The purpose of this thesis examines the effect of fans' multiple professional sports league identities on brand love towards the leagues. As developing new fans' identities is directly connected with expanding leagues' market size, professional sports leagues may employ internal and external resources to capture fans who already have other sports identities. With this in mind, this study is designed to provide professional sports marketers a more comprehensive understanding of the effect of sports fans' multiple identities on brand love towards various leagues. Specifically, it hypothesized that sports fans' identity complexity positively influences their brand love of the league via tolerance, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and brand authenticity. To demonstrate this hypothesis, research data was gathered through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and mediation analysis was used based on the fans' preferences of professional sports leagues. According to the results of the data analysis, there are significant effects of fans' multiple identities on their brand love via tolerance, CSR, and brand authenticity. Furthermore, regardless of the preference of leagues, fans with multiple identities demonstrated higher brand love towards professional leagues through increased tolerance, CSR, and brand authenticity. Details of this study, as well as theoretical and practical implications, research limitations, and future directions, are forwarded.
