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The new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) has deeply affected football, the most followed sport in the world, financially and socially. The clubs that have been heavily hit financially will certainly focus more on the digital world to overcome this problem. Competition in the field will take place in the digital world at the same rate. Three factors will be very important for clubs in the new period: firstly, reassuring the loyal fans' expectation of success as before; secondly, adjusting themselves to the rules of financial fair play and being financially successful; and lastly, meeting the expectations of the new and digitalized fan generation. As a result, the football industry should find the most suitable way for itself, considering the negative consequences of COVID-19 and the changing dynamics of the industry.

This study examined potential sport tourists’ decision-making regarding a sporting event rescheduled due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

An extended model of goal-directed behavior – encompassing the perception of COVID-19, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, positive anticipated emotion, negative anticipated emotion, desire and behavioral intention – was built and tested using survey data and structural equation modeling.

The perception of COVID-19 significantly influenced attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and positive anticipated emotion, which then collectively led to desire. Desire, alongside optimism bias, had a substantial impact on behavioral intention. However, the perception of COVID-19 was not related to negative anticipated emotion.

The findings highlight the roles that optimism bias and the perception of COVID-19 play in shaping individuals’ intentions to engage in sport tourism, suggesting how marketers and managers of sporting events should respond to the pandemic.

This study examines the relationship of COVID-19 with the tourism industry in the context of news coverage. More specifically, this study analyzes the relationship between COVID-19 and subsectors of tourism throughout different periods of the pandemic.

Qualitative research techniques were applied, and content analysis used, to analyze the collected data. The news contents obtained cover two one-week periods: March 5–12, 2020, and April 5–12, 2020. The content analysis method and MAXQDA program were used to analyze the data.

The research findings reveal that tourism and news related to COVID-19 were heavily connected with the travel industry during March 5–12, 2020, with concentrations slightly favoring the hospitality industry. In the period of April 5–12, 2020, the strong relationship between tourism and travel continued. During the latter period, the hospitality and the events industries were both subjects of relevant news.

This study examined the news during a short period of time. In addition, the sample of the study does not represent all news in all media. Examining different media outlets and different news cycles may produce different results.

This is one of the first studies to examine the relationship between the pandemic and the tourism industry from a macro perspective in the context of news coverage. The study provides implications for policy-makers, tourism planners and industry.

This study aims to investigate how sports customers adopted over-the-top (OTT) services to consume sport content. Inspired by the technology acceptance model (TAM), the study aims to understand users' behavior when consuming sporting events and users' perceptions toward OTT services.

The participants of the study are Chinese sports consumers that use streaming services to watch live sport content. An online survey was distributed through HUPU Sports, a Chinese online communication community where sports fans can share opinions. To make sure all responses qualified to take part in the study, skip logic questions were added at the beginning of the questionnaire to ask participants to answer whether they used streaming services for watching sports. A total of 352 responses were received and there were 327 useable questionnaires.

The results revealed that viewing convenience, free of commercials and viewing quality were the main reasons impacting them to adopt OTT services. In terms of users' perceptions, paid users rated higher in perceived enjoyment, perceived value, perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use than nonpaid users. OTT users' fandom and PU could predict the time the users spent on using these services, while the users' fandom and perceived value are positively related to the money users spent on these services. In addition, this study also found that users' fandom, perceived value, content quality, and ease of use are positively associated with users' intention to continue to use the service.

The study is one of the first attempts to explore how sports audiences adopted OTT services to consume sport content and explore the audiences' perceptions toward OTT usage. Previous studies have already investigated how users adopted music streaming services (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019) and other online streaming services (Shin and Park, 2021), but little attention has been given to sports streaming services specifically. Therefore, the findings of the study fill the gap in the extant knowledge of sport consumers' behavior and provide more insights to their online behaviors. Moreover, the authors also contribute to the growing digital media literature by advancing our understanding perceptional differences between paid users and unpaid users. The streaming services literature has primarily focused on general users (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019), but the services neglect to understand the differences in between paid and unpaid users.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence hypothesis of House Price Index (HPI) in the case of 18 major Indian cities for the period 2014–2019.

To attain the authors main goal, this study applies a clustering algorithm advanced by Phillips and Sul. This test creates a club of convergence based on the growth of the cities in terms of HPI.

The study findings show the existence of two convergence clubs and one non-convergent group. Club 1 includes the cities with high HPI growth, whereas club 2 comprises of cities with least HPI growth. Cities belonging to the non-convergent group are neither converging nor diverging.

This study findings will benefit home buyers, sellers, investors, regulators and policymakers interested in the dynamic interlinkages of house price (HP) among Indian cities.

The majority of the studies are conducted in the case of China at the province or city levels. Furthermore, in the case of India, none of the studies has investigated the HP club convergence across Indian cities. Therefore, the present study fills this research gap by examining the HP club convergence across Indian cities.

Through investigating how Belgian LGBTQ people evaluate gay-themed print and television advertising in mainstream media, the purpose of this study is to explore how gay-themed advertising strategies are evaluated in relation to context.

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 Flemish self-identified lesbian, gay male and bisexual people.

Findings of this research demonstrate the importance of the situated context in which LGBTQ people receive and evaluate gay-themed advertisements. By offering a common stock of social knowledge and experience, context creates a framework against which LGBTQ people evaluate gay-themed advertisements. In this specific research that was conducted in a Western-European LGBTQ-friendly society (Belgium), critical evaluations of gay-washing and the dirty laundry effect were found. The positive evaluations of explicit gay-themed and inclusive advertisements also highlighted the importance of advertising an inclusive society.

In considering how gay-themed advertising evaluations relate to context and lived experiences, this research contributes to current knowledge on gay-themed advertising and its reception within LGBTQ groups.

This research offers valuable insights to marketers on how to target sexual minorities in LGBTQ (un)friendly societies.

Findings highlight the social importance of minority-oriented advertising. Not only can such advertising promote civic inclusion and social recognition of minority groups, it also has the potential to play a key role in the construction and normalisation of identities.

In an effort to reinvigorate current marketing debates on gay-themed advertising, this study builds on theoretical insights gained via reception research and LGBTQ studies. In doing so, this research yields a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of LGBTQ people’s engagement with various gay-themed advertisements. Considering within a Western European society the relevance of context when researching gay-themed advertisement reception, the results add to primarily US-based research on this topic.

As the world faces a new health crisis threatening people with the spread of Covid-19, this study aims to summarize the key information of Covid-19 related to disease characteristics, diagnosis, treatment and prevention along with the lessons learned from Thailand.

The narrative review was synthesized from various sources such as the World Health Organization; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Ministry of Public Health and other related news; articles in ScienceDirect, PubMed, Google Scholar; and the author's perspective regarding the lessons learned from Thailand with keywords of “Covid-19” and “Coronavirus” from January to August 2020. Google Trends was used to set common questions.

Covid-19 is the seventh family of coronaviruses that cause various symptoms related to respiratory systems. The disease can be treated through general and symptomatic treatment, by using antiviral drugs. As of July 2020, there are four potential vaccine candidates ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, mRNA-1273, Ad5-nCOV and BNT162b1. The recommendations for Covid-19 prevention are physical distancing, face masks, eye protection and hand washing. Thailand is now considered as low-risk for Covid-19 possibly because of (1) soft policy by government actions, (2) village health volunteers, (3) integration of technology and (4) fact-based communications.

This study summarized the key points about Covid-19, clarified some misunderstandings and shared strategic actions from Thailand, which can be adapted according to the different capacities and situations in other countries.

Greek economic adjustment and memoranda austerity lasted for 10 years followed by intense academic and political debate over their impact on Greek society. Macroeconomic stabilization succeeded in nominal terms but to the detriment of growth drivers and social welfare involving asymmetrical and high social cost.

The article presents the key growth challenges after March 2020, taking into account the COVID-19 disastrous impact. From an institutional point of view, transaction cost reduction, attainment of market credibility, trust and confidence, and improvement of economic and social cohesion, remain doubtful in the long term if macroeconomic stabilization not collides with export-oriented growth and structural reforms.

Contextual changes in communications, social activism and perceptions of commercialization have changed the dynamics in sponsorship. This paper investigated the patterns in sponsorship and social justice within the context of a major sports event.

The European Football Championship serves as an impactful platform for sponsors due to its global reach. The sponsorship activations of the twelve official sponsors were investigated by analysing sponsorship expressions on the LED boarding during every match of the tournament. Furthermore, additional data on sponsorship characteristics and brand positioning was collected for every sponsor to define relevant factors to understand the differences in sponsorship communications.

During UEFA EURO 2020, five official sponsors changed their sponsorship activations. Adjustments were made in sponsorship expressions to position the brand on diversity and inclusion. The analyses of over 90,000 press photos and 51 official match videos clarified the dynamics of brand positioning, sponsorship characteristics in perspective of globalization patterns and different sponsorship approaches in different geographical, social and political contexts.

Decision makers in the global sports industry are challenged in their brand management and sponsorship approaches for the social good. This study supports to understand the sponsorship approaches and factors affecting these different strategies.

Despite the growing attention to social justice issues in sports, there is a need to understand inclusive marketing strategies in sponsorship relationships. Using data triangulation, the findings enabled to clarify differences in sponsor approaches to social justice and illustrate the complex dynamics of brand positioning on diversity and inclusion in the sponsorship ecosystem.

This paper provides a reflective comparison of the budgetary implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for three Nordic countries: Finland, Norway and Sweden.

By drawing from the notion of ambiguity and constructions of certainty, this study analyzes the most relevant budgetary allocations and packages implemented by the governments of Finland, Norway and Sweden in response to the COVID-19 crisis using empirical documentary data.

Influenced by the need to save citizens' lives and protect the economy, the three countries have interpreted the COVID-19 threat in different ways. While Finland and Norway seem to be fighting a war against the virus, Sweden appears to view COVID-19 as an exceptionally difficult flu. These different perspectives are reflected in the strategies and budgetary responses implemented in the three countries.

By elaborating on the ambiguities of reality, causality and intentionality, this paper shows how the budgeting mindset aimed at creating certainties among citizens varies among the Nordic countries, which are generally assumed to be similar.