Profiling sports spectators in emerging markets: role of sports involvement as a segmentation tool

Globalisation of sports with consequent maturation of the sector offers a huge marketing opportunity in the emerging markets. The relevance of a sports consumer's commitment and involvement with a particular sport comes into play with respect to his consumption intentions. The present paper attempts to understand the current status and future prospect of football as a sport in India with reference to its existing spectator-base and their level of involvement and intent to engage with mega sporting events related to football. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that involvement was a multi-dimensional construct, encompassing - football (game) involvement; team (club) involvement and individual (player) involvement. Further a non-hierarchical cluster analysis on a group of 486 football enthusiasts in urban India revealed the existence of four discrete clusters of football spectators' basis their level of involvement with the sport. These clusters were identified and named as team involved; player involved;...