Fan Followers and Their Enthusiasm

Fan followers are evident at all the places. Most commonly, it is the growing enthusiasm of some of the people towards other people or activities and events that tend to bring blissful emotion. However, for a sports fan, enthusiasm is directed towards a specific team or sports. Despite the variations in their range of interest, general features of the sports fan are exhibited by the sports enthusiast.

Therefore, it is a normal trend for the sports fan for they have strong desire to acquire and possess the material and objects with respect to their choice as well as to stay close to their context of affection. This easily illustrated the reason behind the huge sports stadium that is filled with fan followers and sports ticket that are always easily sold out in spite of the surged price.

For instance, sports fan often has the desire to get engaged externally through consistent social media communication with their fellow fan followers in several ways. This has been most incredible noted with the number of increasing fan followers sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Based on this issues and factors, the report focuses on the recognisable characteristic of the sports fan as consumers along with the implications of sports marketing.

The aim of the typologies is to evaluate and understand the changing behaviour of the sports consumer over a due course of time that has been a standing objective of the sports marketer. In addition to this, the purpose of the typologies is to recognise the different models of sports consumption by conducting a differentiating analysis of the major works in relation to the current period.

Figure 1: Sports fan typologies’

(Source: Heere & Gordon, 2015)

In this context, Woratschek, Horbel and Popp (2014) conducted a dual approach for differentiating between modern fan and temporary fans to recognise the different types of clubs and team. Yoshida, Heere and Gordon (2015) stated that a stronger an individual often recognises himself as a fan, relatively more than the individual uses their specific identification. However, being a fan is not always a temporary way for self-identification. Specifically, temporary fans interest are in the phenomenon of the short-term period.

After their short-term interest is over, these types of fan are no more motivated to exhibit fan following behaviour associated with sports subjects. The time boundary, in this case, is usually a differentiating fan from other sports. On the devoted fan is those who remain quite loyal to their supporting team despite the fact that their short-term event of captivation is over. In this regards, Norris, Wann and Zapalac (2015) stated that a devoted fan often possesses an attitude of referring their teams as” my team right or wrong”. In this case, a devoted fan often uses their attitude of being the fan as a necessary aspect for self-identification.

The Desire to Acquire and Possess

In contrast to this typologies Lock and Funk (2016) argued that there are authors that labelled recognised themselves as the team that was popularly known as the Oilers and were signified as symbolic fans. Yoshida et al., (2014) used the idea of brand loyalty to show the dualistic evaluation of a fan of the Chicago fan clubs. However, there are two major elements in the typologies of a fan one is the committed fan and another is the temporary fans who are not usually loyal to their team. In this context, it has been found that devoted fans are usually more brand loyal fans than the temporary fan as they tend to have a stronger relationship with the sports club.

During the period of the begging 1990’s several numbers of studies in North America have widened the evaluation of sports consumers by examining the level and intensity of fan following attachment. Therefore, while doing so, they found that not only sports consumer can be differentiating on the basis of their characteristics and beliefs but also, they can be ranked on the basis of their behaviour.

According to the view of Funk et al., (2016), it has been reported that a northern American sport has been evaluated on the basis of identification of power relationship with the club and team. It is a way to measure the scale of strength in identification that helps to analyse the intensity of the consumer with the sports club. In this context, it has also been said that an individual who reads a lot of sports resources or discusses sports and regularly takes part in sports activities are more likely to have a strong attachment towards sports.

Figure 2: Tiered typologies of the sports fan

(Source: Funk et al., 2016)

It has been found by Thompson et al., (2017) that sports consumer may have conflicting interests and motivation based on their degree attachment to a team or sports. Sports consume may tend to follow sports, but their behaviour may often be driven by several features in team sports product that they refer to as interesting.

However, Ko et al., (2017) stated that motivation scale for sports consumption has been seen to be accurately and reliably examine the motives behind the sports fan. There are four crucial drivers that impact loyalty over the sports clubs that were usually developed by the concerning team competition in the United States among all major professional sporting leagues such as National Basket American, National Hockey league, major baseball league and national football league. 

Recognizing Different Models of Sports Consumption

All these teams fan followers are strongly associated with the success of the team that is more likely to impact on the short-term loyalty rather than committed long-term sports fan. In this context, it has also been mentioned that a weaker level of attachment is found among those who read fewer sports materials and discusses fewer sports activities and hardly attend sports events. These type of sports attachment fan were signified as low identifications supporters.

Arai, Ko and Ross (2014) argued that Wann and Branscombe model consistently deploys the foundation of the continuation of the sport along with several phases of attachment and loyalty. However, Westberg et al., (2017) stated that tiered models of sports typologies cannot readily integrate differences within each step or tiers. It has been seen that they assume that there is a positive relationship between loyalty, identity and sports consumption without providing any strong evidence-based support.

The behaviour of the fan is more closely associated with the concept of loyalty and the necessity of studying loyalty has been identified for more than a year. The concept of loyalty has merged within a structure of behavioural, attitudinal concepts.  According to Swanson and Kent, (2015), firstly, loyalty was implied as an overt oriented behaviour or outcome of consumer behaviour. Later in the period characterises an oriented aspect of loyalty earned more attention with a better way of understanding the psychological phenomenon behind the fan behaviour.

However, in this context loyalty has been perceived as the two-dimensional phenomenon that is the operation of satisfactory attitudes and behavioural repetition over the period of time. This specific concept allows the researchers to classify the extent of loyalty as high, latent and non-existent.

Fillis and Mackay (2014) stated that in case of sports, fan loyalty towards sports and identification with the respective team are found to be the major determining factor for fan behaviour. Therefore, the popularity of the fan loyalty is possibly due to the fact that loyalty towards sports in certain ways may be dysfunctional.

This is because it has been seen that at a time when loyalty may increase with the worse performance of the team. In this context, Jones (2017) states that commitment is typically signified as the emotional and psychological fascination towards the brand. Fan behaviour, therefore, often shows a high level of psychological commitment only at times when they feel deeper inner attachment towards their team.

Evaluation of Sports Consumers

Commitment or devotion in the context of marketing is generally used as the degree by which an individual observes their relationship with the consumption subjects from an aspect of a long-term perspective and are often willing to stay devoted with the relationship despite difficult events. In this regards, this specific concept of commitment has been used to evaluate sports marketing. Vamplew (2018) asserted the commitment to demonstrate a more accurate illustration of loyalty and other forms of repeated purchasing behaviour.

On the contrary, Thompson et al., (2017) stated that commitment illustrates a relationship or strong behavioural connection in between the consumer and specific brand thereby expanding the meaning of loyalty. Sato et al., (2015) contradicts these statement saying that the true form of commitment is the major form of brand loyalty that is usually regarded as an effective form of buying.

Boehmer and Tandoc (2015) stated that brand equity is the way by which a brand can add value to the product and service and at the end of it, this represents the outcome for the marketing strategies that have been adopted for the brand. However, brand equity is typically categorised into two major component, firstly that is based on the financial perspective and another is the consumer based perspective. From the financial point of view, it can be said that brand equity represents the incremental method of cash flow resulting from the purchase of a product with a string or preferred brand name against the cash flow that takes place without any brand name.

Second factors consumer perspective represents the strength as well as the weakness of the brand identity or symbol that is usually added or the subtracted value for the product service produced by the end user. In this context, Miragaia, Ferreira and Ratten (2017) commented that strong brands are developed on the ground of trust that comes from enhanced consumer experience. Again, Girginov, Toohey and Willem (2015) also stated that managing a team in the form of the brand is a growing platform in terms of sports marketing.

Figure 3: Brand equity and sports marketing

(Source: Van Niekerk, 2017)

For instance, a study conducted in Deloitte showed that overall revenue of the top 20 sports club in Europe was seen to be more than $5.1 billion. However, Real Madrid club was one of the sports group that managed to obtain the revenue of $521 million within a single year that is followed by Manchester United exceeding $391 million during the similar period (Van Niekerk, 2017). Therefore, it can be said that brand is the main reason by which fans are related to the strong emotional relationship with their brand while allowing the increase in trust with the purchasing decision making.

Conflicting Interests and Motivation of Sports Consumers

However, the major purpose of this process is to examine brand equity within professional sports context as it contributes to the literary sources by identifying the experience of the consumers and cultural differences that are present across sports activity settings in the evaluation of brand equity.

Sports marketing according to Thompson et al., (2017) are a way of transacting goods as well as services of sports products for the purpose of gain in terms of the buyer as well as the seller. In contrast to this Boehmer and Tandoc (2015) stated that sports marketing is the process of selling the potential of specific sports to a corporate sponsor. According to his point of view sports marketing usually obtained the objective by showing clear terms about the way by which potential sponsor stands to achieve the fame and resources for this purpose.

In this regards, marketing in sports is also engaged with the way of buying and selling of the coach to the sports club or to the sports industry. In this way, the team and club make use of the services of the coach and pay him the amount in exchange for the services. Sports marketing also engages with the sale of products such as shows, sports items to their devoted fans. In this context, Jones (2017) asserted that today “Nike” is one of the largest seller and producer of athletic items in the world with an annual revenue of more than $2.2 billion and the revenue reached highest with almost $3 billion.

However, the segmentation model of sports marketing is to attract sports customers towards the sports item. This model of sports marketing not only forces the sports marketers to compare the markets but also motivate them to establish more detailed motives and values for particular consumer behaviour.

It has been found from research that a sports marketer must not promote for the benefits of recognising with the team and its player but they need to promote the spirit and high quality of the game. In this context, this implications of sports marketing have a capability to influence a high number of typologies that are identified as the high-value supporters attracted towards the game.

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded from the study that being a fan is no longer only about watching and enjoying the sports show but it is also a boy the empowered social media and other sources of sports marketing that are being used to attract consumers. Apart from these issues, fans as well have started using their collective power to impact on the leagues as well as franchises. Therefore, it can be said that it is the market-driven methods that enable the sports to respond in a better way to the fan’s requirement and retain more customers. It is evident from the study that sports have turned in to a practice of entertaining as financial success in turning in to more crucial elements of sports. 

Factors Impacting Sports Loyalty

Therefore, the sports business has increasingly transformed itself into a more customer centred platform. Apart from these, it has also been found from the study has there are different typologies of sports fan that are usually based on the emotion and attitude of the consumer towards the specific sports through a variety of segmentation model. Finally, it has seen from the study that brand equity also plays a necessary role within the sports sector with the involvement of the sports player’s brands that generates a huge turnover.

Drawing from the following evaluation and derived characteristics of the sports consumer, I can ensure the fact that I am also a sports consumer, rather I am a huge fan of cricket, and do not miss any single games. Besides this, I have a hobby for collecting the signatures of different sports players as well as buying sports products. In addition to this, I also have certain collected pictures if World cup events that took place in the year 2002, 2007 and 2015.

Since long, I have been supporting the contentions created by authors in the study that sports consumer have different types of tiered typologies such as emotions, intolerance towards negatively and another social aspect of attachment. This is due to the fact that, I have realised it that after watching all the matches, I feel quite emotionally attached to it and I begin to cheer for the team. I also get disturbed if someone interrupts during the period of watching games or say something negative about my favourite team. I have also seen people who are no proper interest in the game rather who are not completely devoted towards the game.

These type of people usually tends to shout or cheer only when some score high. However, after evaluating the different type of sports fan and different levels of tiered typologies it has helped me to boost my confidence for my favourite team and helped to write about the sports consumers. However, the implication of sports marketing also plays a crucial role in the sports sectors, where the sports manager has a big time in promoting their team by advertising it on the social media platform. 

It also involves the generation of high revenue through sports marketing. Therefore, I can say that by writing details about sports fan who are more likely to be known as sports consumers, I have learned a lot of things about the sports fans and reason behind supporting specific teams.

Loyalty and Devotion in Fan Behaviour

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