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The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature, frequency, and duration of alcohol-related promotions and crowd alcohol consumption during major sports events broadcasted on the SKY Sport network between September 2011 and February 2012.

Content analyses for various categories of alcohol-related images were conducted, including a novel inclusion of analysing crowd alcohol consumption.

The results provide empirical evidence that sponsorship and activation-related activities of alcohol brands subvert national regulations that ban alcohol advertising during daytime television programming.

The results serve to sensitise researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and regulators to the prevalence of incidental alcohol promotional material within the overall televised alcohol advertising mix and the broader societal exposure to such images. This research also informs readers that alcohol companies and media outlets produce alcohol-related marketing that may not be in-line with the meaning and/or intent of laws.

As the popularity of social media increases, sports brands must develop specific strategies to use them to enhance fan loyalty and build brand equity. The purpose of this paper is to explore how two social media platforms were utilised by the Grand Slam tennis events to achieve branding and relationship marketing goals.

A content analytic design was employed to examine Twitter and Facebook posts from the official accounts during, and post-, each respective event.

Both sites were utilised to cultivate long-term relationships with fans and develop brand loyalty, rather than to undertake short-term marketing activations. However, these sites appear to serve a different purpose, and therefore unique strategies are required to leverage opportunities afforded by each. Interestingly, brand associations were utilised more frequently during the post-event time period.

This study offers practitioners with useful insight on branding and relationship-building strategies across two social platforms. These results suggest that strategies appear dependent on the event, timeframe and specific platform. Moreover, the events’ differences in post use and focus may also indicate some differences related to event branding in an international context. Furthermore, sport organisations should look to leverage creative strategies to overcome limitations that platform-specific functionality may impose.

This study offers unique insights brand-building efforts in an international event setting, which differ in a range of contextual factors that impact on social media utilisation.

Purpose – To explore the contested nature of masculinity through an examination of contemporary promotional culture associated with a predominantly masculine commodity – beer. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the representations of masculinity in two New Zealand beer advertisements spanning a 25-year period.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is divided into four sections: (1) a brief overview of the contemporary crisis of masculinity; (2) the role of the media and promotional culture in representing and reproducing crises of masculinity; (3) The Holy Trinity: Sport, Beer and Masculinity and (4) analysis of two promotional campaigns for New Zealand beer brand Speight's. Here, the original series ad from 1992 is compared and contrasted with the 2019 instalment using Strate's (1992) framework which conceptualizes beer advertisements as ‘manuals of masculinity’, in order to track potential changes over time.

Findings – The results highlight the enduring value of Strate's (1992) framework of beer advertisements as manuals of masculinity. In addition, the results reveal that while the representation of masculinity in Speight's beer advertising has changed over time, key themes related to exclusive male spaces, physical labour and the core value of ‘mateship’ remain.

Research limitations/implications – Within the context of globalization, promotional culture operating at both the global and local level can cultivate images of masculinity that represent and reproduce the existing gender order, but it can also confront and disrupt it.

Purpose – To offer a thought-provoking reflection of my experiences ‘in the field’ at alcohol-infused sporting events. This chapter, in effect, is a piece of qualitative research on the ‘doing’ of quantitative survey research. This chapter provides important insights into the politics of collecting and representing data and the social boundaries within which those data are collected.

Design/methodology/approach – Between September 2011 and February 2012, I embarked on data collection for a research project that investigated the culture of alcohol promotion and consumption at major sport events in New Zealand. Specifically, I was interested in examining the public spaces where alcohol was promoted and where people consumed alcohol as part of the overall entertainment experience of sport mega-events. The discussion in this chapter presents an overview of the politics and performances of in-field research.

Findings – I discuss particular cultural, conceptual, methodological and ethical quandaries that coincide with undertaking such research. In doing so, I consider the situational standpoint, positional paradox and behavioural bind of my research experience.

Research Implications – This chapter contributes to the on-going scholarly dialogue that details the complexities of research management and strategies for studies exploring the sport-alcohol nexus, which will be of benefit to current and future qualitative researchers in their preparation to conduct fieldwork about sport and alcohol.

Limitations – The reflections offer details about the culture at specific events and scholars should be cautious of the extent to which they can be generalized from one alcohol-infused sport event to the next.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to gain insight into fans' perceptions, attitudes and behavioural responses toward their favourite college football team in the context of a new beer sponsorship agreement. Specifically, the chapter examines differences in fans' attitudes and behaviours based on their gender, team identification and drinking habits.

Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative, cross-sectional survey design was employed. The sample was comprised of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers who self-identified as college football fans. A hypothetical scenario was used as a manipulation, whereby participants were asked to imagine their favourite college football team had entered into a new alcohol sponsorship agreement while completing a questionnaire.

Findings: Highly identified fans exhibited more positive attitudes and behaviours after being presented with the hypothetical scenario than less identified fans. In terms of gender, female fans had increased attitudes toward sponsorship compared to males, and highly identified females had the most positive attitudes and behavioural intentions toward their favourite teams of any of the four subgroups in the study.

Research limitations/implications: The small sample sizes of some fan subgroups affected statistical power, which may have led to falsely insignificant findings. The range of favourite teams among the participants (50 universities) meant there was likely a high degree of variation between fans' previous experiences with beer/alcohol at college sport venues.

Originality/value: The study offers valuable insight into the intersection of sport fandom and gender in the context of alcohol sponsorship in US college sport, and is also among the first investigations of the effects of team identification on perceptions toward alcohol sponsorship.

This chapter adopts a reflective approach exploring and setting out the contrasting factors that led to the establishment of the subdiscipline in both countries. The factors included the role of key individuals and their respective academic backgrounds and specialisations within each country’s higher education system. Furthermore, attention is given to the particular circumstances in a case analysis comparison of the oldest programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. This sheds light upon the factors linked to the disproportionate success profile for the sociology of sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand. An analysis of scholars and programs within each country reveals important differences aligned with the politics of funding and the variety and extent of systematic structures. Additionally, scholars’ specialisations and preferences reveal a broad offering but are primarily linked to globalisation, gender relations, indigeneity and race relations, social policy, and media studies. This work has been undertaken variously via the critical tradition including Birmingham School cultural studies, ethnographic and qualitative approaches and, more recently by some, a postmodern poststructuralist trend. Lastly, along with a brief discussion of current issues, future challenges are set out.

Purpose – To outline the arguments and consequent legislation that prohibited and then allowed alcohol consumption by fans in Brazilian sports arenas since 1996.

Design/methodology/approach – We present the social and political debates regarding alcohol consumption by sports fans having the Brazilian legislation as a starting point and using the multiple streams framework (Kingdon, 1995). We identify the problems, policies and politics streams on three phases: the prohibition of sale and consumption of alcohol in sport stadiums, the exceptional allowance for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and its consequences on state laws five years after the 2014 event.

Findings – Violence among football supporters was the focal event to approve laws prohibiting alcohol consumption in sports arenas. For the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the sport governing body demanded the opposite, so Brazil and some states approved an exception to their laws. Since then, states see an opportunity to allow the sale and consumption of alcohol in and around the stadiums, questioning the relationship between alcohol and violence. These state laws are under examination by the Supreme Court because they may counteract a national law.

Research limitations/implications – Public safety is the key justification to uphold the laws, but a lack of empirical data and research delimit the arguments on how beneficial alcohol prohibition is to suppress supporters' violence. Lawmakers and groups of interest may also include beer industry lobbying strategies and health-related issues as relevant variables in the debate, although they are not discussed in this chapter.

Purpose – Building on the work of Wenner (2011) and Messner and Montez de Oca (2005), this study provides an updated critical stocktaking of the narrative tendencies in sport-related alcohol advertising on television. Set in contemporary understandings of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ and in the political economy of the alcohol industry, this study anchors a critical reading of masculinity, the sporting context and alcohol advertising in Wenner's (2007, 2013) ‘dirt theory of narrative ethics’.

Design/methodology/approach – Our theoretical and methodological approach is grounded in a dirt theory of narrative ethics. Set at the intersection of reader-oriented literary theory (Iser, 1978) and ethical criticism (Gregory, 1998), we ‘follow the dirt’ to understand how contagion from imported communicative meanings (McCracken, 1990) exerts power (Leach, 1976) by influencing reading and interpretation. We draw upon a diverse sample of 20 television ads representing a balanced cross-section of sport-dirtied beer commercials produced between 2010 and 2019. To balance this sample, we divided the ads by their opposing tendencies to characterize men as either ‘real men’, drawn in mythical masculinity terms, or ‘himbos’, drawn as ‘losers’ or slackers. To address the dominance of Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) in the American market, we further divided our ‘real men’ and ‘himbo’ samples, contrasting five ads produced for ABI brands with five ads produced for beer brands not held by ABI.

Findings – We contend that contemporary sports-dirtied beer ads combine to form a schizophrenic picture of American manhood. Male sports fans are alternatively hailed through mocking and misandry, through playfully saluting the norms of ‘bro culture’, and through encouraging men to understand themselves as proud keepers of tradition. We critically consider the ethical implications of building brand affinities through staking disparate positions in contemporary cultural and political debates about the place of men and masculinity in contemporary society.

Research limitations/implications – We discuss the difficulties involved in holding advertisers accountable for balancing ethical and market demands. Nevertheless, we call on the industry to engage in a more reflexive and responsible approach to crafting sports-dirtied alcohol advertising.