As sport teams with strong brands can enjoy a loyal fan base as well as increased gate revenue, brand studies in sport have paid close attention to sport teams' brand attributes (e.g., success, star player, stadium) as key drivers to create strong brands. However, sport consumers do not only rely on the brand attributes' utility in their team consumption, but claim and anticipate positive and personally meaningful emotional experiences. Nevertheless, a number of studies on sport branding have not identified what kinds of emotions are associated with sport teams and what their impact is. As a result, the affective nature of sport team brands remains largely unexplored. This study sought to identify how emotions associated with sport team brands are structured, from the sport consumers' perspective, and to examine the relative effectiveness of the associated emotions over brand attributes on consumer behavior in the sport advertising setting. The study identified seven key dimensions of emotions associated with sport team brands: connectedness (passion, nostalgia, supportive, and connected), elation (happy, excited, pleased, proud, optimistic, and entertained), competitiveness (competitive and aggressive), surprise (amazed, surprised, and astonished), anger (annoyed, frustrated, and rage), unhappiness (suffering, sad, regret, and dejected), and worry (fearful and anxious). Connectedness, elation, and competitiveness each was positively related to sport consumer behavior while surprise, unhappiness, and worry each was negatively related to it. Interestingly, anger had a dual (positive and negative) relationship with sport consumer behavior. The study tested the relative effectiveness of emotions over cognitive brand attributes on sport consumer behavior in a sport advertising setting using a 2 (emotion: high vs. low) x 2 (cognition: high vs. low) incomplete block design. The study found that emotional advertising works better for sport teams than rational advertising whereas combination advertising works at least equally or better than rational advertising. These results suggest the primacy of emotions over cognitive brand attributes in the context of sport advertising. Given the findings and discussions, implications for sport marketing practice and future research are discussed. / text

According to conventional wisdom, football fans exhibit perpetual loyalty to the clubs that they choose to support. These prevailing beliefs are largely the product of the fanaticism and intense partisanship that fans display. However, in South Africa, the reality is that the majority of the football teams are either failing to harness this loyalty, or that the loyalty levels that their fans display, contradict conventional wisdom. Due to the important role that these fans play in revenue generation, there is a need for leadership at these clubs to better understand this lucrative market. The objective of this study was to establish whether the loyalty levels displayed by fans in South Africa correspond with, or contradict, conventional wisdom. The limited understanding of the matter within a South African context means that clubs lack the required understanding of their respective fan bases. This creates a situation, which stifles the efficacy of management to implement positive changes. This study was anchored in the model of Stewart and Smith (2007) of sport fans' motivations. There are three core dimensions distinguished by the model. These relate to psychological, socio-cultural and social motives, all of which facilitate the process of an individual becoming a fan; and then subsequently remaining loyal. A qualitative research approach was used to collect the data for this study. An interview guide was used to collect the information from the fans and the top management of Cape Town City Football Club through face-to-face interviews. Each interview was recorded with the aid of a voice recorder and all the data collected were then transcribed. The findings from the study show that fans demonstrate more support to Cape Town City Football Club when the team is winning, as opposed to when it is going through a rough patch. Conclusively, the lack of understanding of fans in football clubs means that it is difficult to communicate in an all-inclusive way, considering that not all fans are the same. Based on the findings, the study suggests that leadership at South African football clubs should allow for open dialogues to be created, in which the issues can be discussed; so that practices implemented would better serve the target population.