Investigating sport rivals: Number, evaluations and relationship with team identification

The current investigation examined the number of teams fans list as rivals of teams they follow closely, moderately and casually. It was hypothesized that there would be positive correlations between the level of identification for a team and the number of teams listed as rivals, and that evaluations of rival teams would be most negative for teams followed closely, followed by teams followed moderately, and then teams followed casually. Further, we expected negative relationships between identification and evaluations of the rivals. The final two hypotheses concerned predictors of estimates of the likelihood of watching rivals’ games: participants would report being more likely to watch rivals of closely followed teams and that identification would account for a significant proportion of unique variance in desire to watch rival games. Students from several universities completed a questionnaire packet assessing identification for and perceptions of rivals of teams they follow closely, moderately and casually. The results indicated strong support for the hypothesized patterns of effects.