Do fans care about controversial sport sponsorships? The sport sponsorship moral appropriateness decision-making process unravelled

The sport sponsorship landscape includes companies promoting controversial products, such as gambling, alcohol, fast food, and soft drinks. Despite widespread concerns, limited research has examined how sport fans morally evaluate controversial sponsors in sport. This study aimed to unravel the cognitive processes fans engage in when evaluating sponsorship’s appropriateness. Using 30 in-depth interviews and a q-methodology-based sorting task, participants ranked 29 sponsors from least appropriate to most appropriate. Findings reveal that commercial gambling is perceived as the least appropriate, while sport brands are viewed as the most appropriate sponsors for sport. Fans might experience a psychological discomfort when confronted with a controversial sponsor in sport and employ moral reasoning strategies to reconcile these tensions. The moral appropriateness decision-making process explains why fans perceive a controversial sport sponsor as (in)appropriate. This study not only contributes to sport management theory but also helps sport organizations forecast fans’ moral perceptions of sport sponsorships.