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The purpose of this paper is to explore and test certain assumptions concerning the role of the media in its coverage of the Olympic Games, US men's and women's basketball in particular, and its perceived impact on brand image of the athletes' performance from a fan's motivational and financial perspective.

Uses and gratifications theory and sport fan motivation scales were used to identify potential impacts of media coverage and branding on athletic performance. Based on a study of 143 working professionals that identified themselves as Olympic sport fans in the Pittsburgh, PA metropolitan area, several hypotheses were tested.

The most to least important factor-based constructs found from a PCA (Principal Components Analysis)/factor analysis included competitiveness, fan commitment, media connections, media impacts, demographics and financial impacts. When using the construct athletic performance at the Olympic level as the dependent variable, results suggested that competitiveness, media connections and fan commitment were significant for males only, while only media connections for significant for females. Males were found to be more player-centric than females, willing to be more focused on the competitive nature of the Olympic Games and to dedicate more money for such activities.

Focusing on Olympic Games and associated athletes' competitive nature opens a unique perspective from fan's gender perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Olympic audiences utilized Twitter to follow American National Governing Bodies (NGBs) during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Guided by economic demand theory, the researchers sought to explore whether factors such as the content of social media messages, athlete’s performance, event presentation, scheduling, and TV broadcasting contribute to enhancing fans’ interests in following NGBs on Twitter during the Olympic Games. In total, 33 American NGB Twitter accounts formed the data set for this study. Each of NGBs’ Twitter data was collected every night at midnight from August 7 to 23, 2016. Data collected from each NGB account included number of followers, number of accounts followed, number of tweets, and number of “likes.”

Results of this study revealed that team’s performance and the number of tweets had direct and positive relationships with increasing the number of NGB’s Twitter followers on each competition day. The number of “likes,” however, had a significant negative relationship with fans’ interests in following NGBs’ Twitter.

The results of the study are expected to help Governing Bodies in the Olympic sports have a better understanding of fans’ social media usage.

This paper aims to explore a multi-stakeholder perspective on brand meaning co-creation in the context of the Olympic Games as a unique mega sports event brand with a strong brand identity, to understand how the brand manager may integrate such co-created meanings in a negotiated brand identity.

Using a qualitative methodology, the paper provides a tentative framework of co-created Olympic brand meanings by exploring the narratives of stakeholders’ brand experiences of the brand. Sixteen semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of Olympic stakeholders were conducted and analysed to identify key meanings associated with the Olympic brand.

Through their transformational and social experiences of the Olympic brand, stakeholders co-create brand meanings based on Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect. However, at the same time, they offer their own interpretations and narratives related to competing meanings of spectacle, exclusion and deceit. Alternative brand touchpoints were identified, including blogs; fan and sports community forums; educational and academic sources; and historical sources and literature.

The brand manager must become a brand negotiator, facilitating multi-stakeholder co-creation experiences on a variety of online and offline engagement platforms, and exploring how alternative brand touchpoints can be used to access co-created brand meanings.

The study contributes to tourism branding literature by providing exploratory evidence of how brand meanings are co-created in the relatively under-researched multi-stakeholder sports mega-event context.

This case study examines the interactive marketing initiatives of Coca-Cola China Company for one of its marquee Olympic properties, the Olympic Torch Relay. It provides insights into building increased brand interaction by adding an online interactive component to an age-old concept in Olympic activations.

Over the past decade, the Olympic Movement has become increasingly dependent upon financial support provided by corporate sponsors. This study explores the evolution of the Olympic sponsorship programme, presents current and future marketing strategies employed by sponsors, and discusses major challenges within the programme.

The paper attempts to establish GM(1,1) grey prediction model group for the top three Olympic track and field sports performance, and to predict the 30th London Olympic track and field results and its tendency using grey systems theory.

Athletics sports achievements are influenced by many factors, such as the physical quality, athletes individual growth cycle, and injuring or retirement of excellent athletes, the outstanding performance of some athletes, the using of high‐tech sports training instrument, the implementation plan of scientific training guidance, the introduction of advanced technology, facilities and improvement, and so on. Those aspects can make the match result uncertain, which are running in a uncertain and continually changing environment, so sports achievements have obviously grey features. Combined with grey modeling methods, and aimed at the top three Olympic track and field sports performance, this paper established GM (1,1) grey prediction model group and analysed the trend of Olympic track and field. And in the end of the paper, the 30th Olympic men's and women's the top three athletic achievements prediction intervals are also predicted.

The results show that forecasting model group has high‐precision. In the 46 champions prediction models, three models have the forecast accuracy of 100 percent; 27 models' forecast accuracy are greater than 99.5 percent, and the rest of the models forecast accuracy are greater than 98.58 percent. In the 46 silver medalists prediction models, five models have the forecast accuracy of 100 percent; 33 models' forecast accuracy are greater than 99.5 percent and the rest of the models' forecast accuracy is greater than 98.48 percent. In the 46 bronze medalist prediction models, four models have the forecast accuracy of 100 percent; 25 models' forecast accuracy is greater than 99.5 percent and the rest of the models forecast accuracy is greater than 98.76 percent. The essay deeply analyzes the top three achievements' trend of Olympic Games Track and field. In the end, the paper predicts the 30th Olympic track and field results.

The method exposed in the paper can be used for the short‐term or long‐term prediction of sports scores metering in international competition (such as track and field, swimming, rowing, etc.), and also for personal athletic performance prediction.

The paper succeeds in realising both grey prediction model group for the top three Olympic track and field performance in all projects, and prediction of the 30th London Olympic track and field results by using the newest developed theories: grey systems theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine international football supporter behaviours within the context of national and socio-cultural identification, in an effort to better understand what role national identity plays in fan motivation and consumer behaviour for expatriate and non-domestic fans.

International football supporters across ten cultural and ethnic communities were surveyed throughout the 2014 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup Finals, exploring the identification and new media socialisation behaviours of national team supporters in non-domestic markets.

The study’s findings provide evidence of the role identification plays in informing national and ethnic identities. Supporting one’s home or ancestral national team reflects an important element of national identification and socio-cultural place for expatriate or non-domestic supporters of international football. Importantly, new media behaviours provide supporters with a formative and productive source of national team fan engagement and ethnocultural community creation, particularly for younger target audiences.

These results bear particular significance for theory and practice: the digital socialisation behaviours supporters engage in are integral components of identity building and communication. In better understanding the awareness and interest of geographically detached sport consumers, this study offers new perspective into the opportunities present for sport organisations and marketers in reaching non-domestic fan nations.

The findings offer new perspective into the role national identification plays in fan involvement and motivation, and importantly how new media has emerged as a key platform for expatriate and non-domestic supporter socialisation amongst international football supporters.

As the world becomes a global village, sports organisations have begun to extend their markets and fan bases to different groups of customers. David Beckham, a British soccer star with a high profile marriage and much media attention, has endorsed numerous products, thereby becoming an excellent case study for the current trend of athlete endorsement in the international sports industry. The results of this case study provide insights into factors that might influence the success of athlete endorsement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why the stagnant version of amateurism that is being used by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member institutions to limit student–athlete compensation is creating labor law and antitrust violations, and ultimately contributing to a black market in college athletics.

The qualitative portion of the examination uses a review of historic and recent cases regarding labor law and antitrust violations and applies them to the college athletic industry. Furthermore, the quantitative portion creates a scaled revenue sharing calculation utilizing financial reports from university athletic departments and corresponding professional revenue-sharing agreements to discern an approximate value of a student–athlete’s participation.

The authors find that the current structure of the NCAA and regulatory framework perpetuate injustice for those who lack a voice in the system. Furthermore, the research shows a wage disparity of millions of dollars creating a lack of free market and black-market tensions to reach free market equilibrium.

This research creates reasoning to restructure the NCAA system to adjust for modern commercialization and profits of the industry.

This paper highlights the legal and regulatory abuses by the NCAA, and demonstrates how the compensation gap created by these legal violations is creating a strain on free market flow ultimately leading to a black-market effect in the industry.