Involvement of College Football Fans at The University of Southern Mississippi

The modern college football market faces several challenges including the fact that game day attendance numbers have continued to drop for the past few years and show no signs of slowing down. Understanding the psychological involvement of sports fans could play a major role in improving attendance numbers and providing consumers with a greater experience during football games. The primary goal of this research was to determine predictors of sports involvement among Southern Miss football fans. Another goal was to determine which facets of involvement predicted return intentions. With those who had attended a home Southern Miss football game in the last three years as the target demographic, a survey was created to understand which aspects of the game day experience influenced fans’ involvement and return intentions. A series of multiple regression analyses were utilized to examine the predictors of involvement with two distinct samples (students and non-students). As a result, this study contributed to the field of marketing by revealing that there are differences between the predictors of involvement for students and non-students, and that importance and pleasure play the largest role in determining return intentions