Factors Affecting Fan-Team Identification and Fan Loyalty:An Empirical Study of Iranian Premier Football League

The aim of the current study was to study the team factors affecting fan-team identification and fan loyalty among football fans of premier football league in Iran. Research population involved the fans of football teams that were famous for having eager fans in football premier league in Iran in season of 2012-2013. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using LISREL 8.72 to estimate the structure of the proposed relationship. The findings of the current study showed that factors such as star players, coaches and managers, technical qualities, team history, social commitments and responsibility, social interactions, and fan-team close relationships all have significant effect on fan-team identification. Among these factors, inspection of the path coefficients indicated that the strongest dimensions of the studied variables included technical qualities (β=0.67), star players, coaches and managers (β = 0.52) and social interaction (β = 0.44) respectively; and, the other influential factors were team history (β = 0.42), fan-team close relationships (β = 0.41) and social commitments and responsibility (β = 0.38). The results also showed that fan-team identification had positively significant effect on fan loyalty.

Fan-team identification, Football fans, Fan loyalty, Iran.