How a Small-Time Soccer Team Draws a Crowd: With Its Activism

“In the back room of the threadbare offices of the Irish soccer team Bohemians, the printer clunks and chugs and whirs incessantly, spitting out a cascade of shipping labels. Some of the addresses bear the names of nearby Dublin streets. Others are from farther afield: across Ireland, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic. Each label will be affixed to a package containing a Bohemians jersey. And these days, the club sells a lot of jerseys. The appeal is not rooted in any of the traditional drivers of soccer’s merchandise market: success, glamour, a beloved star player. Daniel Lambert, the club’s chief operating officer, loves both Bohemians and the League of Ireland, the competition in which it plays, but he is under no illusions about the reality of either. ‘We’re a small team in a poor league,’ he said. Instead, fans are drawn to Bohemians by the jerseys themselves; or, rather, what the jerseys say, both about the team and the customer. …”
NY Times