Sport Consumption Intentions during a Crisis: The COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic brought a disruption to daily life and to the sport industry not seen before by generations of consumers. The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of three external factors (i.e., perceived State/County opening phase status, work status and sheltering status) along with consumers’ past spectating behavior on their intentions to attend live sport events in the near future. In this examination, we controlled for COVID-19-related beliefs, as well as for consumers’ emotional states (i.e., scared, optimistic). Data were collected from 382 Amazon Mechanical Turk respondents. The findings revealed how external factors happening due to a crisis (i.e., pandemic) and past spectating behavior influence consumers’ intentions to attend live sport events. Furthermore, beliefs and emotions related to the threat of COVID-19 sport spectators’ intentions to go to live sport events in the COVID-19 era.