THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ONLINE SPORT CONSUMPTION MOTIVES AND POINTS OF ATTACHMENT OF THE PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM FANS

This study aims to determine the relationship between online sports consumption motives and points of attachment among professional football team fans. The study's population consists of professional football team fans in Turkey. A total of 226 football fans—50 women and 176 men—selected by purposive sampling participated in the study. The study used a survey form consisting of the Points of Attachment Index (PAI), the Motivation Scale for Sport Online Consumption (MSSOC), and demographic questions as data collection tools. We collected and analyzed the research data face-to-face using the SPSS 23.0 package program. In addition to descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation analyses were applied to evaluate the data. The analysis of the fans' attachment points to their teams revealed that the "team" sub-dimension had the highest average, as per the research findings. Conversely, the analysis revealed statistically significant differences in the sub-dimensions of points of attachment based on gender, age, and frequency of web participation variables. We determined that among the motives for online sports consumption, the "team support" sub-dimension had the highest mean. These motives had statistically significant differences according to gender, educational status, marital status, and web participation frequency variables. Finally, our study determined a low negative relationship between the points of attachment and the online sports consumption motives of football fans.