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This paper examines the impact of the national sports lottery (toto) in 2001 and the 2002 FIFA World Cup for the Japan Professional Soccer League - J. League. In 2001 J. League attendances grew dramatically and were sustained in subsequent years, even though member clubs did not change many of their marketing strategies and chose to maintain a distance from toto. The evidence suggests that hosting the World Cup allowed the league to leverage the country's hosting of the event in order to generate long-term interest and attendance at J. League games. By contrast, toto appears to have had a short-term impact.

Given its importance in the brand management of sport teams, the present research initiative primarily concerns the investigation of the formation process of sport team loyalty. By integrating a hierarchy of effects model into a relational perspective, the study aims to investigate the role of sport consumers' involvement, self-expression, trust and attachment with a sport team in building loyal relationships. A conceptual model is proposed and tested in the context of professional soccer teams.

The data of the study comes from 287 consumers of a South East European country. The fit of the model is tested using structural equation modeling and the statistical program LISREL.

The results confirm that: all the hypothesized constructs constitute either direct or indirect determinants of sport team loyalty; a hierarchy of effects approach, cognition-affect-conation, can explain how strong consumers-team relationships can be developed; and team attachment acts as a partial mediator in the relationship between the cognitive components of the model (team involvement, trust and self-expression) and team loyalty.

The findings provide several implications to marketing managers of sport teams in how to go about and develop loyal sport fans.

No previous investigation has integrated relationship marketing with a hierarchy of effects in order to explain loyalty to a sport team.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of brand love by studying its intensity and the nature of extreme forms of it, rather than its presence or absence. The love of a sports team is a type of brand love and is a valuable context to study of brand love intensity because the intensity of love can become more extreme than for products; it has two distinctive features that are theoretically, management and policy relevant; and it is an under-researched context in marketing that is socially and economically significant.

The authors empirically develop and test a multidimensional hierarchical higher-order measure of the intensity of team love and a model of its drivers and outcomes using a sample of supporter club members of a professional sports team who vary in their intensity of love for the team.

The results support our measurement model and its distinctive features, especially the importance of the perceived two-way bond fans have with their team. While overall intensity of team love is not related to social influence or on-field performance, as hypothesized, they are related to sub-dimensions of team love, reflecting its multidimensionality. As hypothesized, the intensity of team love and social influence are related to the intention to renew club membership even with increased costs and poor performance and social influence is directly related to word of mouth and game attendance.

The research is limited to the club members of one sports team in a particular sport in one country and one cultural context. Future research opportunities include: extending it to other sports and brand contexts, refining the methodology and addressing other issues highlighted by the research.

The results indicate the limits of management control of team love intensity because it develops over time independently through social processes. However, firms can help facilitate these processes. The social dimensions indicate the need to develop socially, as well as individually-focussed relationship management strategies. Most devoted fans are valuable customers, but some hardcore elements can be dysfunctional and sabotage the brand.

Sport is personally, social and economically significant in most cultures and love of a sports team love can be an important glue that binds people and communities. However, the existence of extreme hardcore fans and heated rivalries can also be divisive and pose challenges for social policy. Hence, the need to better understand the factors driving more extreme forms of team love to better inform the development of social policy.

The authors focus on the intensity of brand love rather than its presence and absence as in prior research. The authors develop and test a new hierarchical measure of sports team love intensity and a model of its drivers and outcomes. The sports context is under-researched in marketing but reveals the important role played by dimensions that are obscured in studies of product brand love – its social nature and the perceived reciprocal relation with devoted fans. The results contribute to developing extended theories of brand love, open up new research opportunities and have management and policy implications.

This study tested the paths of a structural model that was conceptualised by hypothesising that team attributes affect team identification, which in turn plays a mediating role in sponsor identification and image transfer from event to sponsor. A questionnaire adapted items from relevant constructs in past research and responses were collected from 991 conveniently sampled fans of professional soccer teams in Korea. Data analysis using the SPSSWIN statistical program (v. 12.0) and the AMOS structural modelling program (v. 4.0) found that the data fitted the conceptualised structural model.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of background music on consumer's psychological and physiological responses when watching sports advertisements. We investigated how consumers' exposure to background music affects emotional arousal, attention, brand attitude and purchase intentions; and further tested consumers' information processing by using the same measures. Effects of music on viewer responses were hypothesized using arousal theory while the information processing was hypothesized using hierarchy-of-effects model.

We employed a between-subjects experimental design with random assignment. Fifty-four participants were recruited with 27 in an experimental group and 27 in a control group. Quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) and self-report measures were used to assess information processing. A multivariate analysis of covariance was conducted to compare the mean differences of variables between the groups. Partial least squares algorithm and bootstrapping were performed to further explore the relationships among the measures.

Mean differences indicated that the background music exposed group's emotional arousal, attention, brand attitude and purchase intention were significantly higher than those of the non-exposure group. Path analysis showed that the level of arousal induced by watching sports advertisements affected attention, attention affected brand attitude and brand attitude affected purchase intention. Indirect paths from arousal to brand attitude and attention to purchase intention were significant.

This study provides practical implications for sports marketers regarding methods to increase the effectiveness of sport advertisement. Results might contribute theoretically to the sports advertisement field by demonstrating the relationship between physiological and marketing-effect factors. Our method of measuring physiological response using qEEG is also expected to influence physiological measurement in sports marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the scale of destination image (SDI) to assess destination image affecting the consumption associated with tourism.

The scale was developed through four steps: review of literature, formulation of a preliminary scale, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and examination of predictive validity by a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. The preliminary scale consisted of 32 items. Employing a systematic sampling method, a total of 199 research participants responded to a mail survey.

In the CFA with maximum likelihood estimation, four factors with 18 pertinent items are retained. This four‐factor model displays good fit to the data, preliminary construct validity, and high reliability. The SEM analysis reveals that the SDI is found to be positively predictive of tourism behavioral intentions.

This paper develops an original multi‐dimensional 18‐item scale measuring destination image from the perspective of tourists, which can provide academicians and practitioners with a reliable and valid analytical tool to assess destination image.

This study aimed to examine how sport fans' nostalgia influenced their revisit intention to stadiums. Using data collected during the Covid-19 pandemic, the study further analyzed the moderation effect of sport fans' match attendance on the relationship between nostalgia and revisit intention.

The study used an online survey querying baseball and football fans in Japan (n = 863). These leagues completed their 2020 regular season with and without crowds due to the pandemic. Nostalgia was measured using three dimensions: sports team, environment and socialization. The model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM). Multigroup SEM also investigated the moderating effect of match attendance in 2020.

In the proposed model, nostalgia for sport teams significantly influenced sport fans' intention to revisit stadiums. Nostalgia for sport teams encouraged fans who attended live sport matches during the pandemic more than fans who did not attend the live matches. Nostalgia for sport environment and socialization did not significantly affect sport fans' intentional behavior. However, the results revealed that non-attending fans were stimulated to return to stadiums by nostalgia for the environment.

This study examined the individual impacts of the sport fans' nostalgia dimensions. These nostalgia dimensions were omitted in previous studies. Our findings and proposed model may be used by practitioners in sports teams and leagues to deal with fans' perceived loss of the sport during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The central objective is to determine the main components of a brand that become a “beloved” brand in the minds of consumers applied to football teams.

The authors conducted a quantitative causal study using partial least squares (PLS) with a sample of 824 participants using an online questionnaire.

Brand love is a construct composed of five dimensions: passion, connection with the brand, intrinsic rewards, emotional attachment and thinking and frequent use. It also demonstrates that the consequences of brand love for football teams are loyalty, willingness to invest and word-of-mouth communication.

Managers of large football clubs must emphasize achieving an emotional connection with their fans and develop their marketing strategies on building long-term emotional relationships which will result in greater investments.

Given the competitive and international environment of the sports sector, the conclusions will be of use for managers of sports clubs and companies that develop sponsorship strategies. Another important contribution is the theoretical contribution of the brand in football teams and the psychological understanding of fans as consumers.

This is the first attempt to establish a model of the background and causes of brand love with respect to football teams and a context also not analysed as is the Spanish one. The analysis does not only focus on the emotional relationship but also include how the possible investment of the fans is modelled.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of perceived environmental quality of the stadium on fans’ future intentions to attend a game by highlighting the moderating effect of team loyalty.

Using latent moderated structural equations modeling, this study tested the direct impacts of stadium factors on consumers’ desire to stay and revisit intentions and the moderation effects of team loyalty based on Mehrabian and Russell’s environmental psychology behavioral model.

The results showed significant direct effects of team loyalty and desire to stay on revisit intentions. The stadium environment influenced desire to stay and revisit intentions only by the interactions with team loyalty. More specifically, higher loyalty led to higher desire to stay and revisit intentions, whereas fans’ positive experience of stadium environment intensified the effect.

The authors highlight the significant role of desire to stay on revisit intentions by incorporating the cognitive-affective system of human behavior. In addition, this study provides essential information for identifying the interaction effects of environmental factors and team loyalty on consumer behavior in sport settings.

This study aimed to identify subgroups of esports players based on their gaming behavior patterns across game genres and compare self-efficacy, social efficacy, loneliness and three dimensions of quality of life between these subgroups.

324 participants were recruited from prolific academic to complete an online survey. We employed latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subgroups of esports players based on their behavioral patterns across genres. Additionally, a one-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted to test the association between cluster memberships and development and well-being outcomes, controlling for age and gender as covariates.

LPA analysis identified five clusters (two single-genre gamer groups, two multigenre gamer groups and one all-genre gamer group). Univariate analyses indicated the significant effect of the clusters on social efficacy, psychological health and social health. Pairwise comparisons highlighted the salience of the physical enactment-plus-sport simulation genre group in these outcomes.

This study contributes to the understanding of the development and well-being benefits experienced by various esports consumers, as well as the role of specific gameplay in facilitating targeted outcomes among these consumer groups.