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Two of the primary growth strategies for Major League Soccer (MLS) have been team expansion and the construction of soccer-specific stadiums. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between these factors and game-specific MLS spectator attendance.

Two multiple regression models, one using multi-level mixed effects linear regression and another using interval regression, were developed to explain the variation in attendance utilizing the two factors of interest along with other control factors that have been identified as attendance determinants in previous literature. Game-specific data were collected for five MLS seasons, 2007-2011.

The two regression models explained approximately 40 percent of the variation in spectator attendance and the results showed that expansion teams and soccer-specific stadiums were significantly related to attendance. However, the effect of soccer-specific stadiums was minimized due to the extreme success of the Seattle Sounders in drawing about twice as many fans as the next highest drawing franchise, yet playing in an American football stadium.

While many of the standard factors such as the presence of holidays and novelty players, competition from other professional teams, and day of week, competition from other professional teams; team quality failed to show significance. Expansion teams drew better than incumbent teams and the impact from soccer-specific stadia is weak given the success of the Seattle franchise (and possibly negative when excluding Seattle). Censoring of the dependent variable had a discernible impact on many of the attendance factors.

These findings may be useful to managers of MLS and their teams along with other professional teams and/or leagues that are investigating the use of either team expansion or the construction of new facilities to increase spectator attendance.

This is the first study to investigate the relationship between expansion and new stadium construction in MLS over multiple years. The results indicate that MLS’s decision to use team expansion and the construction of soccer-specific stadiums has been beneficial with respect to spectator attendance.

This case study demonstrates how a start-up professional sport league, the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), successfully incorporated an interactive fan festival into its inaugural Championship Weekend. Prior to revealing the details of the WUSA event, the history and rationale of interactive fan festivals is outlined. Also highlighted are the key marketing concepts applied (relationship marketing, brand management, experiential branding) in order to assist sport properties interested in using the interactive fan festival as a marketing tool in the future.

Sports leagues, such as Major League Soccer (MLS), aim at expanding their audience at global level through alternative media other than television (TV). Brazil stands out among football media consumer audiences as one of the main markets worldwide. Brazilian MLS consumers play the role of fans to converge between TV media and digital platforms, in a phenomenon that has been called Social TV.

The aim of the current research is to investigate how Brazilian MLS fans' consumption process is established through Social TV; it was done based on netnography performed between 2018 and 2020.

Results have indicated that Social TV is a catalyst of practices associated with fan culture: cultural convergence, technologies appropriations, poaching experiences and production of a collective intelligence.

Current research reinforces how ethnography methodology has been gaining room as likely consumer market research, working as alternative method based on the prevalence of focus group and survey techniques.

Social TV phenomenon presents itself as a possibility to expand and direct marketing strategies focused on sports management, just as the media often consumed by fans.

From the results, it is possible assuming that connections between fans are punctually guided by their relationship with the cultural object consumed by them in a network relationship whose actors deindividualize sociocultural practices such as consumption. Thus, the main contribution of the study lies on identifying how fan culture can be autonomously established in the market arena in comparison to other cultures.

Women's football faces an existential threat from COVID-19. Using case studies, the authors explore the COVID-19 responses of three highly ranked national football associations (Australia, England and the USA) and their professional women's football leagues to (a) compare and shed new insights into the wide range of phased responses and (b) establish recommendations for other nations to navigate major crises with their social and ethical responsibilities to women's football.

Drawing on institutional theory, a framework analysis was undertaken examining 71 articles to analyse the gendered global impacts of COVID-19 on women's football.

Results highlight several important recommendations for nations to consider during the pandemic: (1) maintain active communication with the community to allay worries about the future of women's football, (2) gather support from health and government officials, (3) seek out commercial and broadcasting partnerships to drive revenue, and (4) the interests of women's football are best served when responsibility for the elite women's league does not rest (solely) with national football associations.

The authors argue that sport is an interwoven part of society and cannot be separated from gender equality issues irrespective of the pandemic.

The study is first to explore institutional pressures and football governing bodies during COVID-19 and provides a framework for nations to manage major crises.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of team performance, price dispersion – having multiple ticket prices for a single event, and market characteristics on fan attendance. By considering the context of the Chinese Super League (CSL), this study considers multiple strategies for enhancing the demand for sport in relation to factors on- and off-the-field of play.

This study uses economic demand theory to examine consumer interest in sporting events in relation to pricing. Through employing econometric modeling, regression analysis is used to estimate results from match-level data encompassing multiple seasons.

The findings estimated from the linear regressions indicate that using multi-tiered pricing for sporting events does not significantly enhance demand in this context. Furthermore, it is found that consumers are responsive to matches against rival teams and strong opponents.

The results run counter to prior literature on price dispersion, indicating that attendance demand may not always be influenced by the number of price points.

The findings help to develop an understanding of how team performance and pricing are important parts of meeting organizational goals in sport. From this, strategies can be formed to help stakeholders and managers in improving organizational performance.

This research is one of the first to consider the CSL, where both single and multiple price points exist for sporting events. Thus, it helps to build both theoretical and empirical knowledge in regards to the importance of pricing systems.

This study examines factors that influence organizations’ choices of an internal human capital development strategy and an external human capital acquisition strategy. The human resource architecture indicates that organizations will use different human capital acquisition strategies. Following the resource-based view, human capital theory and the human resource architecture, we examine factors that impact the choices of different human capital acquisition strategies.

We examine these important human capital decisions in the context of Major League Soccer. Data to test the hypotheses were collected from a variety of publicly available sources. We tested the hypotheses with regression analyses.

We find that while organizations employ both internal and external human capital strategies, organizations may have one dominant human capital strategy and the other strategy may be used to supplement the human capital needs of organizations. Additionally, our results indicate that organizations with an older workforce tend to use an internal human capital development strategy, while higher performing organizations are less likely to use an internal human capital development strategy.

This study makes contributions by examining the choices between internal and external human capital strategies and factors that influence the choice of an internal or external human capital strategy.

This investigation's purpose is to compare coverage of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and Major League Soccer (MLS). The goals are (1) to extend CSR analyses beyond organizational reports and (2) to compare coverage of professional sports teams' CSR behaviors across genders.

Specifically, this quantitative content analysis compared local newspaper coverage of the socially responsible behaviors of the three NWSL and MLS teams owned and operated by the same organizations in Portland, Houston and Orlando.

The NWSL teams received significantly less and more negative coverage than the MLS teams. Moreover, the NWSL coverage was more individualistic, more focused on ethics and quoted individual team players more frequently, while the MLS coverage was more collective, focused on philanthropy and quoted team organization members more frequently.

Although intentionally based on a sample of six teams, this study's results suggest the biases in coverage of women's sports teams extend beyond the playing field to their corporate social responsibility behaviors, reporting and news coverage.

As one of the first studies to analyze media coverage of professional sports team's CSR activities and to compare their socially responsible behaviors across genders, the results provide compelling implications for CSR scholars and practitioners, especially in the sports industry.

The paper aims to refine existing customer‐based brand equity models for the team sport industry and examine the importance of brand equity in the professional German soccer league Bundesliga.

After assessing brand equity on the basis of actual consumer responses, we relate the brand equity measure on an aggregate level to objective means of economic success. Online sampling with a total database of 1,594 usable questionnaires is utilized for analysis. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (including multi‐group analysis) as well as structural equation modeling and regression analysis are applied.

Results highlight the adequacy of a parsimonious brand equity model in team sport (BETS) model and the importance of the brand in team sport for economic success.

The main limitations of this research are sample constraints; test persons are highly involved in and knowledgeable about the product category under research. Future research should address a more diverse population.

Teams and their management have to realize the relevance of their brand in economic success. They have to recognize the significance of the stadium visit and the individual spectators in the stadium.

First, a parsimonious BETS model is presented. Second, it was found that special attention should be devoted to the brand equity‐component “brand awareness” when researching brand equity. Third, this is one of the few studies that uses actual economic data to show the impact of brand equity based on direct consumer responses on company success.

In this study, the authors examine consumer attitudes toward a professional soccer club’s proenvironmental initiatives and evaluate whether key themes are consistent with those found in previous research of fans in different sporting contexts.

The authors analyzed empirical material provided by 147 highly identified supporters of a Major League Soccer team. Using template analysis, the authors compared codes, categories and themes with those previously identified in a reference group of National Football League (NFL) fans.

Twenty-three preliminary codes, nine categories and four themes were established by the researchers. Three themes – Considering Environmental Action, Business Insights and Impacting the Fan Experience – were all consistent with the NFL reference group. A fourth theme, Public Visibility, focused on the possibility that the club’s proenvironmental initiatives could provide a competitive advantage over rival cities and positively influence local programming and behaviors.

The results of this study support the notion that fan characteristics may differ across various demographic and structural contexts and fans’ recognition that a club could leverage its community standing to promote proenvironmental action.

This paper investigates the role of competitive balance among teams in a league in predicting attendance at spectator sporting events. It also controls for the demographic and economic characteristics of the league's markets, and changes in the number of teams in the league. The research relies on a sample that includes 707 non-major professional team seasonal win-loss records (12,956 games) from five sports, aggregated into 75 seasons to develop a model consistent with extant literature. The authors find that competitive balance and average income in the league's markets are significant predictors of leaguewide attendance.