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Electronic Sports (eSports) is an emerging sector of the sports and entertainment industry experiencing an accelerated increase in consumer and sponsor demand. This paper aims to study selected cases of eSports service ecosystems, to identify similarities and differences and to understand the different roles, relationships and multiple interactions of actors involved in value co-creation processes.

This empirical paper follows the service-dominant logic to highlight value creation. Based on the sport value framework, an organizing logic for the actors in sports-related ecosystems to exchange service and co-create value, the authors apply the conceptualization of an eSports service ecosystem framework in which actors create value through their interactions. A case study approach was applied to qualitatively describe two cases of value co-creation by multiple actors during three eSports events. Case study 1a is the 2019 League of Legends World Championship Finals in Paris. Case study 1b is the 2020 League of Legends World Championship Finals in Shanghai. Case study 2 is the BLAST Premier Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Global Final 2020, which was entirely virtual.

The outcome is an empirically investigated conceptual framework of multiple actors co-creating value within a service ecosystem in eSports. The insights of the cases explain how actors interact with each other and co-create value during events in eSports ecosystems. The cases illustrate interactions in the context of eSports where the actors are connected within ecosystems. This enables further development of a value co-creation concept and a better understanding of value co-creation in eSports.

This study contributes to research by explicating a theoretically grounded framework for eSports service ecosystems based on empirical evidence. This research extends the scope of value co-creation beyond the firm–customer dyad to a service ecosystem in eSports, demonstrating the dynamic interactions of multiple actors.

Football exists and evolves in a dynamic ecosystem, displaying a massive and multidimensional influence on most contemporary societies, and football has grown into a significant industry with a plethora of stakeholders. This research is the first to comprehensively identify the key industry stakeholders and their distinct value, from the individual club perspective, and to conceptualise and test their interrelationship toward the development of a corresponding framework of club benefits.

The study applied a multilevel approach to collect and verify qualitative data. It initially developed a preliminary conceptual framework, which was first validated by an expert panel and was subsequently extensively tested in the Cyprus-specific context, which offered fertile ground for such a study. The empirical stage rested on 41 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with very high-ranking individuals from the top nine football clubs, as well as with key industry stakeholders.

Though the examined industry is partly in line with international norms, it is also highly affected by unique characteristics that alter the various stakeholders' role, producing (even negative) value of varied typologies that is directly linked with the industry's financial, sporting, cultural and social conditions.

The research ultimately presents scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a systemic and comprehensive understanding of the individual club stakeholder value offerings, delivers a tested framework as a tool for social and business management and prescribes future avenues for research, governance and practice.

Extant studies on the subject are either partial or focus on individual stakeholders and evidently lack requisite scientific comprehensiveness. The current research bridges this significant gap in knowledge by exhaustively identifying the key industry stakeholders, explicating their relative social, economic or other value in the individual club perspective and developing a value-based stakeholder framework.

Social factors, such as fellow spectators in a stadium or other fans sharing their experiences on online platforms, play a dominant role in spectator sport consumption. This conceptual article sets out to achieve three objectives: classify customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions in the sport fan context, develop a framework that links the classification of interactions to relevant outcomes and identify areas for related future research.

The authors integrate conceptual and empirical contributions on C2C interactions in the service, marketing and sport management literature.

The article proposes classifying C2C interactions into synchronous multi- and uni-directional interactions as well as asynchronous multi- and uni-directional interactions. The C2C interaction framework (C2CIF) proposes that such C2C interactions have hedonic, social, symbolic and utilitarian value outcomes. It further suggests that physiological, psychological and social processes underlie the co-creation or co-destruction of value and identifies contingencies at both the fan and the brand level.

Based on the C2CIF, we identify relevant topics for future research, in particular relating to technology-supported and virtual interactions among fans, fan-to-fan interactions across different countries and cultural backgrounds and fan-to-fan interactions as a way to reduce societal concerns.

There are different streams of research in the service marketing literature concerning value co-creation. Most of the research focuses on value co-creation for the benefit of the customer. However, value is also co-created for the benefit of the provider, especially in a business-to-business context. The purpose of this research is to understand (1) how value is co-created in a sport business-to-business context (i.e. sailing) and (2) how the prevailing value co-creation approaches explain value co-creation processes differently in a sport business-to-business context.

The research was contextualised within the Auckland sailing cluster. Primary data were collected via 27 interviews, as well as observations at events. Secondary data include 13 documents of organisational information and archival data. Data were analysed deductively and interpreted using two different theoretical lenses: service-dominant logic (SDL) and service logic (SL).

The value co-creation analysis of the sailing cluster permitted theorising about relationships in sport management at different levels of aggregation and abstraction. Every actor is embedded in a wider sport eco-system triggered by sport activities and always has a dual role as provider and beneficiary. Actors that are in control of specific sport activities are pivotal actors and provide a value network for others.

This research suggests that SDL and SL approaches to value co-creation are complementary and that further research is necessary to integrate and operationalise these approaches.

It helps practitioners to better understand how value is co-created in sport business-to-business contexts.

This research shows the complementarity of two differing theoretical approaches to explain value co-creation in sport business-to-business settings.

Smartphones have become ubiquitous devices that enable individuals to integrate digital resources in virtually all value co-creation processes, including visiting sport events. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand smartphone-enabled digital resource integration in the context of sport events from an individual intra-perspective. It thereby connects the perspectives of Service Dominant Logic and Experiential Computing.

A conceptual model was developed and empirically tested utilizing a survey of 707 visitors of eight first and second league soccer, handball and basketball matches in Germany. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results reveal that stadium visitors integrate sport event-related and unrelated digital resources to co-create value at sport events. While event-unrelated digital resources generally have more influence on visitors' perceived value, their importance is decreasing with higher team identification. Digital resources in the form of sports betting opportunities are only relevant in some specific contexts. Hence, both individual and contextual characteristics determine digital resource integration.

This study integrates the perspectives of value co-creation at sport events and experiential computing and proposes a conceptual model exploring how sport event visitors enrich their experience through the integration of sport event-related and unrelated smartphone-enabled digital resources. By illuminating the intra-level perspective of sport event visitors' resource integration, it provides the basis for future studies on digital resource integration on higher levels of aggregation including engagement platforms and entire sport event ecosystems.

This study is a micro-level perspective of value co-creation in spectator sport. By examining sport through the value co-creation lens, the dual role of the customer as both a contributor to and a beneficiary of value is acknowledged and the importance of stakeholder interactions is emphasized. This study analyzes the extent to which two theoretically and managerially important factors—attendance frequency (i.e. first-time attendee vs repeat attendee) and resident type (i.e. local resident vs domestic traveler)—impact value creation in the recurring live sporting event setting.

Data were collected from spectators who attended a National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) sanctioned racing event. Multigroup structural equation modeling was performed to examine the proposed pathways, and multigroup t-tests were used to compare the model across both groups for each moderating variable. Corresponding path coefficients were then compared using Chin's (2004) recommended equations and procedures.

The study found organization-related value propositions to be the more common antecedents of value, while customer appearance had a strong negative association with hedonic value, and attendance frequency and resident type influenced certain value perceptions. Sport organizations should consider the expectations and motivations of various customer groups and provide offerings designed to meet the specific needs of different fan segments based on the spectator's experience with the sport product and the distance traveled to attend the sport event.

This paper advances the authors’ understanding of value creation in sport by showing how customer perceptions of value associated with the sport organization and other customers can be moderated by certain behavioral and geographic factors.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual model of branded entertainment into sport marketing and highlight Red Bull’s strategy as a “best practice”. Branded entertainment, the full integration of advertising into entertainment content, is an innovative marketing strategy that can provide sport enterprises and sponsors with consumer attention and engagement.

Branded entertainment was theoretically framed and conceptualised. Using an inductive approach Red Bull’s portfolio of self-generated action/extreme sport content as well as its production, distribution and viral processes were analysed.

A communication model of sport-related branded entertainment was developed to distinguish actors such as athletes, sponsors, and co-operating companies, traditional and new (sport) media as well as sport consumers and prosumers and analyse their actions and relationships.

This study is limited to Red Bull’s branded entertainment activities. However, a thorough conceptualisation and analysis of branded entertainment and findings of unique characteristics and anomalies related to branded sport entertainment allows academics and professionals to understand and apply the concept.

The research theme triggers a dialogue and encourages marketing practitioners to consider alternative ways to engage their target audiences and expand their integrated communication strategies via a unique and dynamic promotional tool.

This paper contributes to the sport value framework by addressing “value co-creation” in a sport media and marketing context. By highlighting the Red Bull phenomenon as an innovative approach a successful integration of branding and sponsorship activities into sport entertainment content production, distribution and viral marketing is presented.

The current study aims to explain the influence of technological interactivity and media sociability on sport consumer value co-creation behavior via collective efficacy and collective intelligence.

Subjects were individuals who have a mobile smart device and experience of accessing sport-related community websites (n = 513). A face-to-face self-administered survey was employed based on the convenience sampling method. A structural equation modeling test was conducted to examine the relationships between the variables.

Technological interactivity and media sociability based on mobile smart devices improve sport consumers' collective efficacy, and media sociability positively affects collective intelligence. Also, perceived collective efficacy and collective intelligence in virtual communities induce consumers to engage in the value co-creation process more actively (i.e. consumer participation behavior and citizenship behavior). One of the key findings includes the significant role of media sociability in the process of value co-creation between consumers and sport organizations. Media sociability is more likely to contribute to improving sport consumers' collective efficacy and the development of intelligence than the properties of technological interactivity.

Research findings contribute to extending the body of knowledge in interactivity studies related to sport consumers' value co-creation behaviors in the virtual environment context.

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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the complexity of how spectators' multiple identities influence their behavioral intention. Specifically, the authors examined the effects of spectators' place identification, team identification and an interaction effect on attendance intention using social identity complexity framework.

Data were collected from spectators attending professional baseball games in South Korea. While 550 questionnaires were returned, 475 (86.36%) were used in the analysis after excluding incomplete responses. The research model was tested using latent moderated structural equations modeling.

Results indicated place identification only influenced attendance intentions through an interaction effect, while team identity directly affects attendance intention. Highly identified sport consumers intended to attend future games regardless of place identification, while the sense of love for the team's home region motivated low-identified sport consumers more to attend future games.

The findings of this research led to understanding the relationships between multiple identities and behavioral intention and provided the spectator sport industry with valuable strategies to manage their sport consumers.