Investigation of the Evangelism of Sport Team’s Attitudes of the High School Students

Abstract

Developments in the sports industry have increased rivalry, professional sports clubs have moved towards economic activities in order to maintain their existence and have started to act like a business. Understanding the tendencies of the sports club fans, where the sports clubs interact intensively, will play a key role in the development of the sport. The aim of this study was to determine the sports team evangelism attitudes of high school students and to examine the evangelist behaviours. The research group consists of a total of 376 students in high school in Sivas. A descriptive qualitative survey model was used in the study. In order to determine the demographic characteristics of the participants, the eight-item personal information form, and the 12-item Sport Team Evangelism Scale which were developed by Dwyer, Greenhalgh and LeCrom (2015) and adapted to Turkish by Yüksekbilgili (2017) were used. Frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation values were used for data analysis. Normality tests of the data were performed and Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis H test were used to compare the variables that did not show normal distribution. According to the findings, it was observed that sport team evangelism levels differed statistically according to the participants' gender, the number of teams they went to, the frequencies of going to matches, the way they followed the matches, and the way to go away. It is seen that the level of evangelism of the sports team of the participants is moderate. Clubs are advised to develop marketing and marketing strategies for products and services, taking into account the profile and evangelist tendencies of the fans.