The purpose of this study was to empirically examine the relative effectiveness of emotional advertising over rational advertising and combination advertising on sport consumer behavior. To achieve this purpose, a 2 (emotion) × 2 (cognition) incomplete factorial design was employed with three experimental conditions (emotional, rational, and combination ad). A total of 324 participants with 108 participants in each of the three advertisements were recruited from a large public university in the United States. To test the relative effectiveness of the three advertising appeals on consumer behavior, multiple ANCOVAs with three experimental conditions (emotional ad: high emotion/low cognition vs. rational ad: low emotion/high cognition vs. combination ad: high emotion/high cognition) were conducted for the four dependent variables: attitudes toward the ads, brand attitudes, purchase intention, and merchandise consumption. Fanship was included as a covariate in order to control for a pre-existing characteristic that affects sport consumer behavior. The results suggested that emotional advertising led to a higher attitude toward the ad, brand attitude, purchase intention, and merchandise consumption than both rational and combination advertising. It was also revealed that combination advertising led to a higher attitude toward the ad than rational advertising. The findings will provide a deeper understanding of how to develop and design sport advertising as a vital component of overall marketing mix.