Analyzing a Flock of Cardinals

 

Introduction

Digital platforms have transformed the way sports fans engage with teams, media, and one another. Sports fandom has extended beyond passive viewing experiences to become more participatory. The St. Louis Cardinals digital fan communities exemplifies how sports fandom practices have evolved with the access to the various digital platforms. By examining Cardinals fandom through Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok, this study explores how fans engage and create content the a variety of ways depending on the platforms’ affordances. While most of the Cardinals fandom communities support the team in positive ways, they all take shape in unique ways through each of these social media platforms.

Goals of the fan community

Through the usage of Reddit, Instagram, and Tiktok, the goals of the St. Louis Cardinals Fan digital fan community align with wanting to keep the Cardinals legacy alive. Each platform provides its own version of this, while still maintaining its strength. Reddit, with its usage of posts/discourse threads, provides more analytical and statistical information on the team's performance in the current or previous seasons. Instagram seems to supply more official postings, often by the team itself or its affiliations, following the players' big accomplishments (or milestones), or to promote involvement with the games, merch, or team. They utilize the #CardinalsNation more than the other platforms! The Fandom on Tiktok has the same idea, but enforces it through more creative fandom content. 

Common Practices Between the Platforms

The most obvious connection between the platforms is the use of community, pride, and team critique. The Reddit fandom contributes engagement through current game threads, sporting articles, and the analysis of team statistics. These posts often foster further discussion between the fans of the St. Louis Cardinals. Reddit appreciates informed postings and fans can reward these credible and high-effort posts through upvotes. On Instagram, the community participates by utilizing likes, comments, and shares (to users stories, direct messaging, or reposting) on content that references player highlights, historical throwback photos, and starting lineup photos! Tiktok, being an app where short videos are often posted, has users posting vlogs (GFed) (especially game-day vlogs at the Cardinals Stadium) and fan art (player edits) to foster engagement. While the platforms serve as mediums for different types of participation, the idea of being connected with like-minded sports fans, showing pride in their team (specially during the losing seasons), and critique on how well the team performs/owner decisions make up the bulk of the commentary. 

The Differences Between the Platforms

Based on the design of the platform and the fans who are users, each one facilitates a different mode of engagement. Reddit is a hub for serious baseball discussion. Even with the bot-led daily game threads (“Game 159”), they enforce moderated rules. A lot of the participants in the credible, evidence based subreddits post links to player stats, trade analyses, and organizational critiques. Instagram functions as a more promotional platform as the team runs it themselves and includes “Player of the Game” graphics, reels celebrating milestones, and throwback posts about historic players. The fans on this site can engage through likes, short comments, and shares. Tiktok is the most creative fandom platform. The users (or the fans) post trendy videos and memes, often focusing more on the romanization of the team and its players through the perspective of the fan.

 Instagram Post celebrating former Cardinals player Mark Mcgwire on 1 October 2025

Insights of the fandom

The Cardinals subreddit community values evidence as the essential component that grounds most of the discussions. The subreddit rules set this expectation in various ways. For example, they do not allow unsourced or AI content, titles of posts must be non-editorialized/sensationalized, low-effort posts are removed or redirected into the daily threads. The community values thoughtful analysis and evaluation based on evidence rather than hot takes or overreactions, based on the last 100 posts on the subreddit community. Even rivalry banter is moderated to keep it light-hearted, which keeps the focus on evaluation and understanding of the Cardinals organization.  The subreddit content suggests a focus on evaluation of the organization regarding what they should do to improve the team.  Oftentimes these posts focus on organization and player-focused analysis based on statistics and verified sourced information. For example, a user initiated a discussion regarding the Cardinals farm system, sharing a link to Fangraphs to discuss the validity of their ratings of key minor league players (“Fangraphs farm system”). The daily game threads on the subreddit (automatically posted by a bot) focus on small talk as members comment on the game (if there is one that day) or just about the team in general. These comments tend to be more casual rather than analytical.

Reddit post from u/dynnk discussing the quality of the Cardinals farm system on 4 October, 2025 

The Cardinals digital fan practices on TikTok reveal a community that is statistical, traditional, and regionally focused. A lot of them tend to talk about what the stadium used to look like, how fans used to behave, and note the older traditions/landmarks of the team's success. Fans engage deeply with baseball statistics, reflecting the sport’s analytical culture and their identity as fans of the team whether they are doing well or not. Content across Cardinals TikTok reveals a deeply engaged and self-aware community. Users on TikTok focus on fan created edits, vlogging of game attendance, and sporting critique. References to attendance in the MLB fan surveys show that fans view themselves as important to keeping the teams success alive. Overall, the fandom demonstrates pride, engagement, emotional connection, and a reflective awareness of its own identity and challenges.

The Cardinals Instagram fans are focused on supporting their team, although the interaction numbers on IG are small compared to the overall number of account followers.  The IG account has 1.1million followers, but most posts get between 1265-13K likes and between 16-408 comments.  The lowest interactions occurred at the end of the season, when it was determined that the team was going to have a losing season with 78W and 84L.  The highest number of comments were on September 29 when the team posted a good-bye to the President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak after 18 years. The content of the IG account is almost all pictures and graphics that look like baseball cards.  Often the captions explain the starting pitcher or lineup for a game scheduled for the day of the posting.  The content indicates that this fandom, on this platform, is only interested in the basic information about the team and the upcoming game.  There are posts about announcers and players from the past, indicating a powerful element of nostalgia for Cardinals history.  Clearly the marketing office is involved with the IG content and strives to keep the focus positive and supportive of the team and the players.

Instagram good-bye post to John Mozeliak, President of Baseball Operations on 22 September, 2025 

 

Cultural and Contextual Frameworks

The content of this subreddit shows that they value a baseball organization that follows good process such as developing young players and not overspending on stars. They look to past eras of the team as a benchmark for current team success. They value sourced materials and dialogue together for communal problem-solving (how to make the team better). This is all done while still embracing humor, rivalry banter, and small talk that makes the community feel inviting and personal. Historically, the Cardinals have had a lot of success, thus there are always high expectations for the franchise. The recent team rebuild has led to a losing record (below 50%) for the season (only 3rd losing season in 20 years). There is a general acceptance of the reality of the team rebuild, thus a greater focus on long-term planning topics like player development (“We were told”), and evaluating the organizational decisions during this process of rebuilding the team. Again, the subreddit rules steer a lot of the conversations towards thoughtful critique instead of insults and emotionally charged criticisms. Given their losing record, there is still a shared sense of optimism for the team.

The Cardinals fandom on TikTok reflects on the team's history and traditions. Even though they have not had a winning season in a very long time, they hold strong to the World Series they had years ago. They foster a deep respect for legacy, while ongoing discourse about management decisions show how they are able to critique the team they value. Finally, fans’ emphasis on loyalty through losing seasons embodies cultural ideals of authenticity and love. The Cardinals’ digital fandom is shaped by broader cultural, economic, and social contexts. Baseball's status as THE “American pastime” competes with newer entertainment forms or fans in order to keep the sport relevant in today’s society. Economic factors, such as a decline in attendance, fuel online critique of the players, owners, teams, membership, or even particular sports related statistics drive the fandoms to keep tradition alive. The decline of traditional sport media has also made social media a critical aspect in furthering the community and its discourse. The usage of “Come with me to a Cardinals Game!” (Avery). The trend on Tiktok becomes popular and more people interact with its content, often also wanting to participate themselves. 

TikTok post of a fan (@Avery) experience at a Cardinals game on 12 October 2025

The cultural values shared on Instagram are focused on glorifying the Cardinal players and the history of the team, and the sentiments are focused on love or respect of the team and the organization. The limited number of replies and interactions, compared to the follower count, indicate a smaller number of members in the fandom on this platform.  It is possible more women use IG than men, but there does not appear to be a political preference with Instagram.  Since the interactions are sometimes very small in number on IG, but the fandom numbers are quite large, it seems there are often more interactions on other social media sites.

 

Engagement with Scholarship

Given the affordances of the subreddit platform and the rules (“Rules and Guidelines”) set in the subreddit, anti-fandom is often presented through productive criticism and skepticism rather than volatile negativity. The moderators and community members work to maintain this level of reasoned responses which then removes forms of anti-fandom that leads to attacks or harassment. Instead of insulting players or other fans, criticisms are directed to provide evidence for criticisms. Hate-watching is transformed to organizational critiques and questions regarding organizational moves, player development philosophies, and coaching decisions.

The TikTok fandom paves the way for further research in how fans are the driving factor in sports media. For example, they remix edits, statistics, or even vlog (Julcia) the Cardinals and their games. More importantly, this platform shows the idea of a participatory community: the fans are producers and no longer just consumers of the MLB. Research could surround how baseball allows fans to me more involved than just buying tickets or merchandise.

The Instagram site and its users exemplify a basic fan community, but because this dialogue is so tightly controlled by the corporate side of the St. Louis Cardinals and is not run or really responding to the fan side of the Cardinals, it does not match the same fandom qualities as something for a piece of literature or a movie.  This fan community adores a team and interacts with the corporate responses from the team, but there is not a robust space for fan creation of a related product or content.

 

Works Cited

Avery. “@stlouiscardinals.” TikTok, 25 May 2025, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8AAx3j5/. Accessed 12 October 2025.

Cardinals. “Congratulations on a historic career, Mo! Thank you for three decades of dedicated service to our team and your numerous contributions to C ardinals Nations!” Instagram, 29 September 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DPMaX_AEsWe/. Accessed 10 October 2025.

Cardinals. “Happy Birthday, Big Mac.” Instagram, 1 October 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DPRA8VVCE_j/. Accessed 10 October 2025.

“Fangraphs has STL as the most valuable farm system in baseball : r/Cardinals.” Reddit, 4 October 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/Cardinals/comments/1nxr2ah/fangraphs_has_stl_as_the_most_valuable_farm/. Accessed 19 October 2025.

“Game 159: St. Louis Cardinals (78-80) @ San Francisco Giants (77-81) [Wednesday, September 24, 2025; 8:45 PM CT] : r/Cardinals.” Reddit, 24 September 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/Cardinals/comments/1nprs06/game_159_st_louis_cardinals_7880_san_francisco/. Accessed 19 October 2025.

GFed. “How long can I stay at a St. Louis Cardinals game?” TikTok, 29 May 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8AA5sL9/. Accessed 12 October 2025.

Julcia. “birds took the W!!” TikTok, 7 June 2025, https://www.tiktok.com/@juliaaforczek/video/7513397504696667423?_r=1&_t=ZP-90PNBHG1dpH.

“Rules and Guidelines.” Reddit, 2024, https://www.reddit.com/r/Cardinals/wiki/subrules/. Accessed 18 October 2025.

“We were told that this season we were going to let the kids play to see what we've got. What have we got?” Reddit, 1 October 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/Cardinals/comments/1nutq7w/we_were_told_that_this_season_we_were_going_to/. Accessed 18 October 2025.