Designing a Model of Motivations for Following Premier League Club Pages in Social Media From the Perspective of the Fans with a Mixed Approach

This research using a mixed approach was conducted with the aim of designing a model of the motivations of fans to follow the pages of Premier League clubs in social media. The research was applied in terms of purpose and carried out in a descriptive-survey way. The statistical population in the qualitative part includes university professors familiar with virtual space and fandom, as well as selected fans of Persepolis and Esteghlal sports clubs. In order to select the interviewees, the purposeful sampling method was used; This sampling continued until theoretical saturation was reached and finally, 20 people were selected as samples. Also, the statistical population in the quantitative part of the research included all fans who follow the pages of Persepolis (7.8 million people) and Esteghlal (3.5 million people) on Instagram. The maximum number of samples (384 people) was used based on Morgan's table by random group sampling method. The research tools to ghater data was semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire with 24 items and 4 main components in the form of a Likert scale. Open, axial, and selective coding was used to examine the data of the qualitative part, and the method of structural equation modeling was used in the quantitative part. The results showed that the fans' motivations for following Premier League clubs' pages on social media are: information and awareness, identity, social and entertainment, respectively. Identifying the motivations for following the virtual pages of famous clubs can provide a perspective to other clubs.