Beyond the goal line: a cross-country investigation of the determinants of football fan loyalty in Germany, Brazil and China

Football (soccer) accounts for 43 per cent of the global market for major sports. 3.4 billion people around the world watched the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Competition from other sports is increasing. However, little is known about the antecedents of attitudinal and behavioural loyalty for football fans and how these influences diverge in different cultural settings. This has heightened the need in understanding what drives football fans to be attitudinally committed to and exhibit fan-related behaviours for a team, and how this may vary across German, Brazilian and Chinese fans. A theoretically developed conceptual model is empirically tested using survey data from football fans from Germany, Brazil and China. The findings show that: (a) attitudinal fan loyalty is largely determined by motivation and fanship, followed by overall satisfaction with the team; (b) attitudinal fan loyalty drives behavioural fan loyalty; and (c) the model largely holds in different cultural contexts across countries, although differences were found between German and Brazilian fans for the effects of motivation and fanship. This study offers new insights into advancing the discourse in the area of fan-loyalty research in a cross-national context. Managerial implications and recommendations for future research are also presented