The Times of India | Sport India and its fandom menace

February 2003, Durban, South Africa: The ICC Cricket World Cup was in full swing and ahead of India’s much-hyped clash with England, I found myself in the business lounge at the Kingsmead Hilton. The location of the hotel is fantastic as it’s right across the road from the stadium. Indeed, you can see right into the ground from the top floor lounge while sipping a cool drink. Anyway, as I sat there, I noticed a young man, sporting an India fan jersey, beavering away on a PC in the corner. So I wondered over, “Hi, I’m Arup, who are you?” “I’m Raks Patel”, he replied with a raffish grin. “I’m with the Bharat Army.”

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JHU Engineering | The New World of ‘Superfans’

What do you do when you’ve founded a successful company and an unexpectedly strong online culture arises that threatens to overwhelm your carefully curated brand? Well, if you are Zoe Fraade-Blanar ’02, you write a book and call it Superfandom: How Our Obsessions Are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are.

The story begins in the years after Fraade-Blanar earned her degree in computer science from the Whiting School in 2002. She was traveling through Asia working as a freelance web coder. Her traveling companion was Aaron Glazer, KSAS ’02, a fellow Johns Hopkins alum with degrees in history.

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