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Previous sport consumer behavior research has found it common for fans to cheer for the closest teams (Wann et al, 1996; Wann & James, 2019). However, little is known about how fans living equidistant between two teams in the same league would pick one over the other to support. To address this question, National Hockey League (NHL) fans in the city of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada were studied, as Red Deer is equidistant between the NHL cities of Edmonton and Calgary. Twelve fans of either the Edmonton Oilers or Calgary Flames were interviewed to ascertain how they became fans of one team and not the other. Four main antecedents to their team fandom were discovered: family and friends, team success, underdog status, and place attachment. While the first three antecedents reinforced findings from previous studies, finding place attachment as an antecedent to Oilers and Flames fandom proved interesting, as previous studies list place attachment as a reason to support a team if the fan lives in the city or region that is home to their favorite team. In Red Deer, none of the 12 fans had ever lived in either Edmonton or Calgary, but many of them described how place attachment to those cities led to fandom formation to that city's team. The findings of this study add to the body of sport consumer behavior knowledge by helping academics better understand some of the nuances of fandom formation in an atypical context.
Since the late 20th-century, sport consumer behavior theorists have been investigating the reasons why a person would pick one team over another to support (McPherson, 1976; Smith et al., 1981; Wann et al., 1996). Some typical antecedents to team fandom include family or peer influence, team success and/or history, players, geography, and media access (Wann & James, 2019; Wann et al., 1996). In more recent years, some scholars have begun examining sport consumer behavior scenarios in situations that are less typical, such as fans who reject cheering for the local hometown team and embrace a distant team instead (Hyatt & Andrijiw, 2008), or fans who choose to cheer for newly-created expansion teams that neither win nor have any history (Lock et al., 2011). Studies such as these inspired us to ask questions...