Introduction: By rapid progress of sport industry in the world, the sport clubs have dealt with loyalty category to attract more fans and funds, which organizational success is one of its main components. The fans loyalty to a club or a team will lead to proper advantages for the club or team. Loyal fan is considered as income source and suitable instrument in advertising. It should be emphasized that fans intend to spend more a symbolic aspects in sport industry and one of these symbolic aspects is trade names. Considering the issue, fans loyalty to sport club brands is the key point to achieve success in marketing programs of sport industry.
Methodology: Regarding the nature, the study was descriptive-correlational and it was conducted by survey method. It is also practical. Its statistical society consisted of the fans of governmental clubs. Sample size estimated by statistical formula which was 448. Measuring instrument of team brand association questionnaire had been developed by Gladden and Funk (2001). Its Validity and reliability were tested (Cronbach's alpha coefficient=0.89). In inferential statistics section, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Pearson correlation tests were used to investigate hypotheses.
Results: The findings of this research showed that there was significant relationship between brand association and brand loyalty in the fans of governmental clubs. In addition, they showed that there was correlation between all three factors of brand association (attributes, benefits, attitudes) and brand loyalty in the fans of public club (p<0.01).
Discussion: According to these results, when the factors of attributes of brand association increase, the level of brand loyalty in the fans of mentioned clubs increase. Therefore, by relying on their assets, the clubs can attract and retain loyal fans of the brand and then benefit from the advantages of having loyal fans including: earning income as a result of increasing the number of spectators in the stadium, selling more tickets, increasing the buyers of the club’s labeled products, fundraising and rising the club’s stock price. Accordingly, it can be said that attitudinal factors of brand association is related to the level of fans loyalty to brands. The positive correlation shows the additive relation of attitudinal factors of brand association on the level of fans loyalty to the brand. Therefore, when the factors of attitudes of brand association including awareness and information, interaction and brand importance increase in the fans, brand loyalty increases.