Loyal Fans Research Articles

Applying the public relations function to the business of sport

Public relations practice in sport is not always evident, yet to the contemporary sports business, it has much to offer. This paper explores the value of public relations to professional sports organisations. Cricket was chosen in particular because although it does not enjoy the same popularity as soccer in the UK, it has an extremely loyal fan base and widespread support at grass roots level. A critical finding from this research is that the communications strategies recommended for use in cricket are equally applicable to other sports.

Professional wrestling – multi‐million pound soap opera of sports entertainment

Professional wrestling is a multi‐million pound industry. Loyal fans watch events and buy merchandising. However, even the participants admit that the results are pre‐arranged, with writers producing the stories and the characters for those involved. In other words, the whole phenomena is manufactured. The spectators are aware of this, and still continue to offer their support. This study looks at the ways in which the industry seeks to entertain these fans and offer them the product that will maintain their interest and their attention and ensure that they will continue to pay regularly so as to maintain the industry’s profitability.

Tony Soprano's America: the criminal side of the American dream

Hit Man. Family Man. Drug Dealer. Devoted Dad. Meet Tony Soprano - the chilling mob boss and central character of the popular HBO series The Sopranos. To millions of viewers, Tony is the good guy, the solid provider who commits nearly every crime conceivable while maintaining a loyal fan following. Tony has defined for us an entirely new, if skewed, moral code. Tony Soprano's America looks at the relationship between the American Dream and the manner in which we pursue it. Like Tony, can we do the effectively expedient thing without sacrificing honor? Must we be held accountable for our behavior? In this fascinating look at the social and family dynamics of Tony's life and at the societal problems that surround it, criminologist David Simon takes the reader through crime in America: from the streets to the boardroom, from the local hood to far-reaching international syndicates. Updated with a new preface. THIS BOOK WAS NOT PREPARED, LICENSED, APPROVED, OR ENDORSED BY ANY ENTITY INVOLVED IN CREATING OR PRODUCING The Sopranos TELEVISION SERIES

Harry Potter, Inc.

Harry Potter, Inc.

Holy cow!Wait ’til next year! A closer look at the brand loyalty of Chicago Cubs baseball fans

This study examined several factors related to the brand loyalty exhibited by fans of the Chicago Cubs major league baseball team. A total of 371 patrons of a restaurant located in Wrigleyville were surveyed prior to Cubs games at Wrigley Field. Working from a tripartite model of brand loyalty, it was predicted that, compared to less loyal fans, die‐hard (extremely loyal) Cubs fans would demonstrate different attitudes and behaviors regarding the Chicago Cubs. Several hypotheses were developed and tested using descriptive statistics, cross‐tabulations, and ANOVA procedures. Significant differences between the two fan groups were found in the areas of brand loyalty, baseball knowledge, childhood exposure to Cubs’ games, frequency of Cubs’ game attendance, and likelihood of purchasing Cubs paraphernalia. A variety of managerial implications are drawn from the results and future research suggestions are provided.

The Earnest Equivocator: Columbo Undoes Macbeth

The academic commonplace that functioned in his own time as culture is just that, purely academic: despite a myriad of texts which attest to the breadth of Shakespeare's contemporaneous audience,1 for the majority of modern Americans, the canon remains high culture. While movie-theater audiences have been invited to become consumers of through such recent vehicles as in Love, Ten Things I Hate about You (a loose adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew), and A Midsummer Night's Dream, all released in 1999, the most popular of American audiences2 (because television remains the most ubiquitous of mass media technologies) resists consuming as regular fare. So it is with great pleasure that I will examine a cultural moment when becomes culture again: the moment when Columbo undoes in a madefor-television film entitled Dagger of the Mind? In this essay I will explore the ways in which the Columbo film's appropriation of succeeds in satisfying the expectations of the fans of the rumpled detective, at the same time as it offers what Robert Willson terms fresh Shakespeare (34); significantly, the pleasure in this text is heightened for the discerning viewer by the way in which Dagger both pays tribute to, and distorts, Shakespeare's text. Finally, Dagger offers viewers an image of Columbo as the Ugly American who threatens the hegemony of the British system within the detective genre, and within the plot. While the British Broadcasting Company may have popularized the Bard for British television audiences, his presence on American television has always been confined to the Public Broadcasting Service, or, more recently, to premium cable stations, as was the case with the Home Box Office channel's animated plays. Since crime drama is a prevalent narrative form in culture, the nexus of and television crime drama offers a rare instance of American culture becoming Bardolized in spite of itself. The escapades of Lieutenant Columbo of the Los Angeles Police Department were first viewed as part of the NBC Mystery Movie series, which aired from 1971 to 1978, and from 1989 to 1991, with additional specials in 1992, '93, '96, '97, and '98; a new audience was realized from the syndication of the series. Today Columbo entraps criminals and regales audiences on two cable stations, the Family Channel, and (ironically) the Arts and Entertainment Network. Fans of the disorderly detective may also share insights, trade pirated episodes, play at playwright, and adapt Columbo's strategies for parlor games on a multitude of Internet sites.4 As is the case with the entire series, Columbo's charms its TV audience with gentle humor. The familiar presence of the brilliant-but-bumbling Lieutenant Columbo, who succeeds in exasperating the and Lady figures as he painstakingly proves their guilt, offers American audiences numerous opportunities for conspiratorial laughter at the expense of the snobbish Brits. In addition, the role of the Banquo-figure, the butler, is played by Wilfrid Hyde-White, a familiar face to American TV audiences: that he is ruthlessly murdered by Macbeth assures the viewers' alliance with the forces of justice. Initially, the movie rewards the affections of Columbo's loyal fans. Our first glimpse sets him in conflict with uptight British airport police; having lost his suitcase, he annoys another passenger by attempting to determine if her bag, identical to his perennially-absent wife's, is his. When he unsuccessfully attempts to pacify the irritated passenger (clumsily dumping the contents of her suitcase), the responding functionaries treat Columbo patronizingly until a representative of Scotland Yard identifies him as the visiting dignitary for whom they have been waiting. Columbo's diffident emendations of the Yard's facile assumptions begin soon after he meets Detective Chief Superintendent Dirk (Bernard Fox), who is engaged in the investigation of the death of Sir Roger Havisham, the financier of a production of Macbeth, just opening at the Royal Court. …

A whole new game: off the field changes in baseball, 1946-1960

During the period from the end of World War II to the first expansion of the game of baseball in 1961, the sport underwent a series of transformative changes. From 1949 to 1954, major league baseball attendance dropped more than 30 per cent, as once fiercely loyal fans turned to other leisure activities, started going to see more football, and began watching more television. In addition, the sport had to wrestle with the issues of racial integration, franchise shifts and unionization, while trying to keep a firm hold on the minds and emotions of the American public. This work chronicles how baseball, with imagination and some foresight, survived the challenges of the postwar era. Some of the solutions were arrived at intelligently, some clumsily, but by the early 1960s baseball was a stronger, healthier and better balanced institution than ever before.

The Effect of Individual Levels of Self-Monitoring on Loyalty to Professional Football Teams

Introduction Understanding fans has become critical to sport organizations in recent years. As a result of increased competition and rising financial pressures (e.g. Fulks, 1996; Howard, 1999), sport organizations can not afford fluctuations in fan support and need to maintain a large base of loyal fans. Loyal fans can be quite valuable to an organization because they are more likely to attend games, purchase team merchandise, watch games on television, and listen to games on the radio. All of these activities can lead to increased profitability for the team through increased revenue. For example, the University of Notre Dame (USA) has been able to use its national following and large number of highly loyal fans to assure sellouts of all of its home football games, to consistently be one of the leaders among American Universities in merchandise sales, and to sign the most lucrative television contract in American college football (Eitzen & Sage, 1997). Although sport executives in the past seemed to take such high levels of fan loyalty and support for granted, the negative reaction following the 1994 baseball strike suggests otherwise. Baseball teams reported drops in attendance as high as 49% in the beginning of the 1995 season (Antonen, 1995) and television ratings for baseball on TBS dropped about 23% after the 1994 strike (Mihoces, 1995). Yet, some teams appeared to be able to avoid a negative impact from the strike. There was considerable variance among teams in regard to fan reaction and some teams were able to maintain the same levels of attendance and a few even reported a gain (Antonen, 1995). Just as there are differences among teams with regards to the level of loyalty among their fans, there appear to be individual differences between fans with regards to their team loyalty. While some fans remain loyal to the same team their entire lives, others seem to switch whenever the situation related to their favorite team is negative (e.g. team performs poorly). The question is: why are some fans consistently very loyal, while others seem to demonstrate such little loyalty to their favorite teams? Moreover, what can sport marketers do to prevent fans with a tendency to be disloyal from leaving them? Also, what can they do to steal disloyal fans away from other teams? The focus of the current study was to examine research related to sport fans and research in social psychology to try to determine why there are differences among individuals and in particular to identify fans likely to be disloyal. Further, the current study then attempted to present research based suggestions for maintaining loyalty among these generally disloyal fans. Sport Fan Research In spite of its obvious importance, little is known about fans' loyalty to their favorite teams (Zillman & Paulus, 1993). Still, there has been some important research on sport fans. Hirt, Zillman, Erickson, & Kennedy (1992) reported that highly identified fans indicated that their mood, self-esteem, estimates of future personal performance, and estimates of future team performance were all positively impacted when the team won and were negatively impacted when the team lost. This research would seem to indicate the relationship between the team and the individual can be quite strong in the mind of the fan, so that success or failure by the team becomes equated with success or failure by the fan. Because of the potential for both positive and negative impacts, it would seem logical that some fans will adjust their relationship with the team in different situations. In fact, Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, and Sloan (1976) found individuals increase their association, or Bask in Reflected Glory (BIRG), with sport teams when the teams performed well. Specifically, Cialdini et al. found that students were more likely to wear university-related clothing and use the inclusive pronoun we following a winning effort by the football team. …

The Effects of Team Loyalty and Selected Stadium Factors on Spectator Attendance

Having loyal fans and a winning team generally results in higher attendance at games. However, university and professional team administrators are beginning to recognize the importance of marketing the stadium experience as more than just the game. Drawing from data collected from spectators at five Southeastern Conference football stadiums, the effects of team loyalty, stadium parking, stadium cleanliness, perceived crowding, food service, and fan behavior control on spectators' desire to stay and attend games at the stadium were investigated. Covariance structural modeling (e.g., LISREL) was employed to test the causal relationships among the hypothesized relationships. The results support the premise that although team loyalty strongly affects attendance, stadium design and stadium services also directly influence spectators' desire to stay, and hence, attend games at the stadium.

Emotional Responses to the Sports Page

Spectators' emotional responses during actual competitions and attributions for game outcomes have been previously examined. In the current research, emotional responses of fans either high or low in identification with a team were measured after they simply read a newspaper article written by another fan of their team or a fan of a competing team. The author was described as either loyal or disloyal to his own team following a competition that was either won or lost in overtime. As hypothesized, persons with varying degrees of identification with the team exhibited different patterns of reactions to the article. For highly identified persons, the most positive mood state followed exposure to a sports article that described a victory for the ingroup whose author was also an admitted loyal fan of the same team. The most negative affect was evoked when the author of the article was a disloyal fan of the subjects' favorite team and the competition was lost. This pattern was not found for individuals low in identification with the team. They were not significantly influenced by the game outcome, group membership of the author, or the author's degree of commitment to the team. Implications for research on sports spectators, exposure to sports news, and emotion regulation are discussed.

Spectator Violence at Sports Events: What Keeps Enthusiastic Fans in Bounds?

A large crowd of fiercely loyal fans, a heated contest, and a few too many beers are a volatile mix. Sports officials must consider that mix to prevent violence-related injuries among spectators.