Team identification and public support for political advocacy in international sports

The "Münster Team Identification Project" initiated by Strauss began in 2002. Münster is a medium-sized German university city. During all men's World Cup tournaments from 2002 to 2022, several thousand Münster citizens were asked in street surveys about their team identification (using the 7-item scale by Wann & Branscombe, 1993, German adaptation by Strauss, 1995) with the German men's soccer team and additionally other variables (such as national identity, feminization of the audience, see e.g. Meier, Strauss, et al. 2017; Meier, Konjer, & Strauss, 2018; Vergeld, Krüssmann, & Strauss, 2018).This study examines the extent to which the commitment to politicization in sport (here the 2022 World Cup in Qatar) is subject to salience, framing and identity effects in connection with team identification. The data was collected as part of a street survey using 25 items (e.g. team identification, work situation and LGBTQ+ rights in Qatar) during the WC (daily from Nov 17 to Dec 21 2022; N = 2,657; 47% male, Mage=38,1 years) and analyzed using multivariate statistical methods. The German team did not reach the knockout rounds. Among other things, the extensive results indicate that (in this Münster sample) the commitment to political advocacy for progressive values in international sports was very stable. It appears that respondents would only refrain from politicization to a certain extent if they saw a clear trade-off between political advocacy and sporting needs: The higher the respondents' identification with the German team, the lower the support for boycotting the World Cup, for example.