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1 – 10 of 23Timothy Kellison and Beth A. Cianfrone
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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George Foster, Norm O'Reilly, Jim Best Devereux and Matias Shundi
This article seeks to enhance the understanding as to why head coaches and general managers (GMs) in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League…
Abstract
Purpose
This article seeks to enhance the understanding as to why head coaches and general managers (GMs) in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) exit from their positions.
Design/methodology/approach
Three hypotheses were investigated using a series of quantitative and qualitative data from the past 30 years. The samples analyzed are comprised of 891 GM and coach annual observations for the NBA clubs and 949 GM and coach observations for the NFL clubs. Analyses include a logit analysis for coach exit/retention, a logit analysis for GM exit/retention and textual analysis via topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation.
Findings
Results show a correlation between a coach exiting and a GM exiting simultaneously, thus amplifying the importance of these two roles in enhancing or destroying the success of a club and supporting the need for a deeper understanding of both roles, particularly the GM. The results further highlight cultural differences across clubs in terms of GM and coach turnover, a factor that often is heavily influenced by club ownership.
Originality/value
The results support the role of owners in exits, confirm the importance of winning in avoiding an exit, find a high level of interrelationship between GM and coach exits and show that past culture of firings influences future exit decisions.
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André Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão, Bruno Melo Moura and Fernando Sacic Carneiro-Leão
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
The study was limited to members of the Brazilian NBA audience who engage in the official social media of the league’s broadcasting.
Originality/value
The study heads toward a theoretical generalization based on the research results.
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Bruno Melo Moura and André Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
The research observed only the part of the Brazilian audience of the NFL that engages in the broadcasts of the games through social media.
Practical implications
The research of this study demonstrates how brands can use social media to enable social interactions that create or improve consumer attachments with them.
Originality/value
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.
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Makoto Nakazawa, Masayuki Yoshida and Brian S. Gordon
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Originality/value
In its conceptualisation of sponsor-stadium fit, the current study extends previous research that has focused primarily on sponsor-event fit.
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Jackson Sears, Beth A. Cianfrone and Timothy Kellison
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Florian Follert and Werner Gleißner
From the buying club’s perspective, the transfer of a player can be interpreted as an investment from which the club expects uncertain future benefits. This paper aims to develop…
Abstract
Purpose
From the buying club’s perspective, the transfer of a player can be interpreted as an investment from which the club expects uncertain future benefits. This paper aims to develop a decision-oriented approach for the valuation of football players that could theoretically help clubs determine the subjective value of investing in a player to assess its potential economic advantage.
Design/methodology/approach
We build on a semi-investment-theoretical risk-value model and elaborate an approach that can be applied in imperfect markets under uncertainty. Furthermore, we illustrate the valuation process with a numerical example based on fictitious data. Due to this explicitly intended decision support, our approach differs fundamentally from a large part of the literature, which is empirically based and attempts to explain observable figures through various influencing factors.
Findings
We propose a semi-investment-theoretical valuation approach that is based on a two-step model, namely, a first valuation at the club level and a final calculation to determine the decision value for an individual player. In contrast to the previous literature, we do not rely on an econometric framework that attempts to explain observable past variables but rather present a general, forward-looking decision model that can support managers in their investment decisions.
Originality/value
This approach is the first to show managers how to make an economically rational investment decision by determining the maximum payable price. Nevertheless, there is no normative requirement for the decision-maker. The club will obviously have to supplement the calculus with nonfinancial objectives. Overall, our paper can constitute a first step toward decision-oriented player valuation and for theoretical comparison with practical investment decisions in football clubs, which obviously take into account other specific sports team decisions.
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Manuel Alonso Dos Santos, Manuel J. Sánchez-Franco, Eduardo Torres-Moraga and Ferran Calabuig Moreno
This study explores the effect of video assistant referee (VAR) sponsorship on spectator response and compares it with advertising and conventional sponsorship.
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores the effect of video assistant referee (VAR) sponsorship on spectator response and compares it with advertising and conventional sponsorship.
Design/methodology/approach
An experiment with 809 subjects is conducted by analyzing 20 one-minute video clip stimuli from a Premier League soccer game divided into four formats: two formats of VAR sponsorship, advertising, and conventional sponsorship.
Findings
The results show that the indicators of recall, credibility, and perceived congruence improve when the VAR sponsorship format is used.
Originality/value
This is the first manuscript to examine the effectiveness of a new type of sponsorship: VAR sponsorship. This manuscript provides metrics that will guide practitioners on whether to use this type of sponsorship.
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Esta investigación utiliza la Teoría Basada en Recursos como base para un modelo que permite integrar las acciones organizacionales con las variables que pueden moderar, directa o…
Abstract
Propósito
Esta investigación utiliza la Teoría Basada en Recursos como base para un modelo que permite integrar las acciones organizacionales con las variables que pueden moderar, directa o indirectamente, su impacto en el alto desempeño de los clubes de fútbol.
Diseño/metodología/enfoque
Se desarrolla una contrastación empírica en tres fases. La primera fue la técnica de regresión lineal. En segundo lugar, un análisis multivariado de covarianza (MANCOVA) y el tercer procedimiento, una regresión por mínimos cuadrados en dos fases. El objetivo de usar estos dos últimos procedimientos fue evaluar el efecto conjunto de las variables independientes sobre las variables dependientes, así como los efectos de interacción entre las mismas.
Hallazgos
Se validan las relaciones, directas e indirectas, entre las variables organizacionales y decisionales previstas en el modelo. También se valida la importancia de las acciones promocionales del club, para lograr competitividad basada en su desempeño o resultados.
Limitaciones de la investigación/implicaciones
Investigaciones futuras se podrían replicar en otros países, usando muestras más grandes con técnicas estadísticas más complejas. También, se podría contrastar si las relaciones encontradas pueden variar según las culturas, o pueden usarse otras variables no contempladas en este estudio.
Implicaciones prácticas
El cuestionario usado es una fuente de información fiable para los directivos de marketing de los clubes de fútbol, puesto que las escalas pueden ser usadas como guías para evaluar y diagnosticar su potencial de competitividad basada en el desempeño.
Implicaciones sociales
Los clubes de fútbol tienen un desarrollo e impacto directo en la sociedad. Por ello, las implicancias en el club recaerán en el entorno cercano (aficionados y sociedad) a este.
Originalidad/valor
Esta investigación aporta varias contribuciones fundamentales a la literatura sobre la competitividad organizacional en el sector deportivo, con aplicación específica a los clubes de fútbol. Este es uno de los escasos estudios que muestran que la competitividad es el resultado de una dinámica motivacional y organizativa, y que el éxito de los clubes se basa en un fenómeno más complejo que solo la asistencia a los eventos. También, es una investigación en un país emergente, lo cual extiende la aplicabilidad teórica y práctica del fenómeno estudiado.
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Ginevra Gravili, Rohail Hassan, Alexandru Avram and Francesco Schiavone
This paper aims to examine the influence of big data (BD) on human resource management (HRM). It defines how these data can be a useful tool in the decision-making process of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the influence of big data (BD) on human resource management (HRM). It defines how these data can be a useful tool in the decision-making process of companies’ human resources to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper emphasizes the need to develop a holistic approach to emphasize these relations. Starting from these observations, the document proposes empirical research employing Eurostat data to test the benefits of BD in HRM decisions that optimize the relationship between training, productivity, and well-being.
Findings
The findings estimate HRM decisions and their impact in a broader macroeconomic and microeconomic perspective.
Originality/value
BD research is emerging as a crucial discipline in human resources. To overcome this problem, the paper develops an analysis of the literature on cleaner production and sustainability context; it creates a conceptual framework to clarify whether the existing studies consider the growing intensity of BD on human resources.
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