Investigating the Influences on Attendance and Intention to Rejoin with Inaugural Members of a New Football Team

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of factors like member satisfaction and social rituals on desirable outcomes such as attendance, intention to rejoin and merchandise sales. This study focuses on the inaugural members of a new team in Australia’s A-League to gain insight into how loyalty develops amongst fans of new sporting organisations. The results show the importance to sports marketers of satisfying members and building ritual behaviour, as both are correlated with all of the positive outcomes investigated here.