If you are not with us, you are against us: the role of sports team identification in driving oppositional brand loyalty through sports team love

Purpose While the love–hate relationship has been widely studied in the relationship between fans and their sports teams, little has been documented regarding the same in the context of the relationship between sports fans and affiliates of their sports teams, notably sponsors. Thus, this study aims to investigate the impact of sports team love on oppositional brand loyalty, mediated by fan identification and fan community identification. Design/methodology/approach This is a cross-sectional study that used convenience sampling, a non-probability technique to recruit and collect data from 270 sports fans of Young Africans Sports Club and Simba Sports Club in Dodoma city, Tanzania. The collected data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling(PLS-SEM). Findings The study reveals that love for a sports team drives oppositional brand loyalty, and both fan identification and fan community identification play significant mediating roles in this relationship. The findings shed light on the influence of love–hate relationships in driving fans’ behavior toward their sports teams and their affiliates, notably sponsors. Originality/value This study is among the few that examine the phenomenon of love–hate relationships in the context of interactions between sports fans and team sponsors. It offers valuable insights into the darker side of sports sponsorship, showing that while in-group fans (i.e. supporters of a given team) actively endorse their team’s sponsors, out-group fans (i.e. supporters of rival teams) hold a different perspective, often denigrating those sponsors.