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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.

The purpose of this research is to examine fans' perceptions of pro-environmental sustainability initiatives promoted by a professional sport club and the ensuing effects on a triple bottom line (TBL) approach (i.e. fans' socially, environmentally and economically favourable behaviours).

Data were collected in two different steps using an online self-administered questionnaire (n1 = 1,043; n2 = 2,167) distributed to fees-paying members registered in the club's database. The analysis was carried out though structural equation modelling.

The results indicate good psychometric properties of the scale used to measure fans' perceptions of a club's pro-environmental sustainability initiatives (perceptions of pro-environmental sustainability initiatives in sports; p-PESIS). Additionally, there is a positive effect of p-PESIS on fans' social behaviours as well as on their daily environmental actions. Furthermore, p-PESIS also shows a positive effect at improving fans' economic activities towards the club.

Extending previous research, the authors tested a scale to measure fans' responses to pro-environmental sustainability initiatives in sport and examined their links to the TBL dimensions. Pro-environmental sustainability initiatives in sport benefit not only the club itself (by reinforcing fans' activities with the club) but also society as a whole, as it can promote fans' conscientiousness and likelihood to behave in environmentally and socially favourable ways.

The National Football League (NFL), the most lucrative sports league in the world, has its second largest foreign audience in Brazil. Its Brazilian broadcasts stimulate the audience to extrapolate television reception and interact through a social media platform, seeking to integrate a collective consumption. Thus, attachments are established between consumers and league. Based on this, this study aims to analyze how the interaction in social media of the Brazilian NFL audience, during the transmissions of its games, results in consumption attachments.

The method undertaken was Netnography, commonly used to investigate cultural practices occurring in online environments. The research corpus consisted of messages posted on Twitterhashtags created by the ESPN Brazil channels to reverberate its broadcasts of the league between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons.

The findings of this study indicate that Brazilian audience interaction in social media establishes consumer attachment with the NFL by means of the brand elements and aspects of social life, mediated by the league.

The research observed only the part of the Brazilian audience of the NFL that engages in the broadcasts of the games through social media.

The research of this study demonstrates how brands can use social media to enable social interactions that create or improve consumer attachments with them.

The study presents how a media brand imbricated in the American culture has been the target of attachment by Brazilian fans through social media interactions.

This study explores the motivations underlying the European Super League (SL) breakaway attempt. While institutional settings bind football to tradition, investors conceive football companies as an opportunity to diversify their investments in a fast-growing technological industry. The study investigates the market structure and identifies the reasons behind the European football crisis, proposing to modify the role of Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in the European football market.

After summarizing the unusual features of the European football market, the article displays the agents involved and their interrelations. Modeling the market facilitates picturing the misalignment of targets of regulatory bodies and football clubs. It also helps visualize the potential consequences of the SL coup on the market.

The market does not allow football companies to monetize their business and compete with other entertainment sectors. Only a radical change in the balance of power between clubs and self-interested institutional settings can settle this situation. Indeed, this relation leads to market inefficiency because the two most critical clubs' financial problems (the high dependence on broadcasting revenues and the uncontrolled expenditures on players' salaries) are linked to the same issue: the governing bodies strongly influence the profit equation by holding control of media rights and incentivizing clubs to overspend to win both on-field and off-field.

This study is the first to assess the football business market using an evolutionary approach to address its problems. It offers a visualizing tool to understand the market and proposes an alternative solution for solving the football market crisis.

Sports tourism was strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is no consensus on what sports tourism should look like in the post-pandemic period. This study explores the future of sports tourism in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides an alternative paradigm model.

Data were collected by interviewing sports tourism experts. Data analysis was based on the continuous comparison method during three stages of open, axial and selective coding.

The findings point to the complexity of the future sports tourism industry. Post-COVID-19 sports tourism strongly depends on environmental forces and targeted support, with strategies focused on tourists’ safety and security, digitalization of the industry, and new employment opportunities.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on sports tourism by providing answers to the current challenges, threats and opportunities associated with the pandemic. The proposed paradigm model could be a guideline for sports tourism practitioners and policymakers to accelerate recovery from COVID-19 in a sustainable and resilient manner.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consolidate knowledge and benchmark the progress being made across the 32 International Federations (IFs) in the Summer Olympic Programme.

Design/methodology/approach: A website content analysis, analytical hierarchy of information, and social media research was conducted to triangulate the barriers and drivers of environmental sustainability (ES) progress. This data was then analysed to empirically substantiate the findings of previous methods by exploring potential drivers of IF ES progress and communication and refining the ranking of IF ES progress.

Results and findings: World Sailing is by far the most advanced IF in terms of ES progress, followed by World Athletics. Only 4 out of 32 have any sort of strategic ES plans. Only golf, surfing, football, sailing, and hockey have received any academic attention. There is a significant lack of understanding of environmental practices across sport, and their drivers/barriers. There is limited accountability with regards to ES progress and activities throughout the Olympic Movement. This has resulted in uneven diffusion of environmental activities.

Originality: This paper is a new contribution to sport management and ES literature. It provides a benchmark of understanding for ES in the Summer Olympic Programme for the first time using a hierarchy of information to ground results. The exploration and comparison of the perspectives of separate sports adds to the paper's originality.

Esta investigación utiliza la Teoría Basada en Recursos como base para un modelo que permite integrar las acciones organizacionales con las variables que pueden moderar, directa o indirectamente, su impacto en el alto desempeño de los clubes de fútbol.

Se desarrolla una contrastación empírica en tres fases. La primera fue la técnica de regresión lineal. En segundo lugar, un análisis multivariado de covarianza (MANCOVA) y el tercer procedimiento, una regresión por mínimos cuadrados en dos fases. El objetivo de usar estos dos últimos procedimientos fue evaluar el efecto conjunto de las variables independientes sobre las variables dependientes, así como los efectos de interacción entre las mismas.

Se validan las relaciones, directas e indirectas, entre las variables organizacionales y decisionales previstas en el modelo. También se valida la importancia de las acciones promocionales del club, para lograr competitividad basada en su desempeño o resultados.

Investigaciones futuras se podrían replicar en otros países, usando muestras más grandes con técnicas estadísticas más complejas. También, se podría contrastar si las relaciones encontradas pueden variar según las culturas, o pueden usarse otras variables no contempladas en este estudio.

El cuestionario usado es una fuente de información fiable para los directivos de marketing de los clubes de fútbol, puesto que las escalas pueden ser usadas como guías para evaluar y diagnosticar su potencial de competitividad basada en el desempeño.

Los clubes de fútbol tienen un desarrollo e impacto directo en la sociedad. Por ello, las implicancias en el club recaerán en el entorno cercano (aficionados y sociedad) a este.

Esta investigación aporta varias contribuciones fundamentales a la literatura sobre la competitividad organizacional en el sector deportivo, con aplicación específica a los clubes de fútbol. Este es uno de los escasos estudios que muestran que la competitividad es el resultado de una dinámica motivacional y organizativa, y que el éxito de los clubes se basa en un fenómeno más complejo que solo la asistencia a los eventos. También, es una investigación en un país emergente, lo cual extiende la aplicabilidad teórica y práctica del fenómeno estudiado.

The aim of this article is to examine how professionals within Dutch sports media give meaning to racial/ethnic diversity in the organization and reflect on the use of racial stereotypes in sports reporting.

Ten in-depth interviews with Dutch sports media professionals have been conducted to obtain the data. Respondents had a variety of responsibilities within different media organizations in the Netherlands. The authors used thematic analysis supplemented with insights from critical discourse analysis to examine how sports media professionals give meaning to racial/ethnic diversity and the use of racial/ethnic stereotypes.

The following main themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (1) routines within the production process, (2) reflections on lack of diversity on the work floor and (3) racial/ethnic stereotyping not seen as an issue. Generally, journalists showed paradoxical views on the issue of racial/ethnic diversity within sport media production dismissing it as a non-issue on the one hand while also acknowledging there is a lack of racial diversity within sport media organizations. Results will be placed and discussed in a wider societal and theoretical perspective.

By focussing on the under-researched social group of sport media professionals in relation to meanings given to race and ethnicity in the production process, this research provides new insights into the role of sports media organizations in (re)producing discourses surrounding race/ethnicity in multi-ethnic society and the operation of whiteness in sports media.

Social media has revolutionized marketing communication (MC). Rugby is South Africa’s most professionalized sport, leading the industry in its business management structure as well as its high-performance achievements. However, below the professional level, local rugby clubs face a large disparity compared to their professional counterparts, often relying on volunteers or part-time employees to manage the organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how non-professional rugby clubs use social media as a MC tool.

The study was exploratory, and a cross-sectional sample of twelve organizations was selected and employed a multiple case study approach. Club managers responsible for MC or social media participated in semi-structured interviews. The qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti, facilitated the researchers’ use of an inductive approach to develop codes and themes for further analysis.

The findings revealed a high level of adoption of social media by the multiple cases (i.e. rugby sports club respondents), with only slight variations in the usage of specific social media applications (viz., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp). The sports clubs perceived that employing social media added substantial value to their MC. There were six emergent themes related to the organization’s perceived benefits from adopting social media MC, namely: brand awareness, relationship-building, player recruitment, attracting sponsors, storytelling, and information sharing.

The study makes a novel contribution in terms of how rugby clubs use social media as an MC tool. The paper advances scant knowledge and awareness of the relationship between South Africa’s sports marketing and social media. The conclusions will aid non-professional sports organizations in enhancing the effectiveness of their social media marketing by ensuring that their objectives and target audiences are well-defined.