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Despite to useful relevance to better understand how group-level identity develops, few studies have explored the identity theory in the esports field and, in particular, considering the impact of a fan's role identity. The current study aims to explore esports fan role-identity vis-à-vis the relationship with the sponsor and the sponsee so as to understand the effects on their behavioral intentions.

Using a sample of 356 esports fans who attended the 2021 FPF eFootball Open Challenge, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) analyzed the psychometric properties of the constructs and a subsequent Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) examined the effects of fan identity on two types of behavioral intentions and sponsor–sponsee relationship.

Results indicate that fans who highly identify with esports have the highest attachment to the event and tend toward having a positive word-of-mouth intention. Esports fans who have a higher brand identification reported a positive attitude toward the event's sponsor brand and tend to purchase its products. Moreover, the study findings also provide evidence of the bidirectional interaction between the way in which fans attach with the esports event and its sponsor brand, leading to greater reciprocity in their identity formation.

This study helps to understand how the fan identity process can enhance its fate and develop mutually, building role overlapping identity in the esports sponsor–sponsee relationship. Complementarily, it supports of how the marketeers and managers must analyze the importance of being a fan to the individual in order to understand how its self-identity can shape the future behavior.

This research serves to determine causal configurations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) conditions that best influences grassroots football club stakeholders to meet a sponsor's goals through promotional activity.

The research uses a case study of the Essex Alliance League, a local amateur football league in England. Firstly, semi-structured interviews were held with multiple stakeholders to understand the ecosystem of grassroots football. From here, further semi-structured interviews were held with club sponsors to identify the conditions of CSR. This allowed the research to then issue a survey from which results were analysed and discussed using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA).

The ecosystem of grassroots football is formed by a myriad of stakeholders operating at a national level, all the way to more local governance structures within which the business-club relationship exists. Sponsors identified three main conditions of CSR: shared values, self-congruity, and happiness. However, following fsQCA, two pathways were found: (1) presence of shared values, and (2) presence of happiness with the absence of self-congruity.

For practitioners, adaptations can be made for clubs to attract and maintain sponsorship as businesses seek to use grassroots sport as a channel for their own CSR objectives. To attract long term sponsorship, club managers are recommended to maintain long-term relationships with business owners especially in relation to personal values, fit, and happiness. As such, the responsibility of the club to ensure its stakeholders engage in promotional activity on behalf of their sponsor will help in maximising the financial value over multiple seasons.

Where fertile ground for academic analysis in grassroots football is present, this research investigates CSR activity at this level of football, where most research is more concerned with professional levels of the game. Furthermore, this research reaches into the sport ecosystem through an understanding of co-created values between organisations in this exchange of shared values to meet common objectives.

This study explores the motives and objectives of sports sponsorship in China, taking into account the sports, social and cultural contexts. It also adopts a comparative approach to examine the sponsorship of elite and grassroots sports events in China.

This study adopts a qualitative approach, employing semi-structured interviews with representatives of nine companies sponsoring elite and/or grassroots sports events in Western China. The data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis.

In China, sponsors are frequently driven to sponsor elite sport events by a sense of obligation and responsibility to the country, whereas their motives to sponsor grassroots sport events is primarily influenced by sincerity and goodwill. Chinese companies consider brand awareness, exposure and the relationship with the government and authorities as key factors for sponsorship, and use sponsorship to achieve market-related objectives.

Companies’ sponsorship motives and objectives have received significant attention in the literature, but mainly in Western countries. In the context of China, this study identifies how sponsors utilize social networks to shape their motives and objectives. It also reveals certain patterns common with the current literature, as well as specificities such as how the roles of the government and authorities are linked to the contingent economic and social context of the country. Furthermore, the differences between elite and grassroots sports events sponsorship are explained.

This study aims to empirically test how sponsored video customization (i.e. the degree to which a sponsored video is customized for a sponsoring brand) affects video shares differently depending on influencer characteristics (i.e. mega influencer and expert influencer) and brand characteristics (i.e. brand establishment and product involvement).

This study uses a unique real-world data set that combines coded variables (e.g. customization) and objective video performance (e.g. sharing) of 365 sponsored videos to test the hypotheses. A negative binomial model is used to analyze the data set.

This study finds that the effect of video customization on video shares varies across contexts. Video customization positively affects shares if they are made for well-established brands and high-involvement products but negatively influences shares if they are produced by mega and expert influencers.

This study extends the influencer marketing literature by focusing on a new media modality – sponsored video. Drawing on the multiple inference model and the persuasion knowledge theory, this study teases out different conditions under which video customization is more or less likely to foster audience engagement, which both influencers and brands care about. The chosen research setting may limit the generalizability of the findings of this study.

The findings suggest that mega and expert influencers need to consider if their endorsement would backfire on a highly customized video. Brands that aim to engage customers with highly-customized videos should gauge their decision by taking into consideration their years of establishment and product involvement. For video-sharing platforms, especially those that are planning to expand their businesses to include “matching-making services” for brands and influencers, the findings provide theory-based guidance on optimizing such matches.

This paper fulfills an urgent research need to study how brands and influencers should produce sponsored videos to achieve optimal outcomes.

This study aims to explore spectators' awareness of and attitudes toward sponsoring firms as well as to propose a model predicting their purchase and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions toward the sponsors of a major sporting event during a pandemic crisis.

A quantitative method was used to collect the data, with 1,259 questionnaires being effectively collected and analyzed using SPSS and AMOS. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), path analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to analyze the data.

Factors such as sports involvement, sincerity, social media use, beliefs about sponsorship, sponsor's image, Covid-19 beliefs and emotions, awareness of and attitude toward sponsors were found to significantly predict spectators' purchase and WOM intentions.

The results support the structural equation model, providing a multidisciplinary conceptual framework that highlights the significance of comprehending the role of significant factors in sponsorship efficiency during the Covid-19 crisis. The proposed framework adds to the knowledge corpus of this field.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the interaction effect that sponsor-team congruence and team fan (home/rival team) have on the influence of different types of sports sponsorship (joint, corporate social responsibility [CSR]-linked and conventional sponsorship) on fans' attitudes and purchase intentions toward the sponsor.

Two experimental studies were conducted on 391 and 297 participants. The data gathered underwent analysis through five multivariate general linear model analyses.

The study found that CSR-linked sponsorship had the strongest positive impact and the weakest negative impact on the attitude and purchase intention of home team supporters and the attitude of rival team supporters. Nonetheless, the sponsor-team congruence did not significantly moderate the relationship. Additionally, the research demonstrated that the fan identity of both home and rival teams moderates the impact of sports sponsorships on attitude and purchase intention.

Previous research has studied the effectiveness of sponsorship format types independently. This is the first research comparing sponsorship formats regarding fan type and congruence.

Social media's role in engaging participants in sports events, particularly during the pandemic, is acknowledged. However, previous studies often utilized sports events for diverse objectives but overlooked brand equity's influence on sports event development. And very limited research explores social media's impact on brand equity in esports events, despite its significance. Therefore, this study aims to explore how social media affects esports event brand equity and participants' satisfaction and engagement with social media through brand equity's influence.

The study focused on League of Legends World Championships (LOLWC) participants, who completed a self-judged questionnaire online. The questionnaire included demographic details and latent constructs. Data analysis involved two steps: exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to assess measurement scale validity and structural equation modeling (SEM) to study relationships between traits.

The results reveal that, within the esports event context, controlled communication exerts a meaningful and dual impact – both directly and indirectly – on the fundamental components of brand equity. This, in turn, serves as a catalyst for increasing participant contentment and their posting intention.

This study applies brand equity theories to the esports domain, exploring participant-based brand equity concepts, user behavior and the influence of social media communication on event branding and engagement. It also recommends strategies for event improvement, emphasizes controlled communication for brand equity and highlights marketing's role in brand awareness, association and participant satisfaction. Additionally, it suggests government regulation to address cyber violence during esports events.

The purpose of this study was to compare four different consumer pathway models based on identity theory, attitude/loyalty theory, lifestyle theory and hierarchy of effects theory, each with associated instruments measuring connection to the team.

The authors did a two-study analysis, first collecting data from people aware of an NFL team (N = 218) and then an MLS team (N = 209) to determine which connection item performed better.

The authors found that the Consumer Pathway for Sport Fandom based on the hierarchy of effects theory and its associated interest measurement item performed better than the other three frameworks and items. The Interest item shared the most variance with games attended, games intending to attend, games watched via media and games intending to watch via media.

The Consumer Pathway for Sport Fandom represents the entire consumer spectrum from non-aware consumers all the way up to die-hard sports fans. This pathway will allow sport marketers to track their consumers from initial awareness of the product or service all the way through the brand relationship to ultimate loyalty.