ABSTRACT
Understanding fan involvement in sport has important implications for sport organizations, including a range of attitudes and behaviors among sport consumers. As such, sport consumer behavior has been a topic of great importance to researchers over the years. For decades, scholars have utilized team identification to understand individuals’ psychological connection to sport teams. As a result, we have a good understanding of how team identification influences a variety of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, as well as the impact of identifying with a team on individuals’ sense of self. However, nearly all studies of team identification to date have dealt with men’s sport, essentially ignoring team identification in women’s sport. In this chapter, the literature on team identification—including the very limited amount of knowledge we have of team identification in women’s sport—is reviewed. As part of this review, figures on attendance and viewership of women’s sport are presented, in part to illustrate how consumer involvement is far different in women’s sport than in men’s sport.
