Different fans, similar support: Environmental attitudes across professional sport fanbases

This study examines whether fans of two professional sport teams sharing the same venue differ in their environmental attitudes, awareness of team sustainability initiatives, and support for environmental action based on both sport affiliation and environmentalist identity.

Professional sport organizations increasingly use sustainability initiatives to engage fans, yet many teams remain hesitant to promote them due to fears of political polarization or fan backlash. The study shows that environmental attitudes vary more strongly according to fans’ environmentalist identity than by the sport they follow, challenging assumptions that sustainability messaging alienates large portions of sport audiences.

The authors surveyed 2,652 season ticket holders from two North American professional sport teams competing in different sports but sharing the same stadium and sustainability infrastructure. They compared environmental awareness, perceived behavioral control, ascriptions of responsibility toward teams, awareness of sustainability initiatives, and “green team fandom” across sport affiliation and environmentalist status categories (active, passive, or non-environmentalist). The findings revealed only small differences between fans of the two sports, suggesting that sport affiliation alone had limited influence on environmental attitudes. In contrast, environmentalist identity had strong effects across nearly all variables. Importantly, even non-environmentalists did not express particularly negative attitudes toward sustainability initiatives, although awareness of teams’ sustainability programs remained relatively low across all groups.

This suggests that sport organizations may have greater freedom to promote sustainability initiatives than previously assumed, since even less environmentally engaged fans were generally supportive. The authors argue that teams should improve and better tailor their sustainability communication strategies to different fan segments, using sport fandom and social identity as tools to encourage broader environmental engagement and climate action.

CITE: Kellison, T., McCullough, B. P., Cianfrone, B. A., & Pelcher, J. A. (2025). Inter-and intra-team differences in professional sport fans’ environmental attitudes. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 26(6), 1-13. DOI: 10.1108/IJSMS-07-2024-0174