International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship最新文献

Purpose

Demonstrate proof-of-concept for conducting NFL Draft trades on a blockchain network using smart contracts.

Design/methodology/approach

Using Ethereum smart contracts, the authors model several types of draft trades between teams. An example scenario is used to demonstrate contract interaction and draft results.

Findings

The authors show the feasibility of conducting draft-day trades using smart contracts. The entire negotiation process, including side deals, can be conducted digitally.

Research limitations/implications

Further work is required to incorporate the full-scale depth required to integrate the draft trading process into a decentralized user platform and experience.

Practical implications

Cutting time for the trade negotiation process buys decision time for team decision-makers. Gains are also made with accuracy and cost.

Social implications

Full-scale adoption may find resistance due to the level of fan involvement; the draft has evolved into an interactive experience for both fans and teams.

Originality/value

This research demonstrates the new application of smart contracts in the inter-section of sports management and blockchain technology.

Purpose

Professional sports teams employ highly paid managers and coaches to train players and make tactical and strategic team decisions. A large literature analyzes the impact of manager decisions on team outcomes. Empirical analysis of manager decisions requires a quantifiable proxy variable for manager decisions. Previous research focused on manager dismissals, tenure on teams, the number of substitutions made in games or the number of healthy players on rosters held out of games for rest, generally finding small positive impacts of manager decisions on team success.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors quantify manager decisions by developing a novel measure of game-specific coaching decisions: the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) of playing-time across players on a team roster over the course of a season.

Findings

Evidence from two-way fixed effects regression models explaining observed variation in National Basketball Association team winning percentage over the 1999–2000 to 2018–2019 seasons show a significant association between managers’ allocation of playing time and team success. A one standard deviation change in playing-time HHI that reflects a flattened distribution of player talent is associated with between one and two additional wins per season, holding the talent of players on the team roster constant. Heterogeneity exists in the impact across teams with different player talent.

Originality/value

This is one of the first papers to examine playing-time concentration in the NBA. The results are important for understanding how managerial decisions about resource allocation lead to sustained competitive advantage. Linking coaching decisions to wins can help teams to better promote this core product.

Purpose

National surveys reveal that sports fans exhibit greater support for athletes, sports teams and leagues endorsing social justice initiatives compared to the general population, highlighting the potential of sports for positive social impact. This study investigates whether such responses are influenced by systematic biases.

Design/methodology/approach

Replicating a Nielsen national survey, two experiments explore whether biases affect support for athletes' participation in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The study also examines partisan motivated reasoning as a factor driving sports fans' support for BLM.

Findings

While avid fans display stronger endorsement of BLM compared to causal/non-sports fans, evidence suggests that systematic biases distort these responses. When sport identity becomes salient, reported support for the BLM movement becomes inflated.

Research limitations/implications

Researchers often employ self-report surveys to gauge audience perceptions of athlete activism or cause-related initiatives, particularly when assessing their impact. This study's findings indicate that this context is susceptible to SDB.

Originality/value

The study underscores the role of systematic biases in self-report surveys, particularly in socially desirable contexts. People tend to over-report “positive behavior,” leading survey participants to respond more favorably to questions that are socially desirable. Therefore, interpreting survey results with caution becomes essential when the research context is deemed socially (un)desirable. It is crucial for researchers to apply appropriate measures to identify and mitigate systematic response biases. The authors recommend that researchers adopt both procedural and statistical remedies to detect and reduce social desirability biases.

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to investigate the interaction effect that sponsor-team congruence and team fan (home/rival team) have on the influence of different types of sports sponsorship (joint, corporate social responsibility [CSR]-linked and conventional sponsorship) on fans' attitudes and purchase intentions toward the sponsor.

Design/methodology/approach

Two experimental studies were conducted on 391 and 297 participants. The data gathered underwent analysis through five multivariate general linear model analyses.

Findings

The study found that CSR-linked sponsorship had the strongest positive impact and the weakest negative impact on the attitude and purchase intention of home team supporters and the attitude of rival team supporters. Nonetheless, the sponsor-team congruence did not significantly moderate the relationship. Additionally, the research demonstrated that the fan identity of both home and rival teams moderates the impact of sports sponsorships on attitude and purchase intention.

Originality/value

Previous research has studied the effectiveness of sponsorship format types independently. This is the first research comparing sponsorship formats regarding fan type and congruence.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to compare four different consumer pathway models based on identity theory, attitude/loyalty theory, lifestyle theory and hierarchy of effects theory, each with associated instruments measuring connection to the team.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors did a two-study analysis, first collecting data from people aware of an NFL team (N = 218) and then an MLS team (N = 209) to determine which connection item performed better.

Findings

The authors found that the Consumer Pathway for Sport Fandom based on the hierarchy of effects theory and its associated interest measurement item performed better than the other three frameworks and items. The Interest item shared the most variance with games attended, games intending to attend, games watched via media and games intending to watch via media.

Originality/value

The Consumer Pathway for Sport Fandom represents the entire consumer spectrum from non-aware consumers all the way up to die-hard sports fans. This pathway will allow sport marketers to track their consumers from initial awareness of the product or service all the way through the brand relationship to ultimate loyalty.

Purpose

The purpose of this research was to investigate how VR-mediated sports, as opposed to 2-D screens, affect the emotional and cognitive experiences of fans with the game and its sponsors.

Design/methodology/approach

The current study employed a single-factorial experimental design, in which participants were randomly assigned to either watch a soccer game through a VR headset or a 2-D screen. Physiological and self-reported measures were used to measure levels of presence, arousal, attention and memory.

Findings

Participants who watched sports through VR experienced a higher level of presence, greater psychophysiological arousal, and exhibited higher levels of attention toward the game. However, they showed lower recognition for in-stadium signage compared to those who watched the game on a 2-D screen.

Practical implications

The results suggest that sports teams can use VR to create a more immersive and engaging experience for fans. Additionally, in-stadium signage advertising may not be as effective in VR sport broadcasting contexts, and sports practitioners may want to explore alternative forms of advertising that are better suited for VR environments.

Originality/value

Methodologically, this study used a combination of self-reported and real-time physiological measures to capture dynamic and spontaneous changes in fans while watching games. Theoretically, this study utilized the Dynamic Human-Centered Communication System Theory to adopt a human-centered approach to understand how VR impacts the experience of sport game viewers.

Purpose

Social media's role in engaging participants in sports events, particularly during the pandemic, is acknowledged. However, previous studies often utilized sports events for diverse objectives but overlooked brand equity's influence on sports event development. And very limited research explores social media's impact on brand equity in esports events, despite its significance. Therefore, this study aims to explore how social media affects esports event brand equity and participants' satisfaction and engagement with social media through brand equity's influence.

Design/methodology/approach

The study focused on League of Legends World Championships (LOLWC) participants, who completed a self-judged questionnaire online. The questionnaire included demographic details and latent constructs. Data analysis involved two steps: exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to assess measurement scale validity and structural equation modeling (SEM) to study relationships between traits.

Findings

The results reveal that, within the esports event context, controlled communication exerts a meaningful and dual impact – both directly and indirectly – on the fundamental components of brand equity. This, in turn, serves as a catalyst for increasing participant contentment and their posting intention.

Originality/value

This study applies brand equity theories to the esports domain, exploring participant-based brand equity concepts, user behavior and the influence of social media communication on event branding and engagement. It also recommends strategies for event improvement, emphasizes controlled communication for brand equity and highlights marketing's role in brand awareness, association and participant satisfaction. Additionally, it suggests government regulation to address cyber violence during esports events.

Purpose

Drawing upon social judgment theory, the research examines whether changes in psychological involvement with a sport human brand owing to their sporting success can generate spillover effects on people's national pride, a proxy for the collective level of well-being and whether the individual's behavioral engagement in sport spectating will moderate this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment grounded in the 2021 Indian Premier League championship, the authors solicit responses from 296 representative individuals residing in India twice using a two-wave panel design. The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis, repeated measures T-test, latent change score analysis, and structural regression analysis to examine the relationship between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride.

Findings

The results demonstrate a positive association between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride. Further, the findings indicate that an increase in psychological involvement with sport human brand was associated with an increase in national pride due to the successful athletic endeavor involving the sport human brand. However, the relationship between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride was invariant irrespective of patrons' spectatorship behavior.

Originality/value

This research demonstrates that sport human brands possess transformative soft power that extends their prerogative cultural identity personified by their athletic ability and success, allowing them to shape public sentiments of national pride via their profound influence through and beyond the complex network of brand ecosystems.

Purpose

This scholarly investigation explores the Malaysian golfers' experience in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia golf courses. The study sheds light on the unique attributes of golf tourism in each country, including the courses, facilities, services and overall golfing experiences offered to golf tourists.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative data were procured through in-depth semi-structured interviews with a cohort of 13 Malaysian golfers.

Findings

The findings indicate that golfers' experiences are affected by the quality of service, facilities, price and course condition, ultimately contributing to their satisfaction level. The evidence suggests that Malaysian golfers are comparatively more satisfied with golf courses in Thailand and Indonesia than in Malaysia.

Originality/value

The study underscores the importance of golf course attributes in retaining existing golfers and enticing new ones. Besides, as comparative research on golf course attributes and destination preferences is scant, this study has far-reaching implications, empowering Malaysian golf course managers to augment the appeal and quality of their golf course destination to optimise the behavioural intentions of golf tourists.

Purpose

A perceived misalignment between socially responsible fans and football club management has recently led to a major crisis during the annual meeting in 2021 of Bayern Munich, one of the largest professional football teams in Europe. In an unprecedented scenario, Bayern Munich fans demanded that management drop one of its largest sponsors due to alleged violation of human rights. The goal of this paper is to examine this particular phenomenon, as it not only demonstrates a discrepancy between the social organizational identity and its image, but more importantly, how it impacts legitimation strategies and the fans' loyalty attitudes towards the club.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the underlying concepts of legitimacy and loyalty, this conceptual model paper proposes two frameworks for social responsibility in professional football clubs: (1) analyzing how the (mis-)alignment between organizational identity and image impacts fan loyalty and (2) depicting four different types of social responsibility strategies to align organizational identity and image.

Findings

The authors identify various theoretical concepts that influence organizational identity and image in and for social responsibility and combine the two critical concepts of legitimacy and loyalty to categorize the social responsibility strategies for professional football clubs.

Originality/value

Both frameworks advance the understanding of the decision-making behind social responsibility strategies and also synthesize the current literature to offer conceptual clarity regarding the varied implications and outcomes linked to the misalignment between organizational identity and image.