When Sport Fans Disengage: A Structured Abstract

Loyal and engaged sport consumers provide the revenue opportunity from media rights, sponsorships and ticket sales that drive profitability for sport teams, corporate sponsors and sport media. Recent declines in spectators across a number of sports present new challenges to marketers in tough economic environments. Marketing scholarship to date has predominantly focused on the drivers of fan loyalty and allegiance (Darcy et al. 2012; Funk and Neale 2006) and the motivational aspects of fan behavior (Funk et al. 2002), at the expense of understanding the deterioration of the relationship between the sport consumer and sport team. This research examines the sport fan dissolution process involved when previously loyal sport consumers disengage from their chosen team. The paper reviews consumer-brand relationship dissolution process models and associated triggers to propose and test a model of sport fan detachment.