Consumer Based Brand Associations for Professional Football Leagues

Abstract

Sport brand research primarily focuses on sport teams as brands. Although the literature focuses on teams, league branding is becoming increasingly important, due to the fact that professional sport leagues face an increasing competition for spectators, and against other entertainment opportunities. In a desire to be the preferred code of choice, managers of the respective league brands look to leverage their brand associations to establish brand equity in order to buffer the plethora of entertainment choices available to spectators. This study examines whether existing team brand association literature can be applied to leagues, and finds that 12 of the 14 tested associations are applicable for leagues. Furthermore, existing differences between the four football leagues in Australia in terms of the league brand associations are revealed.