Reimagining Brand Architecture in Indian Football: A Comparative Study of Men’s and Women’s Leagues for Strategic Equity

Abstract

The paper investigates brand awareness, brand trust and consistent brand identity perception among fans of the Indian Super League (ISL) and Indian Women League (IWL) in order to determine the elements that influence fan behavior and inter-league following. Quantitative analysis was performed with a sample size of 200 respondents drawn in Delhi NCR based on independent samples t-test, Pearson correlation and linear regression. The results showed that the brand awareness of ISL fans is far ahead of the brand awareness of the IWL fans, and the effect size is large as well. Brand trust had strong positive correlation with fan loyalty showing that trust is a main factor to continue engagement. The regression analysis showed that unified brand identity perception was a significant predictor of willingness to support both the leagues along with over 80 per cent predictive variance. Results prove the necessity of unified branding strategies, equal participation in marketing, and another intrinsic marketing promotion that would enhance the attention of IWL and lead to an agreed approach of fans being engaged in fandom between genders.