An analysis of the opportunities of social marketing application for prevention of the fans rowdy behavior

Background. This article is about: how to apply social marketing for prevention of the fans rowdy behavior. Analysis of the scientific literature revealed that there are no surveys of social marketing applications for prevention of the fans rowdy behavior in Lithuania. Social marketing uses the elements of price, placement, promotion, and product to introduce a product or behavior for the public benefit, so it can be successfully used for prevention of fans rowdy behavior. Objective - to identify opportunities of social marketing application for prevention of the fans rowdy behavior. Methods. The study was carried out in 2013 March 6 - 23. Respondents were randomly selected fans of LKL basketball clubs. The questionnaire was filled on the Internet, because fans lived in different Lithuanian cities. Total survey questioned 176 fans. Results. The research shows, that the main reason, why fans of LKL basketball clubs are visiting games, and for most of them - support they favorite team. More then half of them include local fans, who visit the games when the match takes place in the house arena, and 31.43 percent devoted fans, they visit all matches of the team. Almost half of the respondents bedieve that social marketing can help to prevent the fans rowdy behavior. Most of fans believe that the most effective would be if teams have promoted more friendly fan behavior on the basis of social marketing, and fan‘s clubs have supported the idea of a friendly support. The results showed that more then half fans believe that the least impact on their behavior on the public paid more attention to their containment, more than half of respondents believe that it would not help. Conclusions. More than three quarters of the fans think that social marketing can be successfully used for prevention of fans rowdy behavior. They think that all four social marketing techniques (teams, fans clubs and public advertising, which promote the idea of keeping a friendly support of teams and to disclosure to the public delinquent fans personalities) could be used to rowdy fan behavior prevention