Identifying and prioritizing factors affecting the fan crisis in the Iranian Football Premier League based on the three-point model

The purpose of the present study was to identify and prioritize factors affecting the fan crisis in the Iranian Football Premier League. This study was a mix-method research work that was executed in the qualitative and quantitative steps. In the qualitative section, for in-depth interviews, targeted sampling method was used. After 21 interviews with experts, the data were coding based on the qualitative content analysis approach. In the quantitative section, 10 experts were selected based on judgmental sampling and the data were ranked by hierarchy analysis method. Based on the results of study, 18 identified factors affecting the fan crisis were placed in three branches, Content, Structure, and Context. Content branch factors in order of priority were: situation refereeing, corruption in football, fanatical behavior, communication management, ethnicity and racism, psychological characteristics, unprofessional behavior of stakeholders and demographic composition; Structural branch factors in order of priority were: competition management, safety, security, stadium health, public infrastructure, emergency-medical infrastructure; Context branch factors in order of priority were: cultural-social, media function, performance of the Security Council, disciplinary rules, team conditions and competition Political-economic and weather conditions. Therefore, suggested to the managers and officials of competitions and clubs to be aware of the identified factors in order to manage the crisis of advocacy more effectively.