Designing a Model for the Role of Clubs’ Evangelists in Iranian Football Premier League

The purpose of this study was designing a model for the role of clubs’ evangelists in Iranian football premier league. This research was descriptive, correlational based on structural equation modeling that was done as a field survey method. Due to the limited access to all fans of football premier league in the country, the researchers chose two elected clubs, Esteghlal and Persepolis. These clubs are two of the most popular clubs in Iranian football premier league. The statistical population consisted of the fans of Esteghlal and Persepolis clubs in the 16th Persian Gulf Premier League. Based on the number of statistical population was unknown, according to the Morgan table, 384 individuals were considered for sample size and in the Derby game, 192 correct questionnaires were collected equally from the fans of each team. The research method was available random. The base of the research instrument was Dwyer et al. questionnaire (2015) that has been modified to be used in the culture and community of the country. For face and content validity, the translation of the questionnaire were confirmed by some sports marketing experts and sports management professors and the final edition was corrected by fixing the difficulties and ambiguities. The reliability of the study was done by a pilot study. The results of running the model in Amos software were shown the fans as Esteghlal and Persepolis evangelists played four roles of Advocator, Advertiser, Antagonize and Assimilator. Today, sports team marketing executives, through the formation and strengthening of fan club communities, thrive through promotion and marketing, so that their teams could benefit from the financial and intellectual capital through maximized supporter participation