Sports Fan Executive Summary

An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this issue

A conceptual approach to classifying sports fans
Kenneth A. Hunt

Associate Professor of Marketing, Fort Lewis College, Durango,
Colorado, USA

Terry Bristol

Assistant Professor of Marketing and Advertising, University of
Arkansas at Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

R. Edward Bashaw

Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Arkansas at Little
Rock, Arkansas, USA

Keywords Sport, Individual behaviour, Consumer behaviour, Services marketing
Abstract Develops a classification or typology of the sports fan. Specifically, contends that five different types of sports fans exist: temporary, local, devoted, fanatical, and
dysfunctional.
The local fan exhibits fan-like behavior because of identification with a geographic area (e.g. where he or she was born or lives). Jones (1997) found that the two most frequently cited reasons by fans for currently supporting their favorite soccer team were that it was the local team (53 per cent) and that the fan was born in the town or city (10 per cent). Certainly, one would expect to find more Chicago Cubs fans as a percentage of the total population in Chicago than in any other city in
America. However, like the temporary fan, the local fan still operates under a constraint: if a local fan moves away from the city where the schema target is located, the devotion of the fan diminishes.
For example, if the fan 's schema target is a specific sports team, moving from the city would tend to decrease the extent to which the local fan identifies with that team. On the other hand, if the local fan 's schema target is a specific player, separation of either the fan or the player from that locality would tend to decrease the local fan 's devotion to that player. The movement from the locality leads to diminishing enthusiasm and devotion
By maintaining a devoted fan base, teams and leagues realize such benefits accruing from fan game attendance, fan viewing of local and national television broadcasts, and fan listening to local and national radio broadcasts. Importantly, this fan base is the one that tides over teams through bad times ± when the team is not winning or when it has changed localities ± when the temporary or local fan has become a non-fan.
Corporate marketers looking to segment a market based on activities and lifestyles may well benefit from linking their goods and services using the newest mass medium, the Internet. Team marketers, in an effort to feed the information need of the devoted fan, have increasingly used the Internet to create a ``team page ' ' devoted entirely to their specific team. Linking their goods and services or their firm 's name with the team on the ``team page ' ' appears to be an avenue many companies are choosing to pursue. In addition, many teams create their own ``insider ' ' publications. Sponsoring or advertising in these publications allows the devoted sports fan to make associations of the team with the advertiser or sponsor.

Expressing team devotion

Marketing and the fanatical