Soccer fans Motives of the professional football league in Iran

Soccer matches in Iran make that many of fans go to stadiums and sport complexes every week. This study aimed at investigating of underlying motives for the Iranian Fans to attending soccer matches in super league. Research method was descriptive and type of survey. The statistical society was all of soccer fans in super league, but due to some constraints, according to territorial distribution, 8 super league teams were selected from 18 teams and in total 405 questionnaires were collected from the sample. Fan Motivations questionnaire of Jallai (2008) was used as a research instrument. After translate in Persian, validity of questionnaire approved by sport management experts and the reliability of it has been computed with Cronbachs Alpha coefficient method (72%). Descriptive statistics were used to put on display individual, social, and media characteristics of fans and used inferential statistic (Factorial analysis, one-way ANOWA, Freedman Test) to approve the validity of the questionnaire and the underlying motives, determine the difference between teams in the fan motivation factors and classify the main fan motivation indices respectively. The result showed that 6 factors of team loyalty, community pride, team identification, entertainment, social interaction, and team external conception was the underlying motives for the fans to attend and support teams. In addition, the team loyalty is the most important factor for attending the football fans in stadium.