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A 30-item Sport Interest Inventory (SII) was developed and validated for measuring ten unique motives related to consumer interest at an international sporting event. Spectators (N=1,321) attending five different US venues during the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup were administered the SII. Analysis revealed that sport and team interest, excitement, supporting women's opportunity in sport, aesthetics and vicarious achievement explained 35 per cent of the variance in spectators' interest in the event. Results provide sport marketers with consumer-based marketing strategies, particularly for women's sport.

While there is evidence that team captainship in intercollegiate sports can lead to leadership development, there is little evidence about the role that task dependence may play on that effect. The individual or team nature of sports may offer different leadership experiences for team captains, leading to differential outcomes. In this exploratory study, 31 NCAA Division III team captains reported their leadership practice using Kouzes and Posner’s Student Leadership Practices Inventory (2^nd ed., 2005) at the beginning and end of one playing season. Results indicate that team captains developed their use of their leadership practices during the playing season regardless of whether they led an interdependent or independent team. The implications for leadership educators interested in the potentially unique contributions of various leadership experiences are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact that athletics participation in both revenue and non‐revenue intercollegiate sport had on the engagement of students as measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement. In addition, the study reported results to the institution's athletics department for application as a tool for program review.

The study employed a factorial design using self‐reported data from a cooperating institution. The independent variables examined were participation in intercollegiate athletics (athletes vs non‐athletes) and the sport type (revenue sports vs non‐revenue sports). Measures of student engagement were the dependent variables in the study.

Descriptive analysis revealed that athletes were as engaged as their non‐athlete peers and suggested that revenue sport participants were not as engaged as their non‐revenue sport counterparts. Univariate ANCOVA analyses uncovered significant differences between both categories of independent variable – athletes/non‐athletes and revenue/non‐revenue sport participation.

The study was limited by the degree to which all participants answered the questions in the National Survey of Student Engagement honestly and accurately. Since athletics participation is determined by self‐selection, inherent differences among athletes and non‐athletes may exist and were not explored in the study.

Through examination of institutional data, athletics practitioners may gain information to guide policy and practice.

The study illustrates how institutions may capitalize on institutional research data to evaluate, review, and improve specific programs.

This case study demonstrates how a start-up professional sport league, the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), successfully incorporated an interactive fan festival into its inaugural Championship Weekend. Prior to revealing the details of the WUSA event, the history and rationale of interactive fan festivals is outlined. Also highlighted are the key marketing concepts applied (relationship marketing, brand management, experiential branding) in order to assist sport properties interested in using the interactive fan festival as a marketing tool in the future.

Athletic coaches are responsible for team relationships and a team's performance, yet many may leave the coaching profession or withdraw from team management because of work‐family issues. The purpose of this study is to use ecological theory as a guide to theorize on the relationships between work‐factors and work‐family outcomes for team leaders.

Participants were 601 college coaches. Using an online questionnaire, participants evaluated their supervisory support, autonomy in their job, and various work‐family factors. Specifically, the effects of the work‐factors of autonomy and supervisory support were examined on work‐family variables. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Confirmatory factor analysis results suggested that the fit for coaches and their work‐family interface is best explained by four work‐family dimensions – two directional conflict dimensions and two directional enrichment dimensions. Results suggest that supervisory support correlates with lower conflict and greater enrichment. Additionally, coaches reported that an autonomous workplace correlated with lower conflict and greater work enrichment with family.

Results suggest that it is beneficial to help the coach/team leader to improve fit, even though conflict is inevitable. Previously mentioned, and found throughout the results, was the effectiveness of the supervisor at alleviating conflict and amplifying enrichment.

A reason for the disparate number of women in team leadership positions has been family pressure. This research is expected to lay a foundation for future research on the beneficial aspects of multiple role participation.

This research builds on past work on the work‐family fit, which originally focused heavily on conflict, but has just recently started looking at the beneficial aspects of multiple role participation.

Team performance in sport is not limited to the players, but extends to the coaching staff and their relationships. This study aims to identify mentoring functions reported by NCAA Division I assistant women's soccer coaches within a head coach‐assistant coach dyad and examine gender impact on these functions.

The Mentor Role Instrument questionnaire, completed by 39.7 percent of applicable assistant coaches, determined the mentor functions present. Means for the 11 mentor functions were ranked and compared via ANOVA.

Post hoc testing showed the parent mentor function at the lowest level with the social function second lowest. The mentor functions of acceptance, friendship, sponsor, and challenging assignments ranked as the statistically highest group of factors. Assistant coach gender significantly impacted the mentor function of social, with male assistant coaches higher than females. Gender of the head coach significantly impacted the mentor function of parent with assistant coaches having male head coaches reporting greater parent functions. Gender also impacted the social mentor function in the head coach/ assistant coach dyad with male‐male dyads significantly greater than the male‐female dyads.

The current research is limited by its narrow scope. Future research should consider mentor effects on job satisfaction and occupational turnover intent, expansion to other levels of women's soccer, and expansion into men's sports for further analysis of mentoring in coaching.

As the first study to document mentor functions in coaching these results provide baseline data to guide future research and support the development of mentoring programs in coaching.

Women's football faces an existential threat from COVID-19. Using case studies, the authors explore the COVID-19 responses of three highly ranked national football associations (Australia, England and the USA) and their professional women's football leagues to (a) compare and shed new insights into the wide range of phased responses and (b) establish recommendations for other nations to navigate major crises with their social and ethical responsibilities to women's football.

Drawing on institutional theory, a framework analysis was undertaken examining 71 articles to analyse the gendered global impacts of COVID-19 on women's football.

Results highlight several important recommendations for nations to consider during the pandemic: (1) maintain active communication with the community to allay worries about the future of women's football, (2) gather support from health and government officials, (3) seek out commercial and broadcasting partnerships to drive revenue, and (4) the interests of women's football are best served when responsibility for the elite women's league does not rest (solely) with national football associations.

The authors argue that sport is an interwoven part of society and cannot be separated from gender equality issues irrespective of the pandemic.

The study is first to explore institutional pressures and football governing bodies during COVID-19 and provides a framework for nations to manage major crises.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a legacy of event hosting competencies from one event can contribute to advancing the overall hosting capacity of a nation for future events. More specifically, the project focuses on determining the event hosting capacity legacies from the Men’s Under-20 2007 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) event in Canada and how they contributed toward winning the rights for the Women’s FIFA World Cup 2015 event.

A qualitative case study design focusing on FIFA events held in Canada in 2007 and 2015 was used.

Four broad event hosting capacity legacies from the U-20 2007 event that potentially impacted Canada’s ability to secure the WWC 2015 were identified. These legacies included: exemplifying success, advancement of hosting concepts, staff and leadership experience and development and enhancement of sporting infrastructure.

The findings formed the basis of a discussion on the increasing formalization of event organizing committees, the need to consider collective (i.e. multiple events) legacies in the development of hosting strategies as well as the importance of developing the trust of the local community to support future sport event bids and hosting.

The originality and value of this research paper lies in its use of empirical case study findings to illustrate the potential for hosting capacity legacies of sporting events as well as the level and type of event under investigation (i.e. large-scale, football/soccer).

This investigation's purpose is to compare coverage of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and Major League Soccer (MLS). The goals are (1) to extend CSR analyses beyond organizational reports and (2) to compare coverage of professional sports teams' CSR behaviors across genders.

Specifically, this quantitative content analysis compared local newspaper coverage of the socially responsible behaviors of the three NWSL and MLS teams owned and operated by the same organizations in Portland, Houston and Orlando.

The NWSL teams received significantly less and more negative coverage than the MLS teams. Moreover, the NWSL coverage was more individualistic, more focused on ethics and quoted individual team players more frequently, while the MLS coverage was more collective, focused on philanthropy and quoted team organization members more frequently.

Although intentionally based on a sample of six teams, this study's results suggest the biases in coverage of women's sports teams extend beyond the playing field to their corporate social responsibility behaviors, reporting and news coverage.

As one of the first studies to analyze media coverage of professional sports team's CSR activities and to compare their socially responsible behaviors across genders, the results provide compelling implications for CSR scholars and practitioners, especially in the sports industry.

Women’s football has received increasing attention in the academic literature, partly due to its growing popularity worldwide. However, women’s football research remains scattered across numerous academic domains. Focusing on the social sciences, humanities and management disciplines, the purpose of this paper is to map and organise contributions, and to identify research directions for future studies within these disciplines.

Using the keywords “women”, “girls”, “female” and “football” or “soccer” to initially identify articles, an integrative approach was followed to evaluate and analyse relevant literature. In all, 117 academic journals were classified and subsequently divided into 26 themes according to the subject area, topic and level examined.

Results of this integrative review show an increasing trend of journal publications since 1998, with a large representation of studies related to historical and sociological research, where qualitative methods are dominant. Articles investigating economic, managerial and marketing areas appeared in more recent times. Women’s football has been researched from different perspectives (players, fans, sport organisations) and across various countries.

The restricted scope of this review (i.e. its focus on social sciences) and the manual classification of articles represent two limitations of this study. However, the synthesis of academic literature provided may assist scholars who are interested in women’s football and women’s sports research to fill identified research gaps and contribute to further advance academic investigations in this area.

This paper provides an overview of salient research avenues and represents the first attempt to critically appraise the direction of academic contributions in women’s football for the purpose of advancing scholarly inquiry in this sport.