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Despite its growth, there has been a lack of investigation on how sport rebranding influences fans and their behaviors. This study sought to examine how a critical aspect of rebranding – logo redesign – influences fans' attitudes toward a sport brand and intent to purchase merchandise bearing the rebranded logo. More specifically, we aim to investigate the influence of varying degrees of logo change and fan identification in relation to brand attitude and purchase intention.

An experimental design, 4 (degrees of logo change) × 2 (fan identification: low, high), was utilized with the sample of 277 participants. The current logo of the Ultimate Fighting Championship was redesigned into three fictitious rebranded logos as stimuli based on different rebranding types.

The results suggest that color change and revolutionary change generate the most negative attitudes from both high- and low-identified fans, and fan identification is not a significant factor influencing fan attitudes. Regarding purchase intention, low-identified fans are not significantly influenced by logo changes whereas highly identified fans showed similar response to their attitudes.

The findings advance the current body of knowledge on sport rebranding and fan behavior by demonstrating the effects of varying degrees of logo redesign and fan identification levels on brand attitude and purchase intention. Moreover, the current research has important implications for sport marketers on developing effective rebranding and logo redesign strategies.

Central to the celebrity creation process is mass media communication and impression management (IM) behaviors of social actors. The emergence of social network sites (SNSs) such as Twitter offers a platform for social actors to engage both of these means in efforts to manage their celebrity. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how celebrity athletes manage their celebrity status by investigating IM tactics employed by National Basketball Association (NBA) celebrities on Twitter.

A content analytic design was employed to examine the Twitter posts of the top ten most popular and influential NBA celebrity athletes (past and present) at the time of tweet acquisition.

The findings revealed the celebrity athletes used a variety of IM tactics to manage their celebrity. Defensive IM tactics (i.e. reactive measures taken) were used sparingly when compared to offensive IM tactics (i.e. proactive measures taken). Also, consistent with extant IM literature, the celebrity athletes utilized IM tactics in isolation as well as in combination.

The extant literature suggests that celebrities cultivate their relationships with the various media outlets with the potential to create (or even damage) one’s celebrity. This study offers celebrity athletes and their managers with useful insight on celebrity management.

This study is the first to examine IM in a sport business context, particularly the use of IM of athletes on SNSs.

While each genre and gender has been revealed as significant moderators for esports gameplay intention, exploring the interaction effects between genre and gender could broaden our understanding of the drivers’ relative effects on esports gameplay intention. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the interaction effects of gender and genre in the relationship between esports gameplay intention and its drivers (i.e. hedonic motivation, habit, price value, effort expectancy, social influence and flow).

The hypothesized model was examined using data from a sample (N = 1,194). For the purposes of data analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to examine the hypothesized model. Then, a series of structural invariance tests were conducted to compare the interrelationship between the six determinants and esports gameplay for the six-group model.

The results of the six-group model comparison indicated that the interaction between gender and genre moderates the relationship between drivers and esports gameplay intention. In particular, the following moderation effects were observed: (1) “social influence-esports gameplay intention” between “male-physical enactment” and “female-physical enactment”; (2) “habit-esports gameplay intention” and (3) “effort expectancy-esports gameplay intention” between “female-imagination” and “female-physical enactment”; (4) “hedonic motivation-esports gameplay intention” and (5) “effort expectancy-esports gameplay intention” between “female-physical enactment” and “female-sport simulation.”

The findings of this current study contributed to clarifying the genre and gender effects in esports gameplay intention and thus the extension of the Esports Consumption (ESC) model (Jang et al., 2020a) and the technology adoption literature. Since the ESC model grounded the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2), the improvement of the ESC model extended UTAUT2. In consumer behavior research in the esports context, this current study contributed to the extension of UTAUT2 on the new moderating mechanisms by adding the interaction between gender and esports game genre.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the perceived enjoyment that is derived from spectators observing other spectators’ dysfunctional behavior during a game.

Using four forms (i.e. fighting, verbal assault, disrupting play and throwing missiles) of spectators dysfunctional behavior (SDB), two experiments (N = 252 for Study 1 and N = 92 for Study 2) were conducted in which video clips corresponding to the four types of SDB were used as experimental stimuli.

The findings indicate that participants enjoyed viewing spectators running onto the field of play significantly more than the other forms of SDB (i.e. fighting, verbal assaults and throwing missiles). The results also show no significant difference between how much spectators enjoyed the actions of fighting, verbal assault and throwing missiles.

The novelty of this study include the usage of a multidimensional approach to the concept of SDB and testing for a positive outcome pertaining to SDB that has largely, if not fully, been examined using negative inputs and outputs.

The study advances brand association research into participatory sports (i.e. fitness) by examining health club related dimensions and extending research into the United States (US). Data were collected from health club members (n=148) at a branded US fitness facility. Factor and regression analyses used specified brand association dimensions and revealed a predictive model of brand loyalty. Findings and discussions will assist fitness managers in brand-building, marketing strategies and member retention.

While brand extensions and licensing are two distinct brand strategies, recent literature suggests that licensing be treated as an “external” brand extension. As both of these strategies have the ability to have positive and negative effects on the team's brand it is important to understand if consumers are aware if they are purchasing licensed products or extensions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine if consumers are aware when a brand extension or licensing situation is present.

This research involved exposing participants to a total of 16 products (eight brand extensions and eight licensed products) and asking participants to indicate who developed the products they were exposed to.

The results suggest that participants had a difficult time correctly identifying team licensed products, while in general they were able to successfully identify team brand extensions.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that licensed product should not be classified as brand extensions as has been previously suggested. As such, research on brand extensions may not be applicable to licensing and vice versa.

As there is some confusion in regards to who is manufacturing team licensed product, it is important that sport properties choose licensees that produce high quality products to limit potential negative effects on their brand.

This was the first known study to examine differences in consumer awareness of team brand extensions and licensed products.

The existing literature on emotion regulation strategies provides important insights with regards to intrapersonal strategies for emotion regulation. However, in pointing out the limitations of intrapersonal emotion regulation models, it has been suggested that emotion regulation is not confined to intrapersonal processes and the complex social networks that humans form are intricately connected to their emotions. The previous work on financial traders has recognized the relevance of emotions in trading, focusing only on intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies. In this chapter, drawing on the author’s previous research on emotions in trading as well as existing research on social sharing of emotions and interpersonal emotion regulation, interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in the work of financial traders are identified. In doing so, an existing definition of interpersonal emotion regulation is extended and it is argued that while the pursuit of a regulatory goal is paramount, the benefits of interpersonal regulation may be achieved even in the absence of live social interaction, as long as labeling of the affective state takes place. The chapter concludes with a model summarizing intra–interpersonal emotion regulation processes.

The purpose of this paper is to arrive at a better understanding of the experiences of the women who comprise a distinct National Football League (NFL) women’s only fan club.

A semi-structured focus group interview was conducted and analyzed using margin coding for a NFL fan club. The focus group data were triangulated with secondary sources such as participant observation, field notes, and documents (e.g. web site and written documents from fan club).

The data analysis revealed the following eight themes: philanthropy, team affiliation, events, social media, brand elements, fan identity, apparel, perks.

The paper examines the experiences of women fan club members, which could potentially provide the franchise with insights on how to enhance the member experience. While the present study represents only one case, the researchers believe there are key factors to call attention to for NFL marketers considering a brand extension aimed at women.

The results provide marketers with useful information to enhance the experience of current women only fan club brand extension and potential future women only fan club brand extensions. Given the increase in NFL fandom among this segment of the population, it will be crucial for NFL marketers to increase their efforts to leverage their respective sport team brands with female fans.

The paper is the first to explore the experiences of women fan club members in professional sports.

The purpose of this paper is to explore three different types of digital environments for mathematics learning that may support mathematical play and the failure and feedback mechanics present in each.

Interaction analysis and the lenses of failure, feedback and mathematical play are used to analyze the mathematical interactions afforded by three different digital environments.

Each digital environment supports or restrains the potential for mathematical play through mathematical representations, failure and feedback.

The primary contribution of this paper is to highlight different ways in which digital failure and feedback designs can influence the emergent experience of mathematical play.