching this is partly to recoup revenue, but it’s also a way to showcase their community of fans at a moment when everyone is apart. They’re a pretty small team — they have a stadium of about five or six thousand people, usually sold out pre-pandemic. Their aim, and they just launched this project last week, is to start filling up their preseason and regular season games with that fan community from Oakland that made them possible in the first place. They’re even donating a portion of the profits to local racial justice causes. When the cardboard fans are all over, they’re going to try to create a collage of all the thousands of people who submitted photos of themselves and put it up around the city as a representation of this moment — and of the community that showed up and got through it.
Sam: Very cool. The Oakland Roots — that’s the name of the team — they’re a minor league soccer team. That story stood out to me the most in your piece, because as you said it’s sort of representative of the local community that has rallied behind this team. So what’s in it for the fan? Is it basically just a way of extending a little help to the team during this time?
Why Fans Buy Cardboard Cutouts [00:03:20]
Michael: It’s partly about supporting your favorite team, but I also think that in a lot of cases these cardboard cutouts are going to be placed in TV-viewable seats. Whether you actually see yourself on TV is kind of difficult, but the idea is — if you’ve ever gone to a sports game, a lot of people will go back and watch the highlight reel to see if they can spot themselves.
I’m not a sports person, but when I was a kid I went to Fenway Park in Boston a few times, and I would always watch ESPN the next day just trying to find myself. I would task one of my parents with trying to find me on TV. So this is more of a guarantee that you’ll actually see yourself, because not all the stadium seats are going to be filled with cardboard cutouts — the ones that do exist are going to be prioritized in TV-viewable seats.
Whether you actually find yourself is still difficult, because a lot of these companies are not going to send you individual photos. It’s up to you to seek yourself out on TV and watch a stream. But there’s definitely an element of wanting to support your team, and also just a way to connect more broadly with the act of being a sports fan. It’s kind of just a fun thing you can do in this moment when we’re all desperate for fun things.
I looked around and talked to some people — there’s a woman in Australia who submitted a cardboard cutout of her dog for a rugby game. And I also spoke to a man in the UK who sent a photo of his late father, who was a big fan of one of these teams, to have him on the broadcast. So there’s definitely an element of “haha, why not,” but there’s also real sentimental value in this for a lot of people.
Michael’s Live Experiment [00:05:00]
Sam: Very cool. I’m going to let you go because in about half an hour we’re going to tune into a British soccer game where you have bought a cardboard cutout of your father — who’s not a fan of this team, but just as part of the process of testing this out — to see if you can find him on the televised broadcast. Right?
Michael: Yes. I’m not optimistic about this at all, but obviously as a journalist I have to go through with this. I have to watch this game and try to find him. The photo I took of my dad — he has a little sign that says “The Hustle” on it, which is literally just printer paper I printed out, but it would be really cool if I could get a screenshot of that.
Sam: So if any of you happen to watch this game and you see a 67-year-old man holding “The Hustle,” please let us know.
Michael: That’s good.
Sam: All right, we’ll see if we can find him. And if that anecdote makes it into the story, it might actually end up getting cut — so no promises. Alright, thanks Michael.
Michael: Thank you.