Away games: Evaluating the travel behaviour of soccer fans

Abstract

Soccer is a global sport played all around the world. Also, soccer is the most watched sport in the world. Soccer fans are attending a soccer match passively and they support their teams. Fans attend to soccer matches in two ways as home-game and away-game. While home-game is played in the soccer club's own stadium, the away-game includes matches of the soccer club's in the other stadiums. The aim of this research is to reveal the visit intentions and travel patterns of soccer fans. For this purpose, we held face to face interviews with 28 Fenerbahce fans who participated in the Manchester United-Fenerbahce UEFA (Union of Europa Football Association) Europa League match. As a result of the research, it was concluded that soccer fans prefer to the Manchester destination to just watch the soccer match and also, they organized their travel relatively individually. In addition, it revealed that expenditure items of soccer fans are match tickets, flight tickets, accommodation, food and beverages, souvenirs, and special items of soccer teams such as a scarf and team jersey. Lastly, the soccer fans had no intention of revisiting the Manchester destination and they would visit the destination only if there was another match.