Search results

In this study, the authors examine consumer attitudes toward a professional soccer club’s proenvironmental initiatives and evaluate whether key themes are consistent with those found in previous research of fans in different sporting contexts.

The authors analyzed empirical material provided by 147 highly identified supporters of a Major League Soccer team. Using template analysis, the authors compared codes, categories and themes with those previously identified in a reference group of National Football League (NFL) fans.

Twenty-three preliminary codes, nine categories and four themes were established by the researchers. Three themes – Considering Environmental Action, Business Insights and Impacting the Fan Experience – were all consistent with the NFL reference group. A fourth theme, Public Visibility, focused on the possibility that the club’s proenvironmental initiatives could provide a competitive advantage over rival cities and positively influence local programming and behaviors.

The results of this study support the notion that fan characteristics may differ across various demographic and structural contexts and fans’ recognition that a club could leverage its community standing to promote proenvironmental action.

This study explores the relationship between governance model – private organisations vs non-profit organisations (NPOs) – and performance in football clubs.

The study is a comparative case study of two football clubs with different governance models: Malmö FF, which is an NPO, and Bologna FC, which is a privately owned club.

The results show that both football clubs focus equally on financial and non-financial performance, and in practice, both clubs use a blend of private and NPO governance models. While supporting efforts towards financial results, blending the models appears to support football clubs' management of the tension between financial and non-financial performance and the expectation that they will contribute to local development. Thus, using a blend of the two models is not only accepted but expected.

This study is a comparative case study of two football clubs. This study furthers our understanding of how football clubs manage the tension between financial and non-financial performance expectations. This is particularly of interest in light of the increasing professionalisation of sports, especially football, and how this might jeopardise the contributions that sport clubs make to the local community.

By exploring the relationship between governance model and performance, this study shows that, contrary to expectations, privately owned football clubs focus as much on non-financial performance as clubs governed as NPOs. This study contributes to the existing literature by showing how clubs use a mixture of elements from governance models to manage the tension between financial and non-financial performance that has emerged in the wake of the increasing professionalisation of football.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a holistic understanding of extant studies addressing the impact of commercialization on fans of elite sports.

In doing this, the authors performed a structured review of 42 academic articles published between 1992 and 2020 that all focus on how fans respond and are affected by the commercialization of elite sports.

The structured review shows that the impacts of commercialization on fans relate to four different themes. These are (1) fan identity, (2) fan attitudes, (3) fan emotions and (4) fan behaviours. However, the analysis also shows that research within each category is largely scattered, and more research within each category is needed.

The paper highlights the complex and dynamic nature of commercialization. It presents a research agenda for future research and emphasizes a need to integrate the interests of several stakeholders when managing the impacts of elite sport commercialization.

Brian Philpotts is Marketing Director of TheFootball League and is soon to take up a similarrole at the FA Premier League. In this interviewhe talks to David Hudson of De MontfortUniversity about his role and the challenges hefaced after joining The Football League fromNewcastle United in 1999. He shares his experienceand insights on the subject of sports marketingat both league and club level.

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.

Sports leagues have stood out in the entertainment industry due to their great economic value and cultural impact. This is the case of the American sports leagues, with emphasis on the National Basketball Association (NBA), whose largest Latin American market lies on Brazil. The aforementioned league’s audience is constantly growing, a fact that can be partially explained by the encouragement provided for its viewers to interact through social media, in a phenomenon called social TV. Accordingly, the aim of the present study is to investigate how social TV works as a means for Brazilian fans to coproduce their NBA broadcasting enjoyment through social media interactions.

The authors conducted a netnography on the community of fans engaged in Twitter hashtag #NBAnaESPN, which was released by ESPN to promote audience integration during NBA games' broadcasting.

A theorization about the role played by social TV in the way fan culture articulates through social media to enjoy broadcasting media products was herein presented. The findings of this study have evidenced three categories concerning the role played by television broadcasting, social media and the fandom in NBA consumption by Brazilian fans. Based on these findings, the authors got to the conclusion that social TV establishes a mediatized environment where fan culture can be articulated through social media to enable interactions about television broadcasting.

The study was limited to members of the Brazilian NBA audience who engage in the official social media of the league’s broadcasting.

The study heads toward a theoretical generalization based on the research results.

The National Football League (NFL), the most lucrative sports league in the world, has its second largest foreign audience in Brazil. Its Brazilian broadcasts stimulate the audience to extrapolate television reception and interact through a social media platform, seeking to integrate a collective consumption. Thus, attachments are established between consumers and league. Based on this, this study aims to analyze how the interaction in social media of the Brazilian NFL audience, during the transmissions of its games, results in consumption attachments.

The method undertaken was Netnography, commonly used to investigate cultural practices occurring in online environments. The research corpus consisted of messages posted on Twitterhashtags created by the ESPN Brazil channels to reverberate its broadcasts of the league between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons.

The findings of this study indicate that Brazilian audience interaction in social media establishes consumer attachment with the NFL by means of the brand elements and aspects of social life, mediated by the league.

The research observed only the part of the Brazilian audience of the NFL that engages in the broadcasts of the games through social media.

The research of this study demonstrates how brands can use social media to enable social interactions that create or improve consumer attachments with them.

The study presents how a media brand imbricated in the American culture has been the target of attachment by Brazilian fans through social media interactions.

Integrating several streams of theoretical reasoning such as social identity theory, congruity theory and the customer gratitude approach, the purpose of this paper is to develop a model of the antecedents and consequences of sponsor-stadium fit and examine the hypothesised relationships.

Data were collected from professional football spectators in a non-historic stadium context (n=342). Through a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, the authors assessed the antecedents and consequences of sponsor-stadium fit.

Based on the results, team identification and prior sponsor attitude were found to be the dominant factors in enhancing sponsor-stadium fit. Furthermore, the indirect effects of team identification on purchase intentions through sponsor-stadium fit and gratitude towards the sponsor were positive and significant.

When renaming non-historic stadiums of relatively new sport teams, sponsors that present a team-related brand identity can create a preference and image fit with stadiums. The findings serve to advance the literature on stadium sponsorship particularly at non-historic stadiums.

In its conceptualisation of sponsor-stadium fit, the current study extends previous research that has focused primarily on sponsor-event fit.

The usage of sport stadia for public service is increasingly common and may come in different forms. In the COVID-19 pandemic, this included sport entities hosting mass COVID-19 vaccinations at their stadiums. The purpose of this study was to examine the branding effects of a COVID-19 mass vaccination center as communicated by (1) a sport entity (i.e. stadium and its two teams) and (2) the public.

The authors analyzed the entity's social media messages related to the mass vaccination center for the three groups, the stadium and its two sports team tenants (N = 48) while comparing the public's social media content about the vaccination center (N = 187). An empirical material coding analysis was conducted.

The sport entity's posts revealed 12 codes, five categories and two themes communicated about their brand: In this together–community impact and showcasing brand attributes. The public posts analysis revealed 21 codes, eight categories and four themes, creating brand awareness, establishing/reaffirming brand attributes, affective response and in this together–community response.

The identification of the two organization themes and four public themes provided an initial examination of the mass vaccination efforts' impact on the sport entity's brand. With the rise of stadia being utilized as public service venues (e.g. voting centers and disaster shelters), the results of the study can provide guidance to communicating the host team's brand during these times. Results also suggest the public perception of such service reflected positive opportunities for brand exposure and subsequent effects for the teams.