'Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Architecture'
Abstract
Interest in sport, especially in soccer has been increasing in Turkey. Consequently, sport clubs should ascertain the reasons why people attend sporting events and what motivates them to attend in order not to lose their interest. From this point; the purpose of this study was to examine the motivational factors affecting spectator attendance of soccer games in Turkey. In order to measure the sport fan motivations of the spectators, the Turkish version of Motivational Scale for Sport Consumption (MSSC) was distributed to 602 spectators in three different Super League Soccer games with the systematic sampling procedure. Results of this study indicated that the physical skills of the athletes, aesthetics related with the game of soccer and the achievement motives are the most effective motives in explaining spectators̕ decisions to attend soccer games in Turkey. On the other hand, escape, drama, and social interaction motives were found to be the least important motives of the Turkish soccer spectators. The findings of this study also revealed that the more frequent ticket consumers̕ achievement and acquisition of knowledge motivations were higher than the other consumer types in spectator segmentation. Multiple regression analysis revealed that 27 % of the variance in future ticket consumption intentions can be accounted for by the linear combination of 6 of the 12 variables including past ticket consumption frequency, fan identification with the team, and the motives of achievement, acquisition of knowledge, aesthetics, and social interaction. These findings indicated that Turkish spectators are mainly motivated by the core product of the sport, the game itself. However, previous studies indicated that overarching motives (escape, social interaction) should be one of the aspects of the game attendance. Thus, findings of this study showed that Turkish spectators do notM.S. - Master of Scienc
