So your team is out…now what? US soccer fans and the 2018 FIFA Men’s World Cup

Sam Winemiller, Adam Love*, Jeffrey A. Graham, Seungmo Kim

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    Abstract

    In 2018, the US men’s national soccer team failed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup for the first time since 1986. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how sports fans react when their favourite team is not participating in a competition by surveying US soccer fans about the 2018 World Cup. In the current study, 841 US soccer fans completed a survey asking about which alternate teams they planned to support, the reasons for supporting a particular team, as well as their levels of soccer involvement, nationalism, and internationalism. Respondents most frequently intended to support Germany, and the ten most frequently supported teams were all from Europe or Latin America. With respect to reasons for supporting a given team, team-specific factors tended to be more important than relational-type factors.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)58-74
    Number of pages17
    JournalInternational Journal of Sport Management and Marketing
    Volume24
    Issue number1
    Early online date19 Dec 2023
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2024

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Business and International Management
    • Strategy and Management
    • Management Science and Operations Research
    • Marketing

    User-Defined Keywords

    • fandom
    • FIFA
    • international sport
    • internationalism
    • involvement
    • nationalism
    • soccer
    • sponsorship
    • sport marketing
    • World Cup

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