Loyalty is one of the principal objectives of marketing and is sometimes even equated to the concept of marketing itself (Sheth, 1996). Loyalty is a variable that has been extensively researched in the literature of psychology, marketing, and management, in which many authors have studied the variables that explain loyalty (Dwyer et al., 1987; Dick and Basu, 1994; Sheth, 1996; Núñez-Barriopedro et al., 2021). There are, however, three variables that are repeated in many proposals and models: satisfaction, trust, and commitment (Garbarino and Johnson, 1999; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2001; Bansal et al., 2004; Rauyruen and Miller, 2007). Service quality is an another variable that most commonly appears in the literature on consumer loyalty, and it is included by authors such as (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Hur et al., 2011; Kim and Trail, 2011; Mandhachitara and Poolthong, 2011; Pérez-Cabañero et al., 2017). Most authors who study loyalty from a marketing viewpoint do so, firstly, from the perspective of behavioral loyalty, i.e., repeating the exchange relationship (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001; Szymanski and Henard, 2001; Chiou and Drogue, 2006), and secondly, from the perspective of attitudinal loyalty (Kunkel et al., 2013, 2019).

The sports industry generates billions of dollars; a better understanding of the relationship between the product and its consumers is thus a key factor for the marketing managers of sport organizations. Maintaining relationships over time, independently of whatever factors may arise, is also of key importance. Loyalty therefore becomes a crucial element in maintaining relationships over time and thus an element on which marketing managers must focus (Tsiotsou, 2013).

Sport organizations include all those bodies that pursue sports-related activities. They may therefore be companies that offer goods (sports clothes, sports apparatus and materials, etc.), services (personal training, broadcasting games on television, etc.), ideas (consequences of belonging to a club or taking part in a sport: slimming, giving members an identity), or a combination of all of these (Smith and Stewart, 2013). The way loyalty is explained may vary as a function of the type of sports product in question and also of the different types of consumer – such as those attending events, those watching, listening to, or reading the media, those purchasing products with licenses, etc. (Kim et al., 2011).

Sports products have unique aspects that affect the basic conditions for selling them: they are products that are inherently uncertain; they are inconsistent and open to subjective interpretations; they take place under highly competitive conditions; and marketing managers for these products do not have full control over the marketing mix (Mullin et al., 2007). It is also true, however, that it has been shown empirically that members of sport organizations tend to behave in their sport and its money-making activities in the same way as in other areas of consumption (Bodet, 2012).

Consumer loyalty is an asset highly valued by all types of organizations and directing available resources toward improving loyalty is much easier if this concept has been analyzed. This work aims to examine the existing literature on loyalty to a sports organization and verify whether the variables that explain loyalty in organizations in general are also present in sports theory. On this basis, the following questions are raised:

The following sections aim to offer an exhaustive review of loyalty from the point of view of sports management considering the main antecedents that lead to loyalty in sports organizations. In a first step, the different loyalty concepts and their main antecedents (satisfaction, service quality, commitment, and trust) are analyzed. Then the various sources used are detailed, as well as the main search criteria. The results presented compile the most notable data on the bibliography related to sports loyalty, through a systematic analysis of the literature, while the paper ends with the main conclusions derived from this search.

Loyalty has been conceptualized by various authors in the fields of both psychology and marketing. Many authors have made in-depth studies of this concept from the marketing perspective, and all agree that loyalty comprises all those behaviors involving same-brand purchasing repeatedly, both now and in the future (Dick and Basu, 1994; Oliver, 1999; Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2002; Cuesta-Valiño et al., 2021a), despite situational influences and marketing efforts that have the potential to cause switching behavior (Oliver, 1999).

Loyalty is made up of two concepts, which combine to give the variable the greatest explanatory power. These two concepts are: behavioral aspects or purchase intentions and attitudinal loyalty (Rauyruen and Miller, 2007; Cossío-Silva et al., 2016). Behavioral loyalty has been identified as customers’ willingness to repurchase the product or the services and to maintain a relationship with the supplier or service provider. Attitudinal loyalty, however, is the consumer’s level of commitment toward a product/brand and their promotional attitude toward the supplier or service provider (Dick and Basu, 1994; Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001).

By focusing on loyalty in the field studied in this paper, i.e., sport, it becomes clear that it is more difficult to conceptualize loyalty when the subject is services than when discussing products. This is partly because, in the case of services, it is impossible to separate the consumer from the person providing the service, and this participation by the client in the interpersonal component of services – their production and delivery – adds emotional dimensions to loyalty (Lewis and Soureli, 2006). The individual’s underlying willingness to repurchase, together with evaluation of the alternatives, is inseparable from the notion of loyalty (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973).

In recent decades, the literature on loyalty has multiplied and we have found many studies that aim to explain it (see Table 1). These ideas are summarized in the sections below, which explain the principal antecedents of this variable.

Following other examples (Montero and López-Sánchez, 2021; Södergren, 2021), a systematic review of the scientific literature was carried out to identify, classify, and synthesize the existing publications on the loyalty variable in a sports context. The procedure had three steps: identify the literature, extract the data, and present results. In the search stage, the possible articles most suitable for this study were identified using different data sources, such as Google Scholar, Scopus Sage Journals and – above all –Web of Science (WoS). WoS was used as the main source because it contains the publications with the highest impact index, as well as being one of the most extensive databases. Its advanced search formula allows large specifications and helps to classify the studies analyzed.

Loyalty has been a highly studied concept in different areas, that is why the search criteria used have been very specific. Using key words like “loyalty and sport,” “loyalty and sport management,” “loyalty and satisfaction in sport management,” “loyalty and service quality in sport management,” “loyalty and commitment in sport management,” and “loyalty and trust in sport management.” Satisfaction, service quality, commitment, and trust were included in the search criterion because they are the main variables that affect to loyalty in a general context. Figure 1 represents the idea of loyalty and its antecedents transferred to a sport management context.

The search time range covered the last 15years, from 2006 to 2021. During that period, sport has experienced significant growth – as have all related sectors – and competition between organizations is getting increasingly strong, leading in turn to an increased need to retain the consumer (Wemmer and Koenigstorfer, 2016; Cuesta-Valiño et al., 2021c).

Some 1,154 articles were compiled in the identification phase. These were subsequently reduced to 599 once duplicate articles were eliminated. Several refining phases followed, with the analysis of the abstracts and the keywords included in each article.

In a first step, all those articles not specific to the sports sector were excluded, leaving the database with 438 articles. In a second exclusion phase, all those articles that did not measure the loyalty variable were rejected: 328 articles remained. Figure 2 specifies the flow chart followed in the selection process.

The selection, classification, and exclusion phases were carried out using an Excel file. In the following section, the data extracted – mainly from the WoS – are presented.

The results of this review indicate that there are various authors who have vast expertise in sports loyalty. Table 6 shows the authors with the highest number of published articles and the most cited authors among the articles analyzed.

There are numerous magazines that focus on sports and sports management. Moreover, articles on sports loyalty are also published in other journals, such as those with a more general focus or in other specific fields such as tourism or the internet. The magazines that publish the most articles on the subject studied are mainly magazines specific to sports management. Table 7 shows the five journals that publish the most articles on this topic. However, the most cited magazines regarding loyalty in sport have other approaches.

Figure 3 shows the countries that publish contents on loyalty in sport. It is a color map and the stronger color used for a certain country, the more papers published in that country. As can be seen, the United States is the country that has produced the most papers (90 articles), followed by Spain (52), Australia (45), United Kingdom (29) and South Korea (19).

In the literature there are different terms related to loyalty that appear in some of the most accepted definitions of loyalty in the theory, although such definitions differ. An example is the term “purchase intentions” defined in loyalty as the intention to buy from the same organization continuously over time (Oliver, 1999; Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001; Rauyruen and Miller, 2007).

Another term that can be linked to loyalty is “resistance to change,” since this concept appears in various definitions of loyalty (Oliver, 1999).

Resistance to change was a more common term in the literature than loyalty; however, in recent years loyalty has become much more popular, surpassing resistance to change.

Without any doubt, the term most used in theory is “behavior intentions,” followed closely by “consumption behavior.” Nevertheless, these two terms are much more general than loyalty and resistance to change, since they include loyalty and other variables such as word of mouth. (Boulding et al., 1993). In addition, most of the records obtained with the keyword “behavior intentions” and “consumption behavior” are duplicated in the other terms analyzed. Figure 4 presents all mentioned terms.

It is undoubtedly true that all types of sports organizations aspire to gain the loyalty of sports consumers. The literature includes various examples of the variables that explain this loyalty. The most common loyalty antecedents in the general literature are satisfaction, quality of service, commitment, and trust. The question is whether this also occurs in the literature on loyalty in sport.

Satisfaction is the variable most present in the literature on loyalty in the sports field. Another of the variables that has been most associated with loyalty is service quality. Figure 5 shows the percentage represented by each of the variables that explain loyalty in the articles studied.

Although the variables most found in the literature on loyalty in sport are satisfaction and service quality, the articles with the most citations do not study these variables, focusing instead on commitment and trust.

In total, there are 328 articles on loyalty in sport, of which five are those that study the four variables analyzed in this paper: satisfaction, service quality, commitment, and trust. Table 8 shows the five papers that includes all these variables.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

All authors contributed to conception and design of the research, reviewed the theorical background, organized the database, performed the bibliometric analysis, wrote all the sections of the manuscript, contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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