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Action sports are beginning to acquire the status of mainstream sports and are increasingly recognised as a profitable enterprise by both the sports industry and the business industry. The purpose of this study is to analyse motivation of action sports participants. The researchers collected data at the 2005 LG (Lucky Geum Sung) FMX (Freestyle Motocross) World Championships. The results of a MANOVA test and a series of ANOVA tests revealed that in general these action sports participants (n=253) are highly motivated by fun/enjoyment and risk-taking. Motivation of action sports participants varies across gender and level of experience.

Participation in extreme sports, sometimes called adventure sports, action sports or even individualistic sports, has vastly increased in the last 20 years. The terms are still up for debate, only vaguely defined and are often used interchangeably. Both viewing and participation in this young sports phenomenon is on the rise, but the importance of it for the world of sports, media sport and the opportunities for sponsorship are little explored. This paper will examine the emergence of extreme sports and the connected industry, the reasons why people are enthralled by the new phenomenon and the opportunities it poses for communicators.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how experiences, sport careers and biographic variables predict: enjoyment, satisfaction and memories from the unique and spectacular Extreme Sport Week (Ekstremsportveko), Voss, Norway, as reported by the extreme sport athletes.

An electronic questionnaire was distributed to all participants during 2011, and collected responses from 292 athletes (27 per cent response rate). Data were analysed by frequencies, mean values, correlations and multiple regression.

Extreme sport athletes were typically amateurs with serious leisure careers. Social ties between participants and volunteers were found. They had positive experiences at the event, and the realms of education, aesthetics and entertainment were the strongest predictors of enjoyment, satisfaction and memories. Level of excitement augmented the explained variance, especially when predicting memories. Most participants intended to re-visit future Extreme Sport Weeks.

The moderate response rate warrants generalisations from the study. As the study is cross-sectional, cause-effect relationships cannot be established.

For event organisers, the study shows the athletes’ appreciations with its managerial implications.

The Voss area is highly appreciated for its natural beauty and extreme sport resources, and re-visits are likely to occur, hence contributing to its growth as extreme sport venue and to sport tourism.

This study is the first to explore the experiences of athletes who participated in the unique and spectacular event Extreme Sport Week. For researchers and practitioners, it is an example of how to measure experiences and their outcomes of (extreme sport) events.

The role of creativity in marketing has great importance. In this chapter, the authors discuss the role of creativity in the sports context. The authors discuss creativity and then move onto the various contexts in sports that could be covered. This looks at the worlds of traditional and extreme sports along with a brief exploration of the burgeoning area of esports. The authors then draw from some creative principles that are worth keeping in mind before moving onto future areas that could be covered. The authors hope that this will be useful for practitioners and researchers who are interested in not just creativity, but also the exciting opportunities in sports. In short, the authors hope this provides inspiration for those wishing to explore these areas further. Creativity is a powerful thing, and sport is an area full of potential. As such, the authors believe that these two are a pairing worth exploring more.

This study aims to examine the influence of a sports-related accident and its severity on sponsorship effects, including brand recognition, attitude toward the sponsoring brand and purchase intention.

The fear appeal theory and sensation-seeking are applied as a theoretical framework. The research is carried out via an experiment using auto racing video footage and print material that manipulates the severity of accidents at three levels – no accident, an accident with a minor injury and an accident resulting in a fatality.

The analyses demonstrate that the severity of the accident elicits varying sponsorship effects. Sponsorship effects are maximized in a minor injury condition, while smaller sponsorship effects are garnered in the absence of an accident or during fatal injury conditions, as expected via the fear appeal theory. These results suggest that sports fans are excited by auto racing crashes, but are averse to witnessing a fatal accident.

The participants of the experiment were all students. Consequently, the participants did not represent all sports fans. Only auto racing was examined as experiment stimuli. Different demographic characteristics (e.g. age, race, nationality) and sports could differently influence the relationships among the research variables.

Potential sponsors do not need to take a negative view of the dangers of sports accidents. Rather, it is recommended that such companies actively plan their sponsorship activities with the appropriate strategy.

The relationship between the severity of a sports-related accident and sponsorship effects has received little attention regarding its potential impact on brand recognition, attitude toward the sponsoring brand and purchase intention. The current study is the first known empirical research using the fear appeal theory in sports sponsorship. It investigates the severity of a sports-related accident and determines how that severity influences sponsorship effects in auto racing. This study provides a better understanding of the effects of an accident and its severity on sponsorship effects.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual model of branded entertainment into sport marketing and highlight Red Bull’s strategy as a “best practice”. Branded entertainment, the full integration of advertising into entertainment content, is an innovative marketing strategy that can provide sport enterprises and sponsors with consumer attention and engagement.

Branded entertainment was theoretically framed and conceptualised. Using an inductive approach Red Bull’s portfolio of self-generated action/extreme sport content as well as its production, distribution and viral processes were analysed.

A communication model of sport-related branded entertainment was developed to distinguish actors such as athletes, sponsors, and co-operating companies, traditional and new (sport) media as well as sport consumers and prosumers and analyse their actions and relationships.

This study is limited to Red Bull’s branded entertainment activities. However, a thorough conceptualisation and analysis of branded entertainment and findings of unique characteristics and anomalies related to branded sport entertainment allows academics and professionals to understand and apply the concept.

The research theme triggers a dialogue and encourages marketing practitioners to consider alternative ways to engage their target audiences and expand their integrated communication strategies via a unique and dynamic promotional tool.

This paper contributes to the sport value framework by addressing “value co-creation” in a sport media and marketing context. By highlighting the Red Bull phenomenon as an innovative approach a successful integration of branding and sponsorship activities into sport entertainment content production, distribution and viral marketing is presented.

The aim of this chapter is to examine and problematize the taken-for-granted conceptual understanding of risk practices in sport cultures. By inspecting the mainstay, and one might argue relatively stagnant, constructions of risk in the sociological study of sport, a case for attending to a wider range of risk-based ideologies and cultural practices is presented. The chapter ventures away from viewing risk as predominantly physical in sport settings and constructing athletes as oppressed agents who naively acquiesce to practices of self-injury and self-alienation in sport cultures. Emphasis is given to a broad spectrum of risks undertaken in the practice of sport, and the reflexive, personal nature by which risk may be understood by sports and physical culture participants.

In the first part of the chapter, the relatively simplistic or unidimensional construction of risk in sociological research in sport is reviewed. In the second part, the complexity of the concept of risk is then discussed alongside case examples that push the analytical boundaries of how risk is a multidimensional construct of athletes’ minds, bodies, selves, beliefs, values, and identities in a host of relational contexts.

Risk is best understood as a set of practices and belief that exists on a continuum in sport and physical cultures. Risk-taking in sport, however, can be personally injurious and detrimental along a number of lines but is also often calculated, personally/group satisfying and existentially rewarding at times. If the concept of risk is to be applied and interrogated in sport and physical cultures, it should be done so, therefore, in radically contextual manners.

This chapter illustrates the need for new and exploratory theoretical understandings of what risk means to athletes and other participants in sport and physical culture. New substantive topics are proposed, as are methodological suggestions for representations of the unfolding risk in the process of “doing” sport.

The demand for sport tourism throughout the world has risen in recent years for several reasons, most significantly an increased emphasis on health and fitness and the increased use of sporting events by cities in order to attract tourists. The purpose of this case study is twofold. First, to trace the corporate communication process implemented by the management of Isrotel Hotels in its effort to build the new Sport Club Hotel, focusing on internal and external communications. Second, to describe how the marketing and promotion of sport hotels differs from that of ordinary hotels.

This article describes one unique example of a hotel based entirely on the idea of fulfilling the dreams of active sport tourists, provided by the Isrotel Hotel Management Group, who have given the concept of a sports vacation a whole new meaning in the world of hospitality.

The case study described here suggests that sports‐oriented hotel identity must be achieved via the most efficient corporate communication channels in the hospitality industry – nomenclature and branding, graphic design, formal statements, architecture, media relations and routine interactions.

This case study provides insights into the marketing and communication strategies used in creating a sports‐oriented hotel for people who wish to live and breathe sports 24 hours a day during their vacation. This case can serve other hotel managements in their attempts to provide their guests with a different experience that effectively amalgamates hospitality and sports.

Purpose – This interpretive study aims to demonstrate how dialectics might hamper researchers' imagination, inspiration, and insight that can otherwise enhance the understanding of a variety of phenomena in consumer-market dynamics and subsequently propose Foucauldian genealogy as an alternative to theorize such dynamics in the current consumer culture.

Methodology/approach – An ethonographic field study is conducted in the context of X Games, followed by an empirical juxtaposition of semiotic square, as a dialectical analysis, and a genealogical analysis of the same textual data.

Findings – Consumer-market dynamics operate based on interactions and mutual facilitations among four theoretically and empirically distinct groups of consumers in the context of X Games: pragmatic, stigmatized, distinction-oriented, and self-normalizing consumers. The historic conflict between consumers and the market steeped in Hegelian dialectics is contested in the dynamics due to the switch of modes(arts) of being(consumption) made by individual consumers who respectively participate in the system through presentation and representation.

Implications – A multitude of reality/truth-making is present in the consumer-market dynamics; thus, the dialectical view of the systematic progression of the market is found to be less implicative than the genealogical view of the system as polyvalent power relations.