The Effectiveness of Advertising Embedded in Televised Sport Programming: How Team Performance Influences Attitude Formation

Abstract

The present study investigated the effect of emotions derived from the unique nature of spectator sport (e.g., uncertainty about outcomes) on sport fans’ responses to advertisements presented in a sport broadcasting context. In order to test the study’s hypotheses, a repeated measures design (i.e., program-induced valence [2] × program-induced arousal [2] × ad valence [2]) was employed. As hypothesized, the affective reactions to game outcomes (i.e., a win or a loss) had significant carry-over effects on the evaluative judgments to com- mercials. The findings enrich our understanding of how sport fans process information relating to televised commercials during sporting events. Furthermore, the results relate to the possible ways in which sport ad- vertising influences consumers’ attitudes and thus the findings are of benefit to practitioners (e.g., sport team sponsors, sporting event advertisers) as well as scholars (e.g., sport marketing researchers).