Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the celebrity cultures that have accompanied electronic football commentary from the age of analogue radio to digital media practices, culminating in the female social media influencer that arguably appropriates football commentary to perform assertive and ludic gender identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is about the transformation of football commentary from the 1980s to the turn of the New Millennium, tracking the gradual evolution of this popular cultural form in the context of available media technology, modes of sport journalism and patronage. It examines the levels of agency and attendant trends of creativity, innovation, and overall cultural and material production that has taken place in the process. The underlying argument is that football commentary in Kenya, in all its forms, has always been appropriated by, and also made to express, the dominant patterns of political economy; and that at different points in time individuals have used and groups have used available media technological affordances to perform commentary as well as (re)construct desired social identities of class and gender. In this light, we compare the popular cultures that thrived in the 1980s and 1990s in the context of radio football commentary, local football and ‘analogue social networking’ with the Millennial celebrity cultures that have been shaped by social media influencers in the age of European football dominance and digital technology.