Sports Fans

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the psychological make up of a sports fan and shows that it is much more complicated than its first glance suggests. The payback for being a sports fan includes the feeling of belonging, a better sense of well being, the ability to identify with the success of someone else and the ability to escape stresses in real life. The paper shows that sports fans around the world behave as consumers in both positive and negative ways which lead marketing departments scrambling to put their finger on keeping it profitable. Sports fans of all kinds identify and lock into their sport or team. Through their own actions they continue to drive profits up while relishing the togetherness being a fan affords them. The paper shows that for sports marketing departments to increase profits, it is important that they focus on making the group experience a positive one for fans.

From the Paper:

"Tailgate parties, thematic approaches to office parties and the selling out of merchandise are all examples of the psychological stronghold that being a sports fan holds for the person who becomes one.
Sports fan behavior has been studied since the 1970s (Nelson pg 18).
The social identity theory has long since been attached to sport fan behavior to explain how self esteem and evaluation can be elevated by identifying with the success of someone else. This is because many fans will discuss the athletic wins in the first person including statements such as "We played well" but when it came to losses the fan moves back to third person with statements such as "They lost last week" (Nelson pg 18) This behavior provides an understanding of what draws sports fans to become fans. They feel success through the success of the athletes and can push losses off on the team because they are not on the team themselves."

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