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In the highly competitive professional sports industry, managers of a newly established competition face many challenges, including “converting” or gaining the allegiance of new groups of consumers (fans, spectators) to their colors. One critical aspect in the converting process relates to the “ideal” game-day experience as perceived by would-be consumers. Gaining knowledge about this area could be critical to professional sport marketers in enhancing the perceived quality of sport events. This study examines the ideal football experience among 1,412 fans of an Australian A-League football (soccer) club. The importance of a lively atmosphere, that of high turnouts of spectators and the opportunity to watch quality and attacking football are highlighted in most comments, even relegating the game’s final score (winning) to a more marginal level of importance. Some of the implications of the findings for professional football marketers and avenues for future research are presented and discussed.

Insights into how fan experience can be used to cultivate football (soccer) fan loyalty are limited. Based on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) paradigm, this study develops and tests a theoretical model investigating the effects of football-game socialisation, team interest, football interest and transaction satisfaction (stimuli) on fanship and cumulative satisfaction (organism), and subsequently, attitudinal loyalty and behavioural loyalty (response). National culture was a moderator.

A self-administered online survey collected data from a convenience sample of 762 football fans from Brazil, China and Germany.

The PLS-SEM results support the S-O-R based model, indicating that football fan-loyalty behaviours are determined by fanship and cumulative satisfaction with the team. Fan experiences, in turn, are also found to be influenced by fan perceptions relating to socialisation, team interest, football interest and transaction satisfaction—elements over which the football team's management may exert some degree of control. Some national cultural differences were found, with three of the model's 12 structural paths significantly different for Germany vis-à-vis Brazil.

This study advances the authors’ understanding of the significance of socialisation and fan-interest factors for football, providing evidence supporting the role of the fan experience and service-consumption stimuli related to those game experiences as significant drivers (stimuli) of the fan's affective (fanship) and cognitive states (cumulative satisfaction). This study enriches the limited body of evidence on fanship's role as a driver of attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. Finally, the multi-country study partially supports the moderation effect of national culture.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between sport team authenticity, fan identity and citizenship behaviors, and how the link between sport team authenticity and fan identity is moderated by sponsor philanthropy.

A web survey was distributed to baseball fans in an online community in South Korea. A total of 383 valid answered questionnaires were collected and tested with confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The findings suggested interrelationships between sport teams’ brand authenticity and fan identity and between fan identity and citizenship behavior. This work also confirms the moderating effect of a title sponsor’s philanthropic activities on the relationship between sport team authenticity and fan identity.

A sport team’s effort to maintain authenticity would intensify fan identity levels. Action plans that relate to team’s authenticity among fans are necessary. For example, the team could create a plan for the players to give back to the community by volunteering in community projects with the support of the sponsor. Building a team’s authentic culture with well-integrated philanthropy programs of a title sponsor would benefit the team in sustaining competitive advantages in a market.

The findings contribute to the literature by demonstrating the role of title sponsor’s philanthropic behavior on the sport industry. The relative importance of the team’s authenticity (congruency and fan orientation) for fan identity was increased when the perception of the sponsor’s philanthropy was high.

In this study, the authors examine consumer attitudes toward a professional soccer club’s proenvironmental initiatives and evaluate whether key themes are consistent with those found in previous research of fans in different sporting contexts.

The authors analyzed empirical material provided by 147 highly identified supporters of a Major League Soccer team. Using template analysis, the authors compared codes, categories and themes with those previously identified in a reference group of National Football League (NFL) fans.

Twenty-three preliminary codes, nine categories and four themes were established by the researchers. Three themes – Considering Environmental Action, Business Insights and Impacting the Fan Experience – were all consistent with the NFL reference group. A fourth theme, Public Visibility, focused on the possibility that the club’s proenvironmental initiatives could provide a competitive advantage over rival cities and positively influence local programming and behaviors.

The results of this study support the notion that fan characteristics may differ across various demographic and structural contexts and fans’ recognition that a club could leverage its community standing to promote proenvironmental action.

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the use of the term accountability in the twenty‐first century and its role in “remaking the world in favour of the most powerful” using the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan.

The paper examines the notion of accountability by analyzing a case study of the hostile takeover of Manchester United Football Club by the Glazer family. The field of football presents an interesting arena in which to study accountability because of its extremely interested and active fans who search for information on every aspect of their clubs. Lacanian theory is drawn upon to add to understanding of the psychopathology which the demands for accountability and transparency place on individuals. Bourdieu's work on illusio is drawn upon to understand the motivations of the field of football.

The paper finds that calls to “hold the most powerful to account” in practice lack political force. Thus the case study demonstrates the common (mis)recognition of the term of accountability. The ability to correct the abuses of the most powerful requires power.

The conflation of Bourdieu and Lacan adds to understanding of accountability as an empty cipher with performative power.

This paper examines the effectiveness of a sport loyalty program in fostering fan relationships with a team and its sponsors. The study of 268 US baseball spectators revealed that, in the mind of the fan, loyalty programs generally consist of three underlying components. When these components perform well, they can fuel a member's sense of attachment to a team and their tendency to purchase sponsor products. Recommendations to improve loyalty program performance focus on tactics that build member relationships and identification with the team.

How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and answers to it have ranged from greater organizational involvement to framing. Another possibility is meeting youth where they are at; that is, connecting youth’s existing interests in popular culture with broader social problems and issues. A group that is doing just that is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. In this chapter, we trace the development of the Harry Potter fan community, the stories’ resonance with fans, and how the HPA has drawn on the community and the story for mobilization. We argue that the HPA leverages culture in two ways that are relevant for social movements and political communication scholars. The HPA is able to tap into the fan community for bloc recruitment using its ties and connections to media – in this case, the fictional story – as a point of mobilization. Additionally, the HPA is able to bloc recruit from mass society – a process they refer to as “cultural acupuncture” – by strategically connecting the story with social justice issues when cultural attention is at its peak. We conclude with a discussion of the HPA’s impact on its members and how bloc recruitment and cultural acupuncture may be relevant for other fan communities.

Australian cricket has traditionally been an exemplar of hyper-masculine sporting conservatism. However, cricket, as with a number of Australian sports, has recently introduced an elite women's league. Despite growth in participation and funding of women's cricket, it remains poorly understood at the elite level and particularly its fans. Drawing on the concept of gender-bland sexism (Musto et al., 2017), we investigate differences in fan engagement and perceptions of men's and women's cricket matches. Through a case study of Australian Women's Big Bash cricket team the ‘Sydney Sixers’, this chapter explores how women's cricket was experienced on match-day by fans, as well as perceptions of the value and quality of attending women's professional cricket. We first undertook participant observation at matches to understand how women's cricket was delivered, experienced and engaged with by fans. These observations informed a survey which was distributed to club members. Our findings suggest that there continue to be noticeable differences in the presentation of women's matches when compared to their male equivalents, providing evidence for the presence of gender-bland sexism in areas other than sports media.

This study aims to achieve optimum flow separation control for a road vehicle using a reverse flow fan on rear side.

A full-length reverse flow fan array (fan’s air speed is 50% of the car’s speed) is attached throughout the width of the vehicle at rear edge corner.

The reverse flow fan array positioned at rear edge of car pushes the airflow against the car’s rear window. It creates the recirculation region and alters the pressure distribution. This reduces the lift coefficient by 150%, which becomes the downforce and reduces the drag coefficient by 22%. As the car speed increases, fan speed should also be increased for effective flow control.

This active flow control method for 3D Ahmed car body has been studied computationally at low speed (40 m/s).

This design increases the downforce, thus gives better cornering speed and stability, and decreases the drag which improves fuel efficiency. It can be used for effective flow control of cars (hatchback/sedan). The findings can be applied to the bluff bodies, road vehicles, UAV and helicopter fuselage for flow separation control.

The fan array is attached on car’s rear side, which blows air against the car’s rear window. It alters the pressure distribution and aerodynamics forces favorably. But the existing high-speed fan used in a sports cars sucks the air from bottom and pushes it rearward, which increases both the traction force and drag.

This research aims to examine how financial literacy moderates the mediation of attitude toward virtual influencers’ non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or ATB on the relationship between purchase intention and self-congruity, which includes symbolic representation, self-image congruence and emotional value. Initially, we investigated the mediation effect of ATB on the relationship between self-congruity and purchase intention. Subsequently, we analyze how financial literacy moderates this mediation process.

The study employed a sample of 383 virtual influencers’ fans and applied a partial least square structural equation model (PLS-SEM) along with robustness tests to test the research hypothesis. The analysis is based on the moderated mediation framework.

The findings are intriguing for several reasons. First, it reveals that only self-image congruence positively affects purchase intention, contrary to existing self-congruity theory literature. The relationship between self-image congruence and purchase intention is a direct relationship with no mediation effect of ATB. Second, ATB fails to mediate the self-congruity effect on purchase intention. Third, financial literacy has a negative relationship with purchase intention, indicating that fans of virtual influencers with higher financial literacy are less likely to purchase virtual influencers’ NFTs due to more critical investment evaluations. We also argue that financial literacy discards the consumption behavior effect from self-congruity variables on purchase intention.

The study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the significance of financial literacy on purchase intention under the self-congruity framework. It also surmises that self-image congruence does matter for the purchase intention of a virtual influencer’s NFT. However, further research could validate findings by studying broader NFT investors, incorporating fandom and impulse buying variables and examining actual NFT purchases against planned behavior.

This research is crucial for virtual influencers’ NFT creators, marketers and fans by providing insights for evaluating virtual influencers’ creators’ decision to pursue NFT markets. The findings reveal that the creators of virtual influencers should reconsider pursuing the NFT market, as self-congruity may not be a driving factor. Notably, our findings imply that a virtual influencer’s NFT is significantly different from a virtual influencer's merchandising business.

The originality of this study lies in extending the self-congruity within the NFT context, investigating how financial literacy moderates the mediation of ATB on the self-congruity-purchase intention relationship. It challenges self-congruity theory by showing that despite fans feeling aligned with virtual influencers, high financial literacy reduces the congruence.