“…Significantly, the literature posits that "sport is a natural area for sponsorship" (Gwinner and Swanson, 2005, p. 275), given that a "sports brand" can elicit "greater emotional resonance and therefore engender greater loyalty than other commercial brands" (Abosag et al, 2012, p. 1,236). This position has generated a sizable body of literature (Gijsenberg, 2014;Cornwell and Humphreys, 2013;Renard and Sitz, 2011;Abosag et al, 2012;Ngan et al, 2011;Cornwell, 2008;Cornwell et al, 2006;Cornwell et al, 2005;Carrillat et al, 2005;Chadwick and Thwaites, 2004;Fahy et al, 2004;Clark et al, 2002), with emphasis placed on the proposition that loyal consumers (Dick and Basu, 1994) or fans (Thomas and Roeseler, 2013) are essential to the creation of brand equity (Kunkel et al, 2013;Kaynak et al, 2007;James, 2001, 2004;Kolbe and James, 2000). Recent research in the field has seen a broad range of investigations including evaluations of "spectator" and fan involvement (Biscaia et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2011;Ngan et al, 2011), the impact of COO (country of origin) on sponsor evaluations (Meng-Lewis et al, 2013), shirt sponsors (Jensen et al, 2013(Jensen et al, , 2012, niche sports (Greenhalgh and Greenwell, 2013), brand extensions (Abosag et al, 2012), fan rivalry (Bergkvist, 2012), schadenfreude (the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others) amongst fans (Dalakas and Melancon, 2012), individual athletes (Antil et al, 2012), forays into the FIFA World Cup (Woisetschläger and Michaelis, 2012), and, more recently, stadium naming and fan resistance…”