Spectator sports embody social group conflict, where consumers periodically interact with opposing fans, thereby providing outlets for negative brand affect in the form of acrimony toward rivals. To assess the regional nature of rivalry, this study compared 5,145 sports consumers across the four...

Accessing and exploiting organizational resources are essential capabilities for competitive sport organizations, particularly those engaged in motorsports, where teams lacking resources frequently dissolve. Corporate sponsorship represents a common method for resource acquisition. Yet, not all...

Rivalry is ubiquitous across sports, yet the representation and specification of rivalry varies widely. Such discrepancy poses problems when distinguishing between multiple outgroups and when employing rivalry to explain related questions such as demand for sport consumption. In this paper, we...

Previous research on sports rivalry has emphasized fans' social identity and the threat posed by rivals. Much of this scholarship is based on intercollegiate sports, where many fans, such as students and alumni, have a formally defined identity with the university. In this study, fans (N =...

Research Question: Despite pervasive attention to the concept of rivalry, there is neither uniform definition nor universal understanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore sport rivalry and derby matches from the fan perspective and identify the most influential elements that characterize...

Central to the conceptualization of rivalry is the process of social categorization and seeing the self and others as members of ingroups and outgroups. For some sport fans — especially those deemed highly identified — a favorite team becomes an extension of one’s self, and opposing teams...

Purpose - This paper examines how reference to a rival or favorite sports team within cause-related sports marketing (CRSM) campaigns affects fans’ intentions to support the cause. The purpose of the studies is to assess the perils of featuring a specific team in league-wide activations of...

The concept of rivalry is nearly ubiquitous across sports, and although the term “rival” appears frequently in academic work, researchers have not applied a consistent approach to determine what constitutes a rival. The purpose of this research is to identify key characteristics of a rivalry...

While rivalry debates rage among soccer fans and the media, scholars have focused much of their research on clashes between specific clubs that share a considerable history of competition. Yet, historical conflict is just one of several elements that contribute to enduring sports rivalries, and...

Emotion impacts fans' information processing and evaluation of sport sponsors. This paper examines the emotion of schadenfreude (joy at others' misfortune) within rivalry contests under a cognition-emotion theoretical framework. Study 1 assesses the relationships between appraisals of 11 rivalry...