Date of Publication

Spring 4-28-2016

Document Type

Undergraduate Project

Professor's Name

Dr. Dane-Staples

Abstract

Franchise relocation has been occurring in professional sports for years. The Hartford Whalers experienced one in 1997. Almost 20 years later, the American Hockey League (AHL) experienced a historic franchise relocation process. However, little research has been done that included more recent research about fan identity, affiliation, and actions. This study is a content analysis of fan Twitter posts a week prior when the rumors start to spread that both the Manchester Monarchs and the Norfolk Admirals will be relocating to California for the 2015-2016 hockey season and the week following the official announcement. A total of 43 tweets were collected coded accordingly based on the content of the tweet. The data was used to run correlations of the most frequent variables present in fan tweets along with a chi square analysis of those variables. The lack of access to all twitter fan tweets was an implication to this study.

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