Yannis Lianopoulos, Nicholas D. Theodorakis, Antonis Gardikiotis, Nikolaos Tsigilis, Athanasio Koustelios

Abstract: Although prior studies have reported that distant (i.e., foreign) team identification can predict several benefits for sport teams, few attempts have been made to examine the factors that can foster this construct. a great amount of research has helped advance the knowledge regarding the factors that can foster the levels of local (i.e., home) team identification, few have made efforts to explain such topics with respect to fans who prefer to identify with distant (i.e. foreign) sport teams. Moreover, limited research has explored the possible similarities or differences concerning the identification’s antecedents between these two fan categories. The purpose of the current study was to propose a hypothesized model that incorporates four well-established antecedents of local (i.e., home) team identification factors (e.g., vicarious achievement, history and tradition, team similarity, and domain involvement) that could be able to predict fans’ identification with local and distant teams and to test for invariance across the two fan groups. Data was collected from visitors of three Greek websites (one news site, one sport site, and one sport site that focuses exclusively on non-Greek football teams) (N = 1,142), consisting of 1,163 local and 279 distant fans. The results from the structural invariance analysis showed that the hypothesized antecedents significantly predicted team identification in both samples. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Keywords: Team identification, antecedents, local fans, distant fans, sport fan behavior

Citation: Lianopoulos, Y., Theodorakis, N. D., Gardikiotis, A., Tsigilis, N., & Koustelios, A. (2021). Antecedents of sport team identification: Testing for invariance across local and distant sports fans. International Journal of Sport Management, 22(2), 97-132.

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