Sport has emerged as one of the most significant and universal social institutions in modern society. Given its stature, those who market spectator sports must not underestimate the importance of ...understanding and effectively targeting their audiences. To this end, our study examines five functions of sport previously posited in the sociology of sport literature (psychological well-being, self-expression, pride-in-place, social integration, and clarification of gender roles), which serve to explain why individuals are motivated to engage in sport spectatorship behavior. The study finds that four of the five functions are enduring across the two nonoverlapping generations of sport fans who are separated by 25 years. Moreover, our findings reveal the existence of three enduring behavior-based spectator segments that differ in the strength of their perceptions across sport functions as motivating factors for engaging in sport spectatorship. Implications for marketing theory and practice are discussed.
This case addresses the relationship between sport and digital spaces by introducing students to strategic marketing processes related to developing a team-managed fan website. The case was created ...in conjunction with three former members of the Cleveland Cavaliers who helped create www.cavfanatic.com, the official fan site of the team. Key areas addressed within the case study are brand development, brand communication, and brand extension. The case follows a new hire, Natalie, as she joins the new media team of www.cavfanatic.com. The sport marketers she works with review the development of the website and provide information on the strategic development process they went through. In the end, Natalie is charged with looking forward and developing further strategies to continue to engage the Cavaliers fans and to develop the CavFanatic brand.
It has long been assumed that brands sponsoring athletes who excel in competition realise more exposure than brands that do not. But which factors have a significant impact on the amount of exposure ...a competitor earns? The broadcasts of six major men's golf tournaments were analysed to determine the exact duration and value of sponsor exposure during those broadcasts. Multiple regression analysis was then utilised to determine the impact of several variables on the exposure the competitors realised for their sponsors, resulting in a model that estimates the amount of --exposure a competitor should earn, based on these factors.
In an interview, Hilary Shaev, VP of Marketing, National Basketball Association, talked about her marketing career experiences. Before her current job, she spent many years in the music business ...promoting and marketing artists in various genres, building their brands and their popularity. As VP/Marketing of the WNBA, she's responsible for brand strategy and brand marketing. Regarding whether the drafting of high-profile players had anthing to do with the WNBA's re-branding, she said that they did not plan the re-brand now because of the recent draftees, but this year's draftees are emblematic of a league that has grown in athleticism and skill by leaps and bounds since its inception. The refreshed identity was undertaken in part to represent that. The WNBA's Brand Pyramid was designed to inform the creation of the Brand Charter. The Pyramid shows the WNBA's core values (the "How"), offerings (the "What"), and reason for being (the "Why").
Facing a highly pressurized environment, football managers have to innovate to secure high levels of competitivity. Being the central figure of a club, a manager can choose to link traditional human ...resources practices with internal marketing strategies. This inductive research tries to construct new theories about internal marketing applied to the field of sports. The relationship between the manager and several of its key stakeholders in the club (footballers, staff, board of directors and other employees) is analyzed. Discussion results show that using marketing tactics inside the club can improve the human relationships between the members of the organization and, as a consequence, the entire performance of the club. The paper also shows how each stakeholder group impacts on the wellbeing of the football club, with the manager being portrayed as the main relational knot.
This study examines a way to enhance the effectiveness of commercials embedded in the telecasts of mega sporting events. We hypothesise that embedded commercials are more likeable when the cues of ...the commercials match the motivations induced by the telecasts of sports games. Specifically, we posit that the telecasts of mega-sporting events induce motives of relatedness (rather than motives of competence) and that the advertisements embedded in these telecasts will be more effective when they appeal to the relatedness motive. The results support this hypothesis. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed and future research directions are provided.
This study examines the relationship between spectator motivation and sports consumption behaviours in the context of an adaptive sport. Respondents were spectators from five matches held in the ...Midwest United States involving registered United States Quad Rugby Association teams. The Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption (MSSC; Trail & James, 2001) was adapted to measure spectator motivation and predict repatronage intentions and online media consumption among wheelchair rugby spectators. Results indicated that two spectator motivation factors, physical skill and knowledge, were related to repatronage intentions. In addition, knowledge and vicarious achievement were found to be related to online media consumption.
Over the past decade, broadcast rights fees have been the source of much of the growth in revenues in the intercollegiate athletics industry. However, given that the industry is dominated by public ...and non-profit organizations such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), intercollegiate athletic conferences, postseason bowl games, and institutions of higher learning, empirical valuations of intercollegiate athletic programs have been sparse. Utilizing the lens of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, it is evident that athletic conferences view intercollegiate athletic programs as sources of competitive advantage, further illustrating the importance of developing strategies in which such non-profit organizations can be valued. Therefore, this study utilizes the fees paid by rights holders to broadcast intraconference football contests in an investigation of the factors that may be significant predictors of the value of individual football programs to athletic conferences. Results demonstrate that variables representing a program’s on-field performance, off-field prestige, and academic reputation are statistically significant predictors of its value in broadcast rights fees. The resulting model is then utilized to determine the most valuable college football programs in rights fees, as well as identify a number of programs that are currently under or over-valued based upon the share of rights fees earned from their conference’s current television contracts. In today’s landscape of conference realignment, this study’s results include several novel findings for the leaders of non-profit organizations, such as intercollegiate athletic administrators, seeking to maximize institutional and conference resources.
The purpose of this study was to examine the drivers of consumer intentions surrounding a new college football program and its fan base. This study relied on and extended the Theory of Reasoned ...Action by incorporating variables of identity and loyalty and tested their mediated effect on intention to engage with a newly-fielded college football program at Mercer University in Macon, GA. The findings suggest that attitudes and normative beliefs have the strongest effect on intentions. Further, the analysis revealed partial mediation where students’ identity as football fans in general and intentions to engage in the new football program at their university were mediated by the students’ loyalty toward their university where the football team was developing. Overall, the model tested for this study explained almost 80 % of variation in intent.
