In this Behind The Hustle episode, staff writer Michael Waters explains the emerging trend of using cardboard cutout fans to fill empty stadium seats during the COVID‑19 pandemic. He describes how fans submit photos of themselves (or loved ones, even pets) to teams, which then partner with startup companies—primarily based in the UK—to print the images on cardboard and place them in TV‑visible seats. The model serves multiple purposes: recouping lost ticket revenue, providing visual color for televised broadcasts, and fostering community connection while fans are physically apart. Waters notes the phenomenon’s global spread, citing examples from Germany, South Korea, the UK Premier League, and a minor‑league U.S. soccer team, the Oakland Roots, which is using the system to support local racial‑justice causes and plans a city‑wide collage of fan cutouts. He also shares personal anecdotes, such as a woman in Australia submitting a dog’s photo and a UK fan honoring his late father, highlighting both the fun and sentimental value of the practice. The conversation touches on challenges like locating one’s own cutout on broadcast and the limited number of seats allocated for cutouts, but overall portrays the cardboard fan movement as a creative, community‑driven response to pandemic‑induced stadium emptiness.
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It's kind of just a fun thing that you can do in this moment when we're all kind of desperate for fun things. And I mean—
Hey everyone, I'm here with Michael Waters, one of our staff writers. Welcome, Michael.
Hi.
So we're, um, I'm excited about a story Michael found this week that is about cardboard cutout fans and at a moment where like lots of people are returning to business as normal, sports leagues are finally starting to announce plans and starting to play games again, but mostly in empty stadiums. And Michael's got an interesting story about how they're going to cope with the loss of ticket revenue and also try to sort of add some color to the stadiums on TV that they show their games on. Tell us a little bit about how you found the story, Michael.
Yeah, 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 in order to fill the stadiums. And like, my immediate question was, who are the people who are actually supplying these cardboard fans and why, and who's buying them? And that led me down a very long journey through the world of cardboard fans. And I'm not sure if everyone's familiar, but the way the model of this Works is basically that a fan of a sports team will buy, will take a photo of themselves and then submit it to the team. And what the team does is they'll partner with a startup company to print out your photo on cardboard and then put you up in the stands. And it's like a photo from your torso up. So you have these very funny looking cardboard cutouts of people like smiling or cheering, just kind of like frozen in different stadium seats throughout the world. And what I realized as I started reporting this is that I kind of expected this to be like a one-off novelty. I assumed that just a few sports stadiums would actually be doing this, but it's actually spreading throughout much of the world. Lots of major teams and a lot of small teams in particular are getting in on this. And there are about like 4 or 5 different companies throughout the world, especially in the UK, that are basically the brains behind creating cardboard fans. And they're partnering with different, especially like smaller teams, to print the fans, to create like an online portal. And people are buying them. And they're, so far, most of the cardboard fans that exist are based outside of the US, especially in England's Premier League. They have a number of teams there that are doing cardboard fans. But so far there's one soccer team in Oakland called the Oakland Roots that is in the process of rolling out their cardboard fans system, and they're partnering with a UK company to do that. And the way that they're approaching this, for instance, is partly to recoup revenue, but it's also a way to sort of showcase their community of fans in this moment when everyone is apart. And so they're a pretty small team. They have a stadium of like 5,000 to 6,000 people that usually sold out pre-pandemic, and their aim right now— and they just launched this project last week— is to start filling up their preseason and then their regular season games with that fan community from Oakland that kind of made them possible in the first place. And so they're even donating like a portion of the profits to local racial justice causes. And when the cardboard fans are all over, they're going to try to create a collage of all the different thousands of people who submitted photos of themselves and had themselves printed on cardboard and try to put that up around the city as sort of this like odd perhaps representation of this moment, but also just of the community of people who kind of showed up and got through it.
Very cool. No, the Oakland Roots is the name of this team, and they're a minor league soccer team. That was the story that stood out to me the most in your piece, just because it, as you said, that it's sort of representative of the local community of people that have rallied behind this for this team. So what's in it for the fan? Is it basically just their way of extending a little bit of help to the team in this time?
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. And I could get to this later, but whether you actually see yourself on TV is kind of difficult. But the idea is, I mean, if you've ever gone to a sports game in general, I think a lot of people will go back and watch the highlight reel to see if they can see themselves. I am not a sports person, but when I was a kid, I went to Fenway Park in Boston a few times, and like, I would always watch ESPN the next day, and I would just try to get a glimpse of myself, and I'd task like one of my parents or someone who didn't show up with like trying to find me on TV. And so this is like, this is more of a guarantee that you'll actually see yourself, because not all the stadium seats are gonna be filled with cardboard cutouts. And so the cardboard cutouts that do exist are gonna be, prioritized in TV viewable seats in a lot of cases. Obviously it varies team to team. And yeah, but I did mention that whether you actually find yourself is difficult because in a lot of cases you're not— like the companies that are doing cardboard fans are not going to send you individual photos. So it is up to you to seek yourself out on TV and to watch a stream. But I do think, I do think an element of this is definitely we want to support our team, but it's also, I mean, it's also kind of just a way to connect more broadly with the act, like the participation of sports and of being a sports fan. And it's kind of just a fun thing that you can do in this moment when we're all kind of desperate for fun things. And I mean, I, I've like, looked around and talked to some people. And so, for instance, there is like a woman in Australia who submitted a cardboard cutout of her dog for a rugby game recently. And then 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, in order to have him be on the broadcast. And so there's definitely an element of like haha, why not, but there's also, I mean, really real sentimental value in this for a lot of people.
Very cool. Well, I'm gonna let you go because in about half an hour you're gonna 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 reporting this, you're gonna see if you can find him on this televised broadcast, right?
Yes, I'm not optimistic about this at all. But obviously as a journalist, I have to go through with this work and I have to watch this game and try to find him. And the photo I took of my dad, he has a little sign that says "The Hustle" on it, which is literally just printer paper that I printed out. But it would be really cool if I can get a screenshot of that. So if any of you happen to watch this game and you see a 67-year-old man holding "The Hustle," please let me know.
That's good. 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, but we'll end up having to see. All right, thanks, Michael.
