As a Spanish LaLiga football Manager ones said: “More people get divorced than fans changing club preference”.
But how and why are sports fans illimitably loyal to sports teams, individual players and clubs? To provide an answer to this frequently stated question in this blog I chose a famous sports marketing model.
I believe that the fan engagement model established by P.h.D. student Jason P. Doyle’s is how most sports organizations create loyalty toward their brand. It was named the Psychological Continuüm Model (PCM-model). The utilization of multiple media sources is necessary to increase exposure and to, in the long run, create brand loyalty according to the model.
The relationship between a sport club, individual athlete or sports competition will improve over time. The PCM-model suggests four stages a sports fan find himself in:
Stage 1: Awareness (I know the New York Yankees)
Stage 2: Attraction (I like the New York Yankees)
Stage 3: Attachment (I am a Yankee fan)
Stage 4: Allegiance (I live for the New York Yankees)
Sports organisations invest in marketing and fan engagement to evolve the fans in the Awareness stage to hopefully a fan in the Allegiance stage. Fans in a high involvement stage will spend more money buying merchandising goods, tickets and will convince friends and family to do the same.
A fan cannot transform from Awareness to Allegiance without the two intermediate steps. According the the PCM-model the level of engagement has to grow step-by-step.
This was my first blog regarding fan engagement which is huge in the sports marketing world. Please let me know what you believe the PCM-model should chance and how this theory can, in the future, be improved.
Sources:
– Jason P. Doyle Sports Spectator Segmentation
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