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The purpose of this research is to understand the overall consumer experience, while highlighting the means through which consumers live and take possession of what they consume.

Holt’s typology serves as the theoretical background. Choosing a netnographic framework, we analyze the coffee experiential universe of 41 Canadian consumers of Tim Hortons' coffee by studying their personal stories posted on the company’s website.

Individuals predominantly associate the consumption of coffee with ritual, happiness, joy, travel companion and extended relationship. These categories relate to mystique (ritual); pleasure (happiness and joy); travel (travel companion); and love (family-like relationship).

We acknowledge that there is a danger of bias in our data considering that we used the narratives that recorded the highest hits. However, these narratives represent a socially constructed reality which was validated by Tim Hortons’ fans themselves.

To maintain a strong market position, it is no longer sufficient to understand the associations linked to the overall experience of a product’s consumption. The company must also have ways of accessing or appropriating the consumer experience.

The study shows that it is possible for today’s consumer products to become symbolic representations in the minds of consumers, provided that the consumer has a strong attachment to the brand. It is essential to understand the appropriation practices of consumers’ experiences, as these hold significant theoretical and managerial implications.

The purpose of the chapter is to overview the sociological literature related to social media and digital technologies in sport, with particular attention to media representations, content production, and audience responses. The chapter examines how social media and digital technologies reproduce and challenge hegemonic representation strategies, while maintaining existing cultural norms in the industry. Further, the chapter evaluates how athletes and fans create digital communities to bring visibility to marginalized groups. Finally, the chapter considers the potential of digital media for social justice and advocacy.

The chapter synthesizes existing literature in sociology of sport, sport communication, and media studies to provide an assessment of the implications of social media and digital technologies for sport.

Scholarship on social media and digital technologies in sport has primarily focused on descriptive analyses. Sociological approaches provide a theoretical grounding for examining issues of power, inequality, and social justice in relation to media ideologies, production, and consumption.

The chapter identifies future areas of study, including a more robust engagement with theory and an expansion of methodological approaches.

The chapter provides an overview of the literature on social media and digital technologies in sport of nearly 80 scholarly publications. The chapter moves beyond focusing on patterns in content to consider how structures, journalistic practices, cultural norms, and audience interactions collectively shape ideologies about gender, race, sexuality, religion, and disability in the sport media industry.

Charismatic leadership can be defined by the features of the leaders, but also by the multiple‐level interaction processes that take place between the leaders and the led. As we approach the phenomenon, it is easy to see that in earlier research charismatic leadership is faced with many kinds of criticism. As seen, its consequences may be dangerous for organizations which may be led for “shared madness”. The undesirable consequences at the societal level include totalitarian aspects as well as truth manipulation practised by charismatic leaders. At the same time, charismatic leadership can be regarded as part of transformational leadership, where vision, intrapreneurship and emotions play a vital role. In this paper we explore charismatic leadership and followership taking a case from ice hockey coaching as an example. We suggest that ethics usually takes a guardian’s role in evaluating the outcome of charismatic leadership processes, that emotionality plays a vital role both in charismatic leadership and followership, and that charismatic leadership needs to be understood in the contexts that may culturally trigger it.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how, once a city has made a decision to build a new arena, local stakeholders envision the venue as a leverageable asset to achieve broader development goals through event hosting.

A total of 66 semi-structured interviews were undertaken in 12 cities across Canada. Participants included city employees (parks and recreation, tourism), elected officials (current and former mayors, councilors), arena management, management from the local team (serving as anchor tenant), members of chambers of commerce and local business associations, prominent members of the local business community, and other politicians and relevant stakeholders (members of parliament, bloggers, journalists, educators, and community activists). Interviews were transcribed and subject to coding to identify themes.

Core themes were identified which captured how key stakeholders viewed the arena as an opportunity to leverage other events being targeted and held at the arena. This included: opportunities and benefits of hosting other events; the arena, competitiveness, and competition; partnerships and collaboration; capacity: knowledge and experience; and leveraging challenges.

This study makes several important contributions to the literature. First, it examines sports facilities in smaller cities, a subject more widely studied in larger, “major league” cities. Second, it takes a different approach to understanding leveraging, examining facilities rather than the event that the city is hosting or the franchise that plays in the city. Third, it examines a context where the facility has been built for a sports team, and not for other sport and entertainment events that might be hosted there.

This paper provides a conceptual discussion of the bidirectional relationship between knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) in a specific subset of knowledge-based organisations, i.e. professional sport organisations. Through the review and conceptual discussion of two relevant research themes, i.e. KM strategies for IC value creation and IC codification, this paper aims to highlight research gaps useful to future research.

The authors apply a systematic literature review method to analyse 66 management and accounting studies on KM and IC in sport organisations. Internal and external validity tests support the methodology adopted.

The authors provide a conceptual model to explain how KM strategies about IC investments can be optimal, i.e. they create value for all the stakeholders but also suboptimal, i.e. they create value only for a group of stakeholders. Next, they provide evidence of the opportunistic use of the codification associated with IC investments that impair financial reporting information transparency and mislead managers and investors.

The results are informative for managers, regulators and policymakers to mitigate the inefficiencies regarding KM and IC codification and decisions.

This study contributes to the understanding of the bidirectional relationship between KM and IC in knowledge-based organisations by focussing on professional sport organisations in which KM and IC have played an important role for a long time. It also includes future avenues for advances in managing, measuring and reporting IC.

Far from all, football clubs can provide the same level of exposure effects as global football brands, even on local level, and many of these clubs also operate in a context of commercial immaturity. The purpose of this paper is to show what value a football club can provide for sponsors in a context of commercial immaturity with limited expected exposure effects.

The study is based on a case study approach, taking its point of departure in two sponsor brand management paradigms, the projective and relational paradigm. The case of Malmö FF in the Swedish top tier league and the club’s official partners has been chosen to exemplify the commercially immature context.

The study has shown that the most important value the club can provide for sponsors is to act as a mediator in sponsor–stakeholder relations. Exposure effects are subordinate to the relational effects sponsors achieve through their sponsorship.

The study indicates that the relational construct in the sponsorship literature should to a greater extent include sponsor–stakeholder relations, beyond the sponsor–club dyad, in a context of commercial immaturity.

The results indicate that club management should engage in stakeholder management with a strong focus on stakeholders of sponsors to provide value for these sponsors.

This study explores a new dimension to the relational construct of sponsorship, using the relational paradigm of brand management in a context of commercial immaturity. The mediating effect of the club is a contribution to the discourse on the relational construct.

This paper aims to investigate, through the lens of the principal–agent problem, the relationship between payment of National Hockey League (NHL) salaries and player performance during the period of 2005-2011 and explore the inherent issues within the NHL player compensation and incentive structure.

The research adopts a pragmatic philosophy with deductive reasoning. This paper focuses on the NHL season 2005-2011 and undertake analysis of historical player contracts and performance data of 670 players across 29 clubs to undertake liner regression analysis.

This paper quantifies potential inefficiencies of NHL league contracts and defines the parameters of the principal–agent problem. It is identifies that player performance generally increases with salary, is higher in the first year of a contract and despite decreasing over the life of the contract, will usually peak again in the final year of the contract.

The research is based around figures from 2005-2011 and secondary statistical data. The study captures quantitative data but does not allow for an exploration of the qualitative perspective to the problem.

Entry-level or first contracts are good for all teams and players because they provide incentive to perform and a reduction of risk to the team should a player not perform to expectations. The same can be said for players at the other end of the spectrum. Although not typically used much, performance bonuses for players over the age of 35 allow clubs to “take a chance” on a player and the player can benefit by reaching attainable bonuses. These findings therefore provide contributions to the practicing managers and coaches of NHL teams who can consider the results to help shape their approach to management of players and the planning of teams and succession planning for talent.

The paper presents a comprehensive and current perspective of the principal–agent problem in NHL and extends the work of Purcell (2009) and Gannon (2009) in understanding player performance enhancement.

With the licence season 2013/2014 onwards Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Financial Fair Play (FFP) fully came into force. Among other things, FFP demands from the clubs to operate within their own revenues in order to counteract the increasing over indebtedness in European club football. The purpose of this paper is to cast further light on the relationship between UEFA and the clubs as the main actors of FFP and to derive implications to UEFA to improve the efficacy of this regulatory intervention.

This paper explicitly examines the case of FFP from an agency theory perspective. A positivist agency approach is applied in order to describe and explain (potential) problems in the relationship between UEFA and the clubs.

The paper demonstrates that the relationship between UEFA and the clubs corresponds in many aspects to a classic principal-agent problem. A potential conflict of interest between both actors is outlined which together with asymmetric information creates incentives for opportunistic behaviour on the part of the clubs. The necessity of a stronger emphasis and communication of the economic and sport ethical legitimacy of FFP is detected.

It is suggested that UEFA should consider taking a more proactive stance and endeavour to prevent non-compliance not only by limiting the opportunities to do so but also by providing information as well as education.

FFP is supposed to have ground-breaking consequences for European club football. This is the first paper to systematically examine (potential) agency problems inherent in FFP.