Fan Identification and Sponsorship Evaluation of Football Spectators (Antalya Example)

Abstract

Sport industry is a diverse and rapidly developing and growing industry. Besides its benefits for maintaining and developing health for the individual and the society, sport is an attractive advertising and promotion medium, an entertainment and consumption sectorand a sector where many economic transactions take place. One of the reasons behind the tremendous economic growth of this sector is the concept of sponsorship. Sport activities are the leading activities that sponsors give support all around the world. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the fan identification levels and sponsorship evaluation of football spectators that attend to first league football matches of Antalyaspor, played in a stadium located in Akdeniz University Campus in Antalya city center. As the number of population is not exactly known, (n=t2pq/d2) formula is used and 385 is obtained as sample size. 395 questionnaires were used in the sample. Sport Fan Identification Scale and Sponsorship Evaluation Scale were used for data collection. In data analysis, non-parametric correlation and hypothesis tests were used as the data were not normally distributed. According to the results, fan identification showed positive relationship with personal liking for event (r=0.406, p<0.05), status of the event (r=0.337, p<0.05), attitude towards event (r=0.281, p<0.05) and sponsoractivity fit (r=0.143, p<0.05).Men spectators showed higher scores in fan identification and the personal liking for event (p<0.05). Evaluation of sponsorship is an important issue for the teams to see if they made good decisions and also for the sponsorsors if their investment brought a good return. So for future research sponsorship evaluation studies are recommended.

Keywords: sport sponsorship, fan identification, football spectators,evaluation of sponsorship