Search results

Global icon David Beckham was alleged by the tabloid media in April 2004 to have had an extra-marital affair. Given his carefully nurtured image as a family man and model father, would the adverse publicity damage that image and affect his lucrative sponsorship endorsements? Research undertaken in the UK by IJSM&S suggests that there has been some negative impact, but it is probably not enough to make him a sponsorship liability. The findings also demonstrate very high levels of prompted and unprompted awareness for his endorsements.

In 2016, Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal (SBM) published its 100th article. While a number of other journals have been analysed as to their content, no such study has yet been applied to SBM. The purpose of this paper is to produce a content analysis examining the first century of SBM articles in order to map out what this outlet has published, and to what extent the journal has achieved the objectives set out in the first issue.

This paper employs a content analysis approach, with each of the first 100 research papers being analysed and coded by the two authors.

This study has found that there has been a general focus on sport marketing throughout the first 100 papers, while football is the dominant sport that has been studied. Over the course of the 100 papers, the majority of articles employed quantitative methods, with surveys being the most used method of collecting data. The authors were initially principally based in Europe and North America; however, the geographical location has widened over the period in question.

While there have been a number of other journals which have had a content analysis, this is the first such study into SBM.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key elements that maximise sponsorship opportunities and that enable a successful relationship between a sponsor and a sponsored party.

The paper is based on a review of the literature and takes a case study approach. The paper first identifies the classic aspects of sponsor relationships and then explores new criteria to propose a brand model approach. Practical examples are taken out of the sailing team Alinghi who raced the America's Cup.

The paper suggests that the key success factor for a sponsored party is to act as a brand. This brand should have four strong pillars to build its brand essence: its own identity, a clear offer for a value creation process, an organisation to support this offer in line with strategic alliances of the sponsor and identified targets or consumers.

Sponsorship is part of the daily life of any business and can take many forms. Moreover, the large number of sponsorship opportunities does not help entities looking for financial support to stand out easily. However, few opportunities meet all criteria to build an effective sponsor relationship. The authors believe that a brand model approach is the best way to achieve such goal. Alinghi (America's Cup 2003 and 2007 winner) is a perfect example of this new approach.

The purposes of the study were (1) to examine whether directional dominance between co-existing athlete brands and sponsor brands exists; (2) to explore whether directional dominance influences consumers' memory interference; and (3) to test whether brand interference interacts with directional dominance among brands to influence consumer evaluation and behaviors under multiple endorsement and sponsorship portfolios.

The research is a 3 (directional dominance: symmetric dominance vs. asymmetric dominance with existing vs. asymmetric dominance with newly endorsed brand) x 2 (brand memory interference: interference vs. no interference) between-subjects factorial design.

The results indicate that (1) directional dominance influenced consumer brand interference, and directional dominance interacted with brand interference on (2) brand evaluation and (3) purchase intention in multiple brand portfolios.

Considering that conventional single-sponsor sponsorship or single-endorser endorsement portfolios are increasingly rare, research on concurrent circumstances of multiple endorsers and multiple endorsed brands in multiple brand portfolios was necessary. By expanding and reconceptualizing the context of brand networks, this study provides empirical evidence on how the dominance and directionality between endorser and (existing and newly) endorsed brands—an athlete endorser's strong pre-existing association with an existing endorsed brand in particular—influenced consumer brand interference and the brand evaluation in multiple brand portfolios.

Social entrepreneurship

The case can be a learning resource for management students and budding entrepreneurs with aspirations for a career in the field of social entrepreneurship.

This case examines the organizational change and dilemmas social entrepreneurs have to face when enterprises grow. The organization under study “Action for Children Today” (ACT) aimed to help under privileged children. The organization was the brain child of young, energetic, media professional Ananthi Subramanian. Ananthi had never dreamt of being a social entrepreneur, but her mission of inclusion for underprivileged orphans in mainstream society by educating and inculcating skills, took her towards a new life and career. The endeavour began as a shelter for homeless children, but Ananthi came across other issues faced by the children, so new ventures were added under the umbrella of ACT. Although it was never an easy journey, Ananthi’s commitment kept her motivated to work for the cause and the organization that started with just one child has been home to more than 300 children up to the present day. ACT had its share of ups and downs through its journey and the case is based on certain issues and challenges that the organization had to face and how it overcame those hurdles.

Expected learning outcomes are as follows: a better understanding of different forms of social entrepreneurship; an understanding of problems and challenges faced by social entrepreneurs; and an understanding of how to implement new business models.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS: 3 Entrepreneurship

Of all the major, global professional sports where women have made inroads, striving toward equality in terms of status, earnings and media attention, tennis stands at the forefront. This chapter traces this historical development, outlining the sport's earliest socio-cultural features that afforded the inclusion of female players and charting the progress of notable women who thrust tennis into the limelight and turned themselves into commodities – the essence of professionalisation. Suzanne Lenglen blazed the trail by becoming, in 1926, the principal attraction in the sport's inaugural professional tour. Female players were encouraged to cast aside the shackles of restrained femininity and chart their own courses in a sport still dominated by men and played according to male standards. The rise of ‘Open Tennis’ in 1968 removed the playing restrictions and stigma of professionalism, but by opening up to the male-dominated corporate world, unsurprisingly it was the male players who initially competed for the lion's share of new money. Billie Jean King's efforts to galvanise her fellow female professionals to compete on a rogue tour sponsored by Virginia Slims left them ousted by the sport's main officials, but the tour's commercial success propelled them toward equality in terms of prize money and status. Still more or less a white, middle-class-dominated pursuit, the arrival of Venus and Serena Williams in the late 1990s turned tennis toward new markets, and the sport's significance for women remains apparent in the fact that its leading players are the most recognisable and well-paid of all professional female athletes.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the social significance of digital technologies for researching and understanding active women's bodies, identities, practices, and politics. In critically surveying the rapidly expanding body of literature on women's social media use for sport and physical activity, the chapter highlights the multidisciplinary nature of much of this work and its feminist and social justice orientation toward understanding the uneven impacts of platformed engagement for women, particularly those who are socially marginalized.

The chapter synthesizes the current literature to identify feminist and sociological approaches to analyzing sporting women's social media use. It draws on the authors' own research as case study illustrations of key developments.

Findings identify opportunities and challenges for women navigating the complexities of social media encounters in their sporting and physical cultural lives, focusing on self-presentation, branding and digital labor, community-building, and activism. It proposes theoretical, methodological, and ethical directions for sociological interventions in this area of study.

Future research should investigate the rapidly evolving digital landscape, issues of social justice and marginalized voices, and the social conditions that sustain gender inequalities in sport and social media spaces.

The chapter contributes original insights on emerging directions in the study of women, sport, and social media. Furthermore, it addresses the challenges for social researchers responding to the uptake of new social media platforms by female athletes and physically active women.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the push and pull factors associated with the consumption of Chinese Table Tennis Super League (CTTSL) game events by online audiences and on-site attendants.

Conducting a comprehensive review of literature and a test of content validity, a questionnaire was formulated to assess push and pull motives, event consumption, and sociodemographic variables. A total of 433 CTTSL event consumers, including 225 respondents who primarily followed CTTSL game events via television and webcasting and 208 respondents who primarily consumed the events by attending live game events.

Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that for online consumers, two push factors, self-esteem and drama excitement, were found to be positively related to the event consumption factors; whereas, social interaction and sport performance factors were found to be negatively predictive of event consumption factors. For on-site consumers, none of the push and pull factors were found to be related to the consumption factors.

These results indicate that unlike research findings derived in other research settings mainly conducted in Western countries, push and pull factors are more functional for online CTTSL consumers who are of comparatively stronger fandom level, which are likely affected by CTTSL’s contemporary operations.

Enriching the dual process theory through examining its applicability in studying sport consumer behavior, from both perspectives of internal and external motivations; applying theories and research findings of internal and external motivations that have primarily been derived in Western countries into a professional sport setting in China; identifying unique and diverse perspectives of professional table tennis consumers in China between online and on-site consumers; contrary to the findings derived in Western countries, the motivational factors are more functional for online CTTSL consumers who are of comparatively stronger fandom level, which are likely affected by CTTSL’s contemporary operations; and conducting micro-perspective analyses to study Chinese sport consumer behaviors, which has rarely been done in contemporary scholarly inquiries in China.