Robustness analyses. We conducted additional analyses to increase our confidence in the core findings. In Robustness 1 (see Table 4), we reduced the sample to brands that sponsor multiple teams and included brand fixed effects, along with fan/team fixed effects. The significant effect of incidental visual congruence (b = .13, p < .05) suggests that the positive influence of visual congruence extends beyond unobserved managerial actions. These effects hold even after we remove respondents who live in the same city as the team, which we did to reduce concerns about the impact of preexisting local brand biases. We recognize that this positive effect might exist without the sponsorship, such that fans might prefer any brand that shares their favorite team’s colors. However, the positive effect of created visual congruence (b= .35, p < .01) suggests unique benefits of visual congruence in the sponsorship itself. Unfortunately, we cannot observe why a brand manager might choose to change colors for one team but not another. A comparison of the magnitude of effects from this more restricted model and the model without brand fixed effects reveals that between 60% (incidental) and 85% (created) of the effect of visual congruence comes directly from visual congruence, but unobserved factors also have a role (e.g., managers might increase sponsorship activations for teams with visual congruence, perhaps reflecting the same visual congruence processes that work on fans). Together, these findings substantiate the performance benefits of visual congruence in sponsorship. We also address the managerial selection issues in Studies 2 and 3.