Exploring the Factors that Influence the development of Fans’ Attitudes towards name sponsors of Sport Facilities

The purpose of the study was to examine factors that influence fans’ attitude towards a naming rights sponsor of a sports facility. The survey sample consisted of 511 spectators of professional football and basketball matches at sports facilities in Attica. The questionnaire of Chen & Zhang (2012) was used to measure the majority of the factors explored. For the evaluation of the outcomes of sponsorship acceptance decisions, Kyle et al. (2003) approach was adopted, as modified in the context of naming rights sponsorship (Anestos et al., 2016). From the regression analyses performed, it was found that sponsorship beliefs, evaluation of sponsorship acceptance decisions, and attitude towards commercialization (correlated negatively) had a significant effect on predicting attitude towards the sponsor. Contrary to research hypotheses, team identification did not predict attitude toward the sponsor, while stadium identification had a significant -but not negative- impact on the attitude toward the sponsor.