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This study aims to investigate how sports customers adopted over-the-top (OTT) services to consume sport content. Inspired by the technology acceptance model (TAM), the study aims to understand users' behavior when consuming sporting events and users' perceptions toward OTT services.

The participants of the study are Chinese sports consumers that use streaming services to watch live sport content. An online survey was distributed through HUPU Sports, a Chinese online communication community where sports fans can share opinions. To make sure all responses qualified to take part in the study, skip logic questions were added at the beginning of the questionnaire to ask participants to answer whether they used streaming services for watching sports. A total of 352 responses were received and there were 327 useable questionnaires.

The results revealed that viewing convenience, free of commercials and viewing quality were the main reasons impacting them to adopt OTT services. In terms of users' perceptions, paid users rated higher in perceived enjoyment, perceived value, perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use than nonpaid users. OTT users' fandom and PU could predict the time the users spent on using these services, while the users' fandom and perceived value are positively related to the money users spent on these services. In addition, this study also found that users' fandom, perceived value, content quality, and ease of use are positively associated with users' intention to continue to use the service.

The study is one of the first attempts to explore how sports audiences adopted OTT services to consume sport content and explore the audiences' perceptions toward OTT usage. Previous studies have already investigated how users adopted music streaming services (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019) and other online streaming services (Shin and Park, 2021), but little attention has been given to sports streaming services specifically. Therefore, the findings of the study fill the gap in the extant knowledge of sport consumers' behavior and provide more insights to their online behaviors. Moreover, the authors also contribute to the growing digital media literature by advancing our understanding perceptional differences between paid users and unpaid users. The streaming services literature has primarily focused on general users (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019), but the services neglect to understand the differences in between paid and unpaid users.

The purpose of this research is to determine the nature of the relationship between sporting, financial performance and a stock price of football clubs by adopting the quarterly financial statements of the European clubs that represent the research sample: Juventus, Borussia Dortmund and Olympique Lyonnais, which helps clubs’ managers in evaluating the sporting and financial performance effect on the share price at the quarterly level.

The research is performed using the panel data technique, for Juventus, Borussia Dortmund and Olympique Lyonnais (2007–2016). The sporting performance is represented by the quarterly rate of the number of goals scored by the club to the number of goals scored against it; the quarterly rate of the number of wins to the total number of matches played by the club in local and international competitions. At the same time, financial performance is represented by the quarterly rate of current ratio, the quarterly rate of the leverage ratio, and the quarterly rate of earnings per share (EPS).

The analysis of the results was distributed at two levels: macro and micro. The analysis at the macro-level dealt with the correlation and influence between the sports performance indicators and the financial performance indicators of the three clubs combined on the share prices of those clubs. The micro-level performance is analyzed separately from the macro analysis. The results indicated that there was an effect on macro analysis. As for the microanalysis, the results showed no effect of the sporting performance of the three clubs on their share price.

The main implications of this research reveal the weakness of the correlation between the clubs' share price in the financial market, possibly due to the quarterly rate of the data. But there is a slight change for Juventus. There is a moderate correlation between the quarterly sporting performance indicators of this club and the quarterly average of its share price in the market.

The main implications of this research reveal the weakness of the correlation between the clubs' share price in the financial market, possibly due to the quarterly rate of the data. But there is a slight change for Juventus. There is a moderate correlation between the quarterly sporting performance indicators of this club and the quarterly average of its share price in the market.

The social implications of the current research are clear by dealing with the relationship between the sports and Financial performance of football clubs and its relationship to the price of its shares in the financial market. The success of football clubs in achieving sporting victory attracts more fans. This leads to an increase in the club's profits and consequently to an increase in the price of its shares in the financial markets. Therefore, the societal benefit will be achieved by increasing the enjoyment of the audience and increasing the revenues of the club and the city to which it belongs.

The originality of this research is represented in its use of quarterly data to clarify the relationship between the sporting and financial performance of a sample of European football clubs with the price of its shares in the financial markets. Therefore, this research differs from previous research that used only daily and annual data for clubs to clarify the relationship between their sporting and financial performance.

The purpose of this study was to gather insights from sport marketing professionals and identify key opportunities, challenges and knowledge that sport marketing educators and researchers could utilize in developing curriculum and research agendas.

A qualitative approach was used, and data were collected through in-depth interviews with 15 sport marketing professionals. Participants were asked questions related to the knowledge, skills and experiences that they believe are important for students to have to be successful in the industry, as well as the types of research that would be most useful in their day-to-day work.

Industry professionals noted collaboration, transformation in digital marketing, data and analytics and experiential marketing as key trends facing the industry today. The findings suggest that sport marketing curriculum should focus on soft skill development such as communication, relationship building and empathy alongside hard skill development such as data analysis and storytelling. As well, findings show research areas where scholars can aid practitioners with a focus on consumer insights, technology, measuring ROI and experiential marketing.

With these findings, educators and scholars can better prepare students for successful careers in industry and contribute to the ongoing advancement of the scholarly field. This study serves as a starting point for further research in this area, and it is hoped that it will spark continued collaboration between academia and industry.

This paper explores sports consumer interest in virtual environments (VE) and Web3 activations, specifically how the level of psychological involvement, consumers' generational cohorts and previous experience with VE and Web3 activations influence consumer interest in VE and Web3 products and services related to their favorite sports team.

A survey instrument was developed and distributed online resulting in a sample size of n = 526. The survey was designed to measure consumers' psychological involvement with their favorite sports team based on the Psychological Continuum Model, and to determine respondents' interest in potential VE and Web3 activations. Finally, the survey collected demographical information and data regarding respondents' previous experience with VE and Web3 applications. Multiple regression analysis was subsequently conducted to predict the impact of (1) psychological involvement, (2) consumers' generational cohorts and (3) previous experience with VE and Web3 activations on the dependent variable consumer interest in VE and Web3 activations.

The regression model showed a significant impact of the independent variables on consumer interest in VE and Web3 activations with consumer involvement exerting the highest influence. Consumers' previous experience with VE and Web3 applications also seems to trigger interest, in line with the consumption capital theory. This study also suggests that younger generational cohorts are not intrinsically more attracted to VE and Web3 activations but their interest seems to depend on the type of activation.

This study is intended as a first assessment of independent variables that may have an impact on sports consumer interest in VE and Web3 activations. Further research is needed to assess the impact these variables combined with other indicators may have on consumer interest, for instance by employing a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach. This research included selected VE and Web3 applications comprising online games, NFTs and cryptocurrencies, to calculate a VE and Web3 Literacy Score for the purpose of this paper. However, the “umbrella term Web3” (Wang et al., 2022) could indicate a number of additional applications not considered in this research. Future studies could examine sports consumer experience with additional Web3 activations when assessing VE and Web3 Literacy.

The results of this research imply the need for a diversification of the VE and Web3 portfolio offered by sports teams to cater to different consumer segments. Upcoming challenges for sports teams include motivating younger consumers to take an interest in Web3 activations beyond gaming. Additionally, sports teams should encourage loyal supporters in the advanced stages of the PCM who possess limited VE and Web3 experience, to engage in VE and Web3 activations through simplified offers complementing their overall fan experience.

VE and Web3 activations currently offered by sports teams are still in their early stages and data underpinning their success is scarce. This is the first study examining variables that may influence consumer interest in a sports context.

This study explores the motivations underlying the European Super League (SL) breakaway attempt. While institutional settings bind football to tradition, investors conceive football companies as an opportunity to diversify their investments in a fast-growing technological industry. The study investigates the market structure and identifies the reasons behind the European football crisis, proposing to modify the role of Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in the European football market.

After summarizing the unusual features of the European football market, the article displays the agents involved and their interrelations. Modeling the market facilitates picturing the misalignment of targets of regulatory bodies and football clubs. It also helps visualize the potential consequences of the SL coup on the market.

The market does not allow football companies to monetize their business and compete with other entertainment sectors. Only a radical change in the balance of power between clubs and self-interested institutional settings can settle this situation. Indeed, this relation leads to market inefficiency because the two most critical clubs' financial problems (the high dependence on broadcasting revenues and the uncontrolled expenditures on players' salaries) are linked to the same issue: the governing bodies strongly influence the profit equation by holding control of media rights and incentivizing clubs to overspend to win both on-field and off-field.

This study is the first to assess the football business market using an evolutionary approach to address its problems. It offers a visualizing tool to understand the market and proposes an alternative solution for solving the football market crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the sport trajectory could be an impact factor in leadership development.

A qualitative research method has been adopted by conducting 17 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed with the program Open Code (4.03).

The findings of this study revealed that the interviewed managers perceived that their sport trajectory has had an important influence in the development of their leadership. This influence is determined by four factors: (1) sport profile, (2) sport referents, (3) competences, values and abilities and (4) experiences from different sport roles played during their lifespan.

The research is based on interviews with a small sample of managers. In order to develop the research further, a more extensive sample is required.

The paper is unique as it examines the impact of the sport trajectory as an impact factor in leadership development.

Among scholarly analyses of sport demand, few have considered the demand for match replays despite replays' indispensable role in sport broadcasts. Different from live matches, viewers of match replays generally have access to match outcomes. Outcome uncertainty is thus less relevant in attracting viewers. This paper addresses this research gap by analyzing the demand for replays of competitive esports matches.

We collected match replay data for two competitive esports leagues, CrossFire Pro League and King Pro League, from two Chinese esports online platforms, Douyu.com and Huya.com. Drawing on two economic theories of superstar effects—a skilled-based theory and a popularity-based theory, we performed regression analyses and dominance analyses to examine the demand for esports match replays.

Our results indicated skill to be more important in the demand for tactical games while non-skill-popularity is more instrumental in attracting viewers to replays of leisurely games. The platform with knowledge-sharing features also exhibited a stronger skill impact for tactical games.

Findings contribute to the understanding of sport match replays and offer implications for esports organizers and broadcasters to market games effectively.

This study aims to explore spectators' awareness of and attitudes toward sponsoring firms as well as to propose a model predicting their purchase and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions toward the sponsors of a major sporting event during a pandemic crisis.

A quantitative method was used to collect the data, with 1,259 questionnaires being effectively collected and analyzed using SPSS and AMOS. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), path analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to analyze the data.

Factors such as sports involvement, sincerity, social media use, beliefs about sponsorship, sponsor's image, Covid-19 beliefs and emotions, awareness of and attitude toward sponsors were found to significantly predict spectators' purchase and WOM intentions.

The results support the structural equation model, providing a multidisciplinary conceptual framework that highlights the significance of comprehending the role of significant factors in sponsorship efficiency during the Covid-19 crisis. The proposed framework adds to the knowledge corpus of this field.