March sadness: Coping with fan identity threat

Highlights• There is a lack of inquiry into the process undertaken by fans to cope with identity threat.• Using autoethnography, I explore how I (as a fan) coped with a negative occurrence.• I find that I relied exclusively on emotion-focused coping following a negative event.• Through deep contextual inquiry, I find coping is a process, relying on multiple tactics.• I coped until a meaningful positive event occurred, restoring my identity to what it was pre-identity threat.