Media coverage associated with nationalistic sentiments in mega sporting events has received scholarly attention. The authors extend existing research on the impact of two different types of commentaries (i.e., objective and color commentary) by conducting an experiment with a 2 (commentary condition) 2 (nationalistic sentiments) factorial design. Data from college students in Korea (N = 80) were collected to examine 1) the influence of commentary and nationalistic sentiments on team image and hostility and 2) the effect of commentary on attitudes toward products through team image. Moderated Multiple Regressions (MMR) showed that nationalistic sentiments moderated the effect of the commentary on the cognitive responses. Further, the Sobel test revealed that team image fully mediated the effect of commentary on attitudes toward products made in the opposing team's country. The results indicate that nationalistic sentiments in conjunction with media effects play an important role in international televised sports.
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