Zeichen Journal ISSN No: 0932-4747 Factors identifying the fans’ association with Indian Super League Avtar Singh1 & Rahul Sharma2 Mittal School of Business Department of Marketing Lovely Professional University Punjab, India. Abstract Sports League in India is becoming the trend and influence the corporates to invest in large scale and further extract small or long term benefits at regular intervals. Different sports leagues in India continue to take place round the year, it has now become practice and moreover a competitive strategy for most of the brands that sell similar category products in the market. This study focuses on identifying different factors that could help one understand the fans’ association with India Super League. The study involves the survey of 248 individuals/fans based at Amritsar, Punjab, India and the findings of the study suggests seven different factors on the basis of their relative significance. Keywords: Sports League, Sports Equity, Indian Super League, Football, Sports Marketing Introduction Sports marketing is mainly a subdivision of the marketing field which promote the sports events as well as the sports team all over the world. In the process, they also promote other products and services through those sports events and the sport teams. The element which will be promoted through this can either be a physical product or even a brand name. The main purpose for this is to aware the clients regarding the sports and also the brands that are all related to it followed by providing strategies to promote the sports or any other products, services or brand through this sport as stated by Lovelock et al., (2004). Mullin et al., (2014) Sports marketing can also be defined as the element for promoting a sport including a wide variety of fields such as broadcasting, advertising, social media, ticket sales etc. As stated in BARC report 2016, according to the survey cricket still dominates the Indian sports viewership, where other sports contribute over 20 % share in Indian sports viewership, that to has been emerged due to global sports events such as Olympics and introduction of various domestic leagues in India. It had been seen that out of this 20% share of viewership,80% share comes from 6 major properties- Pro Kabaddi League, Indian Super League, Rio Olympics 2016, Kabaddi World Cup 2016, Premier Badminton League, and Hockey India league. Moreover it has been analyzed from survey that Indian Super Volume 6, Issue 12, 2020 Page No:745 Zeichen Journal ISSN No: 0932-4747 League shows best reach ratio and has highest stickiness amongst its viewers, so it seems to be a better option for high engagement space. Also such leagues are being more favored by Female viewers and NCCS viewers, Hence FMCG industry could get much engagement with its targeted audience at same place. Indian Super League Times of India (2014) Indian Super League is professional football league in India where IMG– Reliance, Star Sports, and the All India Football Federation, officially launched the league on 21 October 2013. It is consists of 8 teams that includes Athletico De Kolkata, Chennaiyin FC, NorthEast United, Delhi Dynamos, Mumbai City FC, FC Pune City, FC Goa, Bengaluru FC, Jamshedpur FC, Kerala Blasters and Jamshedpur FC. The competition is first played in double round-robin league followed by the semi-finals (consist of two legs) and the final. Till now 5 editions of ISL is being held where ATK and Chennaiyin share the most number of championships with 2 trophies. On 18 July 2014, an announcement was made that Hero MotoCorp would be the first title sponsor of the Indian Super League. The deal was made for 3 years and was extended later for another 3 years. Also German sports manufacturer Puma SE acted as the ball supplier for the Hero ISL. The company provided balls for the game and the training session while in the recent season of 2018- 19, Nivia acts as the ball supplier of the tournament. Recently the tournament had gained the momentum and is very liked by the viewers The Hindu (2014). Literature Review Loakimidis (2016) narrated the fan interaction of the 12 teams across some of the greatest sports league in the world, the interaction approach taken by the teams towards their fans or supporters. The study includes the top tier leagues of hockey, football, rugby and soccer in North America and Europe. The National Football League (NFL) used more online marketing and media base. Gray and Wert-Gray (2011) focused on the main aspect of sports organization marketing that is the relationship marketing which carries a very important role. Once a sports organization successfully attained the relationship marketing programs it can develop long-term relationship with the fans, which lead to customer retention. The study mainly tell us about the customer retention in sports organization marketing by seeing the effect of identity and satisfaction by performance on four fan consumption behaviors i.e. in-person attendance, media based attendance, purchase of team merchandise and word of mouth communication. Thus we can understand that how much important relationship marketing is in order to maintain the fan base for a sports team. Vale and Fernandes (2017) emphasized about strong bonding of sports fans with their favorite teams both in offline and online world. Still the engagement of a fan is limited to social media Volume 6, Issue 12, 2020 Page No:746 Zeichen Journal ISSN No: 0932-4747 which is an online process. The study has been done to understand how and why fans engage with their favorite teams in social media. Regarding the uses and gratifications approach of the consumers online framework brand activities, seven motivations including Information, Entertainment, Personal Identity, Integration and Social Interaction, Empowerment, Remuneration and Brand Love along with three dimensions of online engagement behaviors such as consumption, contribution and creation were found out. A survey has been organized after that about the UEFA league on Facebook. Most required dimensions seem to be information, empowerment and brand love drive by consumption, contribution and creation respectively followed by integration and social interaction on second. The study fully focused on use of social media in sports marketing and in addition how manager can engage their fan base through online mode by analyzing the intention of their engagement. Jagongo and Kinyua (2013) highlighted, how social media mainly shows us how the business firm runs and access the resources not available otherwise. It shows the market owners and the entrepreneurs how much worthy and useful social media can be in increasing their strategic partnership along with customers and suppliers. It also showed the way how social media can act as a communication system or a marketing tool. The study was done to observe the effect of social media on the SME's of Nairobi. Also to determine the effect on market access, customer relationship management, innovativeness and pricing products of SME’s. Mahajan (2009) worked on the impacts of social media in society. Where he observed that social networking is a way to connect people in spite of obstructions of time & distance. It gained popularity and its utilization has increase and is expected to increase more in nearby future. Author focused the impacts of engagement on social media and instances where various communities are working hard for a noble cause and thereby performing the duties of a responsible citizen of country. Sanderson (2011) examined where he quoted a case of NBA superstar Lebron James, he analyzed that how social media proves to a direct way for athletes to interact with the viewers / fans. Sanders then put stress on all those facts which he finds lacking. Initially, various governing authorities don’t allow players and athletes to use this platform in some locations. Secondly players are restricted with time foundations to use such platforms. Further Sanders demonstrates the major effects of social networking on sports. He explained various theories of communication studies and sports management audiences is his research based book. Hence it can be concluded that social media seems to be a dynamic source of interaction with followers. Haugh and Watkins (2016) conducted a study to understand why fans use various platforms or sites to reach their favorite teams and get some attention. Social media is continuously considered to be an aspect of relation Volume 6, Issue 12, 2020 Page No:747 Zeichen Journal ISSN No: 0932-4747 between the sports organizations and the fans. The previous study from Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden suggests that the organizations should focus on collecting and integrating all the social media platforms and the sites rather than completely focusing on a single platform. It also tells us about the various social media sites visited by the fans and their main objective for doing this. Hence a clear pattern has been observed regarding the platforms used by the sports fans and can be used in making a Social Media Ecosystem for sports fans. Podobnik (2013) examined that most of the sport organizations had shown interest in showcasing their presence in Social Networking Services (SNS) as they believe that the Social Media Market (SMM) will act as the next holy grail of marketing. However, the true value of the Social Media Marketing is still not clear as marketing based on social networking is still defining its benefits and the way of practices. This paper will give some idea regarding the process of how to unlock the true potential of SMM through analyzing the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the main SMM platform which is facebook. The case study of the heavyweights of the Premier League brand connects the several interesting factors regarding Facebook, SMM and KPIs.