A study on the fan's image congruence of professional sport team's and attitudes towards star player their sport product and services effects on purchase intention

rofessional sports have emerged as a rewarding job that offers many opportunities for development. A strong professional sports team brand creates opportunities for product extensions beyond the core product. As professional sports clubs progress towards branding, it can be anticipated that there will be a direct proportional increase in the capacity of the fans to become a brand. Also, the presence of a star athlete in a team can contribute to the overall appeal of a particular team. It can be said that the athletes who performed extraordinarily in sports competitions attracted the attention of the national media. Therefore, the characteristics of a star athlete may increase the atmosphere, sales of products or services and most importantly ticket sales in games. The purpose of this study, three big clubs in Turkey; To determine the effect of Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş and Galatasaray fans on the team they support and the image perceptions of the star athlete they have determined, and the effect of the image congruence with the team and star athlete on their intention to purchase licensed sports products and services belonging to the team and star athletes. Within the scope of this purpose, the data to be used in the analyzes of the study were collected from Fenerbahçe (382), Beşiktaş (389) and Galatasaray (390) fans on the day of the match through a face-to-face survey from a total of 1200 fans around the stadiums of these three clubs. For analysing the data in this study; exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, variance analysis, and structural equation model analysis were applied with descriptive statistical tests. The results of the analysis support the expectations regarding the hypotheses and research questions. The results of the study shows that the intentions of Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray fans while they purchase licensed products and services are affected by the team image and image congruence with the team they support. On the other hand the intentions of Beşiktaş fans while they purchase licensed products and services are affected by the brand image of the star athlete and image congruence with the star athlete.