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This study examines the effect of four acculturation strategies (integration, assimilation, separation and marginalisation) on identification with and consumption of American football for the Asian population in the United States. Using Berry's (1990, 1997) bi-dimensional model of acculturation as a theoretical framework, significant differences (based on the four acculturation strategies) between football identification and consumption were found. In addition, this study examines the relationships between acculturation, ethnic identity, identification with, and consumption of, the sport among the Asian population. The results indicate that acculturation plays a significant role in explaining participants' identification with, and consumption of, the sport, whereas ethnic identity does not.

This study examines how Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) events are marketed in order to understand the role of violence in promoting events. Researchers examined 134 pieces of promotional artwork and 57 promotional news releases by MMA organisations across North America, Asia and Europe and found that 18 (13.4%) pieces of promotional artwork used violent text or imagery. Violent text was found in 12 (21%) of the 57 news releases. Violence was typically limited to smaller or European organisations. Results illustrate an evolution of the sport, suggesting violence may no longer be necessary to promote events.

This study surveys professional niche sports sponsors in an effort to empirically understand what selection criteria these companies deem important when evaluating professional niche sports sponsorship proposals. Findings suggest that professional niche sports properties may possess unique attributes on which sponsors place very high levels of importance, such as cost effectiveness, flexibility in assisting sponsors achieve their objectives, a more targeted fan-base and decreased sponsorship clutter. Pragmatically, findings provide professional niche sports managers with tools that may be useful when competing for sponsorship funding against more established mainstream sports properties. Theoretically, the current study begins to fill a gap in the sports sponsorship literature which has primarily focused on mainstream professional sports, major intercollegiate sports and elite amateur sports such as the Olympic Games.

The terms are not synonymous; their differences are mainly of function and areas of administration. Community Health is used in national health service law; environmental health to describe the residuum of health functions remaining with local authorities after the first NHS/Local Government reorganization of 1974. Previously, they were all embraced in the term public health, known for a century or more, with little attention to divisions and in the field of administration, all local authority between county and district councils. In the dichotomy created by the reorganization, the personal health services, including the ambulance service, may have dove‐tailed into the national health service, but for the remaining functions, there was a situation of unreality, which has persisted. It is difficult to know where community health and environmental health begin and end. From the outside, the unreality may be more apparent than real. The Royal Commission on the NHS in their Report of last year state that leaving environmental health services with local authorities “does not seem to have caused any problems”—and this, despite the disparity in status of the area health authority and the bottom tier, local councils.

This paper aims to examine the event attendance motives and the underlying mechanism through which event attendance motives influence positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) and revisit intentions. It also investigates how event attendance motives differ by gender.

A self-completed survey administered in English among visitors to the 2016 Olympic Games generated 230 valid responses. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling was applied to test research hypotheses.

Event attendance motives of esthetics and escape positively influence host city evaluation. Host city evaluation positively influences PWOM and revisit intentions. Host city evaluation mediates the relationship between event attendance motives (esthetics and escape) and behavioral intentions (PWOM and revisit intentions). Male Olympic tourists show significantly lower means in the motives of social bond and escape when compared with female Olympic tourists.

This study adds to the body of knowledge concerning Olympic tourists, their motives and behavioral intentions. Research findings indicate that event attendance motives influence PWOM and revisit intentions through the mediating effect of host city evaluation. Considering the noticeable paucity of gender analysis weakens the understanding of the Olympic tourist behavior, this study contributes to the literature by examining gender differences in Olympic attendance motives.

The objective of this paper is to respond to four research questions. The first two as how likely are college football season ticket holders to recommend (1) purchasing a similar season ticket package and (2) attending a home football game, to a friend or colleague. The third question examines if there is a difference between advocacy toward purchasing season tickets as compared to advocacy toward game attendance. Finally, we identify what factors impact advocacy for college football season ticket holders.

An online survey of 57,240 season ticket holders from 69 different National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision programs was undertaken. The data were analyzed to build a model of the drivers of advocacy in season ticket holders from a conceptual base of advocacy, trust and loyalty.

The identified drivers include both institutionally influenced factors and factors related to season ticket holder behaviors/demographics. The season ticket holder is arguably the highest level of fan for any sports organization from an affinity perspective and clearly the most important from a business perspective. This research argues that the season ticket holder should not only be the focus of ticket sales efforts but also leveraged as marketing advocates with the objective of attracting additional fans.

The value of this research is the large sample of data from season ticket holders of NCAA Division 1 football clubs and the resulting learning it provides to researchers and practitioners.

In the late 2000s, the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) emerged to become the dominant mixed martial arts (MMA) organisation, bringing the sport to mainstream acceptance. The purpose of this paper is to draw on theories of co-evolution and positive feedbacks to provide insights into how the UFC has assumed this dominant position.

A single historical case study is compiled drawing on data from a number of sources, including the UFC, US State Athletic Commissions, MMA web sites and prior UFC-related academic literature.

A number of significant growth dynamics are identified, including interconnections between the increase in free-to-air events and the generation of new UFC fans and revenues; the increased financial rewards to successful fighters that allows them to improve the quality of their training and the improved quality of UFC content; and the accumulation of a critical mass of high-level fighters that increases the reputation of the UFC and the increased attraction of new fighters to the organisation.

Further in depth studies are necessary to substantiate and quantify the interconnections identified in this paper.

The paper provides insights for other non-mainstream sports organisations that are attempting to grow their participation and viewership.

The emergence of new sports and sports organisations such as the UFC with global appeal and significant commercial returns is infrequent. This study contributes to the need for understanding of how new sports enter the mainstream and the role that governing organisations such as the UFC play in achieving this transition.

The purpose of this paper is to link the notions of brand community, loyalty and promise as a reminder to marketers of the importance to brands of keeping their commercial promises to brand community members.

The paper reports on a questionnaire survey (n=500) of members of a sport brand community as part of an investigation into the relationship between brand community and brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty was predicted by age, frequency of attendance, motivations for joining the brand community and the degree to which expectations built by the brand promise are met.

In common with many inquiries in the area of brand community, this is a single case study. It is primarily a cross-sectional study, with a minor longitudinal element.

Branding practitioners and consultants with responsibility for brand community management issues need to balance the consumer-to-consumer dimensions of community with a careful understanding and operationalisation of the brand promise.

This is the first paper to integrate the constructs of brand community and brand loyalty with that of brand promise.

Due to the size and velocity at which user generated content is created on social media services such as Twitter, analysts are often limited by the need to pre-determine the specific topics and themes they wish to follow. Visual analytics software may be used to support the interactive discovery of emergent themes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Tweets collected from the live Twitter stream matching a user’s query are stored in a database, and classified based on their sentiment. The temporally changing sentiment is visualized, along with sparklines showing the distribution of the top terms, hashtags, user mentions, and authors in each of the positive, neutral, and negative classes. Interactive tools are provided to support sub-querying and the examination of emergent themes.

A case study of using Vista to analyze sport fan engagement within a mega-sport event (2013 Le Tour de France) is provided. The authors illustrate how emergent themes can be identified and isolated from the large collection of data, without the need to identify these a priori.

Vista provides mechanisms that support the interactive exploration among Twitter data. By combining automatic data processing and machine learning methods with interactive visualization software, researchers are relieved of tedious data processing tasks, and can focus on the analysis of high-level features of the data. In particular, patterns of Twitter use can be identified, emergent themes can be isolated, and purposeful samples of the data can be selected by the researcher for further analysis.