Impact of sustainable values on football fans : Understanding the impact of sustainability among football fans

Abstract

This thesis investigates the influence of sustainable values on football fans, mainly focusing on their perceptions and behaviours towards football clubs’ sustainability efforts. The study, commissioned by Finnish football Team Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS), aims to fill a gap in understanding the interest between football fandom and sustainability. Sustainability gets identified to understand the target to develop recourse balance, which includes economic, social, and environmental factors. The concept tries to address the challenge without sacrificing important factors (United Nations Academic impact 2023). This research project aims to bring to the light the opinions of football fans, specifically examining how large is the impact of sustainability among football fans. Furthermore, the study seeks to find potential practises to be used in future by football organizations worldwide. A quantitative research method was used, involving a survey distributed to football fans across Europe. The survey was completed by 75 individual football fans, from five different countries. The findings reveal that majority of respondents are interested in sustainability within football in one way or another. The research importantly revealed the difference between fans who are keen about sustainability, and fans who do know about sustainability within football area. The knowledge of sustainability related practises is lacking, despite multiple organizations publishing sustainability reports on yearly basis. Based on these findings, strategies and ideas were identified to enchase the fan engagement within sustainability topic. The survey had two open answers to give external ideas for organizations to work with in the future. The established of a supportive and diverse network within football fans increase the motivation for organizations to work with the subject.