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An Exploratory Examination of the Factors Influencing the Origination, Continuation, and Cessation of Identification with Sports Teams

While previous work had focused on the manner in which identification with a sports team influences the reactions of spectators, research had yet to identify those factors with the greatest amount of influence on identification. This article reports on an exploratory study designed to fill this void by identifying the factors involved in the origination, continuation, and cessation of sports-team identification. Responses indicated that a wide variety of factors were perceived by fans to be important in their identification. Specifically, the success of the team, geographical reasons, the players, and affiliative reasons were all quite important in the fans' identification.