Pathways to Team Brand Loyalty in Divided Cyprus: The Roles of Media Use, Family Fandom, Fan Community Engagement, and Brand Identification

This study examines team brand loyalty among Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot football fans in the divided sociopolitical context of Cyprus. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, the study investigates how media use, family fandom, and fan community engagement relate to brand identification and team brand loyalty. Data were collected from 846 adult football fans, including 402 Turkish Cypriots and 444 Greek Cypriots, and analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling. The coefficient patterns suggest that team brand loyalty is associated with both brand identification and fan community engagement in both groups. Fan community engagement showed strong associations with team brand loyalty among Turkish Cypriot fans (β = .507) and Greek Cypriot fans (β = .488), while brand identification was also positively associated with loyalty in both groups (β = .382 and β = .353, respectively). The pattern of coefficients suggests that media use was more closely associated with brand identification among Greek Cypriot fans, whereas fan community engagement appeared especially relevant for Turkish Cypriot fans. Model-consistent indirect coefficient products suggest that media use was indirectly associated with team brand loyalty through fan community engagement and brand identification, but these pathways are interpreted descriptively because bootstrap confidence intervals were not available. The study contributes to sport marketing research by suggesting that team brand loyalty in divided societies is associated with both personal identification and socially shared fan experiences.