After years in the #2 spot, Major League Baseball is now tied with the National Football League for the “most loyal fans,” according to the 15th annual 2010 Brand Keys Sports Loyalty Index. The new study puts the National Basketball Association in second place and the National Hockey League in third among pro sports.
The firm says fan loyalty is based on four parameters:
- pure entertainment, or how well a team does, and how exciting they are;
- authenticity, or how well they play as a team, which can be helped by new venues and management;
- fan bonding, or the respect and admiration fans have for players; and
- history and tradition, meaning the role a team plays in a fan’s and a community’s rituals, institutions and beliefs.
Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, says that fans aren’t as rigidly sports-based as they used to be. “It used to be a much segmented audience of sports fans who, if they were football fans, followed only football. But around the mid-‘80s you started to have greater and greater crossover.”
He says teams can build loyalty through different channels based on the four loyalty drivers. Pure entertainment as a loyalty driver, says Passikoff, has less to do with the win/loss ratio than on how competitive or aggressive they are.
He says the Yankees do a good job of bonding with fans around merchandise, and not just because they have won championships. “They leverage everything they can and market the hell out of everything,” he says. “You don’t see a ‘Seattle Mariner’ TV network.”
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