“In this day and age, you have to stand for something”: examining organizational advocacy issue choice and spokespeople in sport

Purpose – This study aims to examine organizational advocacy or the more collective stance-taking efforts in a sports league – the National Basketball Association (NBA) – to see whether an organization can more effectively communicate about its advocacy efforts with different message spokespeople. The study aims to determine whether each respective message source – an athlete, a league commissioner, and the organization itself – could be effective for the NBA to consider using as a spokesperson for advocacy messaging. Design/methodology/approach – This study conducts a 3 [message spokesperson: commissioner (Adam Silver) vs. athlete (LeBron James) vs. organization (NBA)] × 2 (advocated issue: abortion vs. gun violence) factorial online experiment between-subjects online experiment using a panel (N = 265) of self-identified sports fans in the USA recruited through the Lucid platform. Findings – Liberals with high fan identification perceived the message from LeBron James as less authentic compared to the NBA’s message, leading to lower supportive intentions. Liberals with low or moderate fan identification perceived a message about gun violence as less authentic, which led to lower supportive intentions. Authenticity mediates the relationship between issue and supportive intentions depending on political leaning and fan identification level. Originality/value – This paper empirically tests advocacy-related concepts in a sports context, adding new insights to measurement in extant literature and its potential prosocial effects. This study also examines how attitudes toward organizational advocacy can impact the cause itself – extending the understanding of advocacy further by seeing if it impacts society at large.