European football supporter attitudes toward ambush marketing

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore attitudes towards ambush marketing at the 2016 Union of European Football Associations European Championships, seeking to examine fan affect towards ambush marketing. Design/methodology/approach: A 24-item survey questionnaire was constructed, exploring consumers’ general cognition and affection of ambush marketing; following Dickson et al.’s (2015) design, industry-specific attitudes were canvassed, assessing supporters’ views of beer and gambling industry ambush marketers. Findings: Results indicate that fans appear to be marginally more forgiving of ambush practices from beer or gambling brands than across ambushing more generally, yet a prevailing antipathy towards ambush marketing from an ethical perspective was observed. Importantly, however, the study’s findings suggest that industry-specific advertising regulations bear little impact on fan perspectives. Practical implications: The study’s results bear notable implications for marketing theory and practice: for ambushing brands, this suggests that they are rather less likely to be have a disruptive effect on events and their official sponsors. For official sponsors, a level of threat from ambushers nevertheless remains as it would appear consumers do not have strong views about the practice of ambushing. Originality/value: The study’s methods build upon and extend previous studies into consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing, specifically focusing on the perceptions and affect of fans in lieu of more empirically generalisable consumer populations. Given the target audiences of sponsors and ambush marketers, this emphasis on fan attitudes represents an important direction in ambush affect research.