Purpose

The aim of this research was to investigate fans’ responses toward a sponsor that has had a long-standing sponsorship deal with a club and decided also to sponsor the club’s rival.

Design/methodology/approach

A long-term sponsorship deal between a retsina wine company and a popular football club and a newly established deal between the company and the main rival club were selected as the research setting. Data were collected from a total sample of 302 participants, fans of the two teams, using an online survey and PLS-SEM was employed to test the relationships of the proposed structural model.

Findings

The results provided evidence for the importance of the inclusion of perceptions of fit for both teams to the model as it impacted the responses in the joint sponsorship. Team identification emerged significant for improving fans perceptions of fit between the sponsor and their favorite club but also led fans of the long-term sponsored club to feel betrayed from the sponsor. The sense of betrayal impacted the level of fit, the rejection of sponsorship but did not emerge significant for driving negative responses toward the sponsor’s brand. The same held for the rejection of the joint sponsorship.

Originality/value

This is the very first study that incorporated the effects of the perceptions of fit of two rival clubs to test the effect of sponsorship for a sponsor brand of a deal that includes a longtime sponsored football club and its rival as a newly sponsored one. It is also one of the first attempts that explores relationships between perceptions of fit, sense of betrayal and rejection of a joint sport sponsorship in a rivalry context, highlighting the importance of preventing fans' betrayal.

中文翻译：

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从爱到背叛？当你的球队的赞助商决定也赞助你的对手时

 目的

这项研究的目的是调查球迷对与俱乐部有长期赞助协议并决定赞助该俱乐部竞争对手的赞助商的反应。

设计/方法论/途径

雷西纳葡萄酒公司与一家受欢迎的足球俱乐部之间的长期赞助协议以及该公司与主要竞争对手俱乐部之间新达成的协议被选为研究背景。使用在线调查从 302 名参与者（两支球队的球迷）中收集数据，并使用 PLS-SEM 来测试所提出的结构模型的关系。

 发现

结果证明了将两个团队的适合度纳入模型的重要性，因为它影响了联合赞助的反应。球队认同对于改善球迷对赞助商和他们最喜欢的俱乐部之间的契合度具有重要意义，但也导致长期赞助俱乐部的球迷感到被赞助商背叛。背叛感影响了契合度、拒绝赞助的程度，但对于推动对赞助商品牌的负面反应并没有显着影响。拒绝联合赞助也是如此。

 原创性/价值

这是第一项研究，纳入了两个竞争对手俱乐部的契合度感知的影响，以测试赞助商品牌对一项交易的赞助效果，该交易包括一个长期赞助的足球俱乐部及其作为新赞助的竞争对手。这也是探索在竞争背景下适合感、背叛感和拒绝联合体育赞助之间关系的首次尝试之一，强调了防止球迷背叛的重要性。