Football club Vitesse from Arnhem in the Netherlands nearly lost their professional license this summer in a series of events that observers described as a rollercoaster. The reactions in Arnhem to all events is exemplary for the meaning of sports as a communal identity, says professor of Sports Management and Sports Business Jan Willem van der Roest.
This week football club Vitesse Arnhem will play their first home game of the season, after the first four games could not carry on because of the repeal of the club’s professional license. The reason for the Dutch Royal Football Association (KNVB) to revoke Vitesse’s license is a pattern ‘bypassing and undermining the licensing system’, according to the KNVB. Vitesse has been in crisis since the sanctioning of their Russian former owner after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Further takeovers failed and amplified the financial struggles. The decision by the KNVB was overturned on September 3rd, after a long series of appeals and court cases.
Collective meaning
The current mood in Arnhem is one of joy and relief. ‘‘With every lost appeal the feeling my club wouldn’t come back grew. I mostly felt a huge loss for the city, it’s part of the DNA of Arnhem. Regaining the license feels like a miracle. I love the fact that I can go back to whining about our right-winger this weekend’ says local fan Tim Koehoorn. Tickets for the upcoming home game, the first after regaining the professional license, were sold out in less than seven hours, after which new seats were freed, which also sold out.
That a sports club can evoke such emotion and feeling isn’t strange, according to Jan-Willem van der Roest, professor in Sports Management and Sports Business at the Technical University of Amsterdam. ‘Sport has a collective meaning. Starting in the last decades, people are looking for ways to experience togetherness. Sports, and in the case of most European countries football, has been just that.’ This is very visible during events like the Olympics or World Cup, where the streets are filled with the national colours of a nation. A local club like Vitesse adds a different layer: ‘People give a collective meaning to the club; it becomes part of a common identity in a city.’ If a club disappears, the collective loss can leave a permanent scar on a community, according to Van der Roest.
Assortment of UEFA-affiliated clubs that (almost) dissolved or lost their professional license
Europe-wide problem
Vitesse is not the only football club in existential trouble in Europe. Girondins de Bordeaux, champions of France in 2009, lost their professional license in 2024. Sheffield Wednesday, historically one of the most supported football clubs in England, is currently in large financial struggles and ‘on the brink of collapse’ according to observers. Boavista FC, the fourth most successful club in Portugal, was removed from the professional football system, due to failing registration. Not only men’s football clubs are affected. Independent Swedish women’s club Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC joined men’s club BK Häcken from the same city after almost dissolving, losing their independent character.
Professional football clubs are more than a cultural marker. Sport clubs have a large communal impact through education, promoting children’s health and organizing events. In the top division of English football tickets have grown so much in price that it has become impossible for most people to visit. Especially in those cases the communal activities from the club grow in importance, according to Van der Roest. ‘You get way further with the logo of a club, than with the logo of the local council.
