Search results

The present study aims to analyse sport entrepreneurs' passions and motivations to start a sport business. It answers calls from the literature to investigate sector-specific entrepreneurship ventures and expand the scope of sport entrepreneurship to innovative sport business owners.

Twenty-six entrepreneurs based in Scotland who started a sport business have been surveyed and 8 entrepreneurs were interviewed.

Participants demonstrated a high inclination for self-employment mainly following pull factor reasons such as career change. Their passion for sport, inventing and work played an influential role in their decision to start and grow their business. Some sport entrepreneurs also aimed to pursue higher goals through their innovative sport product or service by contributing to a social cause, which closely aligns with social entrepreneurship.

This study theoretically contributes to the literature by illuminating the specificities of sport entrepreneurship and how passion – as both an antecedent and an outcome – affects the motivational state of sport entrepreneurs.

This study aims to examine escapism as the explanatory mechanism that can account for distinct outcomes of harmonious and obsessive sports fan passion among US and Chinese fans.

The study uses cross-cultural data collected among sports fans in the USA and China. Using structural equation modeling and PROCESS model, the authors test the mediating role of escapism and the moderating role of indulgence on the relationships between sports fan passion and procrastination.

The authors found that positive escapism mediates the relationship between harmonious sports fan passion and procrastination, whereas negative escapism mediates the relationship between obsessive sports fan passion and procrastination. While individual-level indulgence was not a significant moderator, post hoc analyses revealed that the interaction of indulgence and uncertainty avoidance played a moderating role.

The use of sports fan samples from both the USA and China enables a cross-cultural comparison of the proposed model, thereby extending the model’s generalizability. By advancing the dual model of escapism, the authors hope to stimulate a research dialogue that identifies more nuanced (both positive and negative) predictors and outcomes of passion for an activity and escapism in the broader context of other passion-inducing activities (e.g., Internet use, work, etc.).

Marketers promoting sports events can use this study's results to highlight the benefits of harmonious sports fan passion in terms of positive escapism and reduced procrastination. Organizations promoting sports fandom need to also be aware that sports fans can have obsessive passion for sports that can lead to procrastination. Therefore, it is important to be vigilant and distinguish between “healthy” and “unhealthy” passion early to avoid “unhealthy” passion turning into negative escapism and by extension, procrastination.

Socially responsible marketers should understand a potential negative effect that obsessive sports fan passion may entail and prevent or minimize its negative consequences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explains why sports fan passion can(not) be associated with procrastination. It does so by using the dual escapism as the explanatory mechanism linking harmonious and obsessive sports fan passion and procrastination.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of autoethnography within the context of sports fandom. This paper advocates the use of such qualitative methodologies to enable a greater understanding of sports fans. The paper also aims to provide greater understanding of sports fandom.

The research moves away from traditional methodologies of studying sports fandom from an objective viewpoint and uses an evocative autoethnography to provide an account of the lived experience of a sports fan.

By writing himself into his research it has been possible to gain a deeper insight into sports fandom. The subject of passion arises and while the Dualistic Model of Passion was explored as a mechanism for dealing with obsessive passion it is suggested that attempting to move away from a state of obsessive passion may diminish the enjoyment of being a sports fan.

This paper highlights the benefits that methodologies such as autoethnography can have for academics studying sports fandom and other disciplines. It encourages academics to overcome the perceived lack of academic acceptance of the method.

This paper utilises a qualitative methodology to explore the experience of being a sports fan. This methodological approach is yet to be fully embraced within this field and hence there is a lack of in‐depth data on the experiences of sports fans. This account will allow readers to develop a greater understanding and insight of sports fans.

In an attempt to promote sport employees’ well-being, the purpose of this paper is to examine the more traditional constructs of psychological capital (i.e. hope, efficacy, resiliency and optimism) and to feature the inclusion of authenticity, an often overlooked construct, among sport employees.

This conceptual paper is designed to create an expanded sport employee psychological capital construct, labeled A-HERO, and a subsequent theoretical model to improve their well-being.

In detailing a conceptual model of A-HERO for well-being, the model includes and explains the relationships among sport employee antecedents (i.e. sport employee identification, pride and passion), an organizational contextual variable (person–organization fit), and an important employee and organizational outcome (i.e. employee well-being) in contemporary sport organizations.

A-HERO offers a necessary first step for future theoretical research and empirical applications to improve sport employees’ well-being.

By elucidating the role of authenticity at work with traditional psychological capital constructs in the current sport industry, this paper stimulates sport business and management scholars to validate empirically the A-HERO construct and examine proposed relationships for an improved prediction of sport employees’ well-being.

This study aims to detect the dimensions of the in-store customer shopping experience from the sports retailer perspective and to investigate how the role of sports equipment stores is changing.

This exploratory study performs semi-structured interviews with retail managers of sports equipment stores.

This research reveals the importance of the dimensions of immersive design, sensorial ambient elements, social relationships, trialability and real experience sharing in designing a memorable in-store shopping experience in sports stores, and it highlights that the store's role in the sports context is transitioning from sales space to an interactive, immersive, engaging and convivial place. It proposes a model to design the in-store customer shopping experience effectively.

Sports equipment managers can make their physical stores as experiential as possible by investing in expert, passionate personnel and technology in order to create a real in-store experience of the product and the sports practice.

While sports equipment retailers acknowledge the importance of providing customers with a memorable shopping experience by creating an evocative environment and placing multiple touchpoints in stores, management scholars have paid limited attention to sports stores. This study explores the ways in which sports retail managers can design their stores effectively in experiential terms.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue of Management Decision and discuss the key question “Should sport be taken seriously?”.

The themes of the special issue are discussed and each paper is introduced.

Sport should be taken seriously because it has a significance beyond the field of play. It has become a commodified activity which creates and consumes wealth and can be used as a context for management research.

Rarely before has sport been taken seriously in a management research context. This guest editorial and the special issue that follows it begin that debate.

OGQ was founded by Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone with the mission to support potential Olympic medal winners, in achieving their dream, with the help of all the stakeholders; and the vision to scout for potential talent and identify their needs. It had eminent personalities from sports who understood the problems with Indian sports and from industry who had a passion for sports and supported it. OGQ supported its athletes for the 2012 London Olympics through voluntary contributions and its athletes won four medals. For the 2016 Olympics, OGQ had a target of eight Olympic medals and was scaling up its support to athletes. Viren Rasquinha, the CEO of OGQ, knew that he had to focus on getting more contributions as he needed more resources to support the athletes. For this OGQ needed to review its communication strategy to the current and potential donors.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how experiences, sport careers and biographic variables predict: enjoyment, satisfaction and memories from the unique and spectacular Extreme Sport Week (Ekstremsportveko), Voss, Norway, as reported by the extreme sport athletes.

An electronic questionnaire was distributed to all participants during 2011, and collected responses from 292 athletes (27 per cent response rate). Data were analysed by frequencies, mean values, correlations and multiple regression.

Extreme sport athletes were typically amateurs with serious leisure careers. Social ties between participants and volunteers were found. They had positive experiences at the event, and the realms of education, aesthetics and entertainment were the strongest predictors of enjoyment, satisfaction and memories. Level of excitement augmented the explained variance, especially when predicting memories. Most participants intended to re-visit future Extreme Sport Weeks.

The moderate response rate warrants generalisations from the study. As the study is cross-sectional, cause-effect relationships cannot be established.

For event organisers, the study shows the athletes’ appreciations with its managerial implications.

The Voss area is highly appreciated for its natural beauty and extreme sport resources, and re-visits are likely to occur, hence contributing to its growth as extreme sport venue and to sport tourism.

This study is the first to explore the experiences of athletes who participated in the unique and spectacular event Extreme Sport Week. For researchers and practitioners, it is an example of how to measure experiences and their outcomes of (extreme sport) events.

This chapter covers many angles of the role national identity plays in the production, consumption, and reception of sport via social media channels. More specifically, it explores what sociology specifically brings to the equation regarding theories of group identity, identifies the core studies that represent what we currently know about national identification in the social mediated sports world, and determines fruitful themes and paths for subsequent investigation.

The approach to the chapter largely involves the synthesis of a diverse set of literatures in the academic spaces of nationalism, fan behavior, and social media.

The chapter advances the argument that only a handful of investigations in social media content focus on how national identity is forged within sport. Global events (Olympics, World Cup) seem to be the current areas of investigation, with social media facilitating various forms of BIRGing and CORFing depending largely on real-time results.

Relevant and understudied areas for future investigation on the nexus of sport, social media, and national identity include gendered correlates, GORFing (Glory Out of Reflected Failure), redefinitions of sport fandom, eSports, and the application of new technologies, applications and platforms in the social media space.

The chapter establishes a foundation of knowledge triangulating sport, social media, and national identity while creating warrants for key scholarly agenda advancement in the future.