Antecedents and consequences of emotional attachment to sport teams brands

With the proliferation of professional teams in the highly competitive sports industry, team brand managers have been looking for ways to reinforce emotional attachment and loyalty to a team brand and to increase the dissemination of positive information about the team brand among fans. This paper aims to provide insight by investigating the effects of team brand experience and team brand personality on emotional attachment towards the sport team brand, as well as the impact of emotional attachment on loyalty towards the sport team brand and positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Data were collected using online questionnaires from 472 Canadian fans of professional teams in the National Hockey League. The results showed that sport team brand experience is a significant predictor of both cognitive and affective dimensions of fans’ emotional attachment, namely investment and dividend, respectively. Sports team brand personality, on the other hand, has a significant effect on dividend solely. Investment, the cognitive dimension of emotional attachment, influences both sports team brand loyalty and positive eWOM while dividend, its affective dimension, affects eWOM only. This research thus extends our understanding of the determinants and consequences of consumers’ emotional attachment to sports brands and its relationship to other relevant concepts.