How Sports Sponsorship Influences a Sponsor’s Financial Performance: A Case Study from the Korea Baseball Organization

This study aims to examine the effects of sponsorship on the sponsor’s financial performance. Th is study investigates return on sponsorship (ROS) with a quantitative analysis. Nexen Tire’s title sponsorship agreement with the Heroes baseball club in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) in 2010 is studied. The positive effect of sponsorship on the sponsor’s Tobin’s q is confirmed by comparing the non-sponsorship period (2000‒2009) with the sponsorship period (2010‒2018). It is also shown from an event study that the sponsor experiences negative abnormal stock returns on the news of the sponsorship agreement, though this was not found to be statistically significant. Still, when the sponsee enters the postseason, positive cumulative abnormal returns are observed, particularly significant 10 days before the postseason games. Th is study confirms the positive influence of sponsorship on the sponsor’s financial performance and, with evidence from South Korea, provides insight into Asian markets in need of research. Th e results suggest that 10 days before a postseason game would be an ideal time to leverage marketing and activate a sponsorship strategy.

Athlete-Centric Employer Branding During Rival Leagues’ Market Entry

New sports leagues use employer branding to promote themselves as distinctive and desirable employers so they can attract talented athletes. A multiple case analysis was used to examine the employer branding strategies of four leagues that entered markets with incumbents: the National Women’s Hockey League, BIG3, Alliance of American Football, and Premier Lacrosse League. All four leagues used athlete-centric employer branding, which uses symbolic and instrumental employment information to signal commitment and involvement to athletes. Leagues also directed their employer branding to consumers. The findings suggest adding an employment dimension to theories of league brand architecture as well as reconsidering the audience for employer branding. Athlete-centric employer branding is a strategy for entering markets from a rival position and is likely to become more popular as public pressure on leagues increases.

Better Together? Examining the Impact of Official Secondary Ticketing Partnerships on Consumers’ Attitudes and Behaviors

To overcome the negative stigma due to their association with ticket fraud and price inflation, research has suggested secondary ticket market companies partner with professional sport leagues and teams. Moreover, such a partnership can increase revenues of the ticket market companies. However, additional research is needed to explore how official partnerships influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. Relevant findings clarify the mechanism through which official partnerships affect secondary ticket providers’ financial success and provide insight into consumers’ attitudes toward the ticket resale industry while informing the literature on the effectiveness of sponsorships. Th us, utilizing a multi-study design, the current research examines consumers’ perceptions of official partnerships and assesses their impact on purchase intentions. Also, given historical negative perceptions of the secondary ticket market, the current study investigates the mediating effects of perceived risk and the moderating effects of ticket price.

Developing and Validating a Venue Stimuli-Local Image Fit Scale

Few studies in sport marketing have examined the formative role of venue stimuli in affecting sport spectators. As such, the fi eld currently lacks methodological direction for dealing with venue stimuli as a means to understand the sport spectator experience. Research is needed to inform academics and practitioners about the appropriate use and potential outcomes of venue stimuli, particularly as they relate to destination image and local place. Given the notable lack of investigation on this topic, this study was exploratory in nature, with the purposes of developing and validating a sport venue stimuli and local image fi t (SIF) scale. The development process of the SIF scale comprised the six stages of scale development recommended by previous scholars. Th e scale developed in this study provides a reliable and valid instrument designed to assess the extent to which sensory stimuli in the sport venue are congruent with local image, thus offering practitioners and academics a means to understand how inimitable elements of the local culture enrich the venue experience when they become intertwined with spectators’ sensory experience.

Using Predictive Analytics to Measure Effectiveness of Social Media Engagement: A Digital Measurement Perspective

As social media becomes an increasingly dominant and important component of sport organizations’ marketing and communication strategies, effective marketing measurement techniques are required. Using social media data of a Division I football team, this research demonstrates how predictive analytics can be used as a marketing measurement tool. A support vector machine model was compared to a standard linear regression with respect to accurately predicting Facebook posts’ total interactions. The predictive model was used as (i) a planning tool to forecast future post engagement based on a variety of post characteristics and (ii) an evaluation tool of a marketing campaign by providing accurate benchmarks to compare against achieved engagement metrics. Results indicated the support vector machine model outperformed the standard linear regression and the marketing campaign was unsuccessful in achieving its goals. This research provides a foundation for future use of predictive analytics in social media and sport management scholarship

Delay Effect of Sport Media Consumption on Sport Consumers’ Subjective Well-Being: Moderating Role of Team Identification

Although empirical evidence indicates that sport media consumption has a positive effect on sport consumers’ subjective well-being (SWB), there is little information regarding how these enhancements in SWB change over time. Th e current research demonstrates that less identified sport consumers experienced greater levels of purpose in life when it was measured right after they recalled their past sport media consumption than when it was measured aft er a 15-minute delay. Meanwhile, the level of purpose in life was similar for highly identified sport consumers whether it was measured right aft er recalling past sport media consumption or aft er a 15-minute delay. On the basis of a moderated mediation test, we further demonstrate that highly identified sport consumers experience a greater degree of eudaimonic value aft er recalling past sport media consumption, which delays hedonic adaptation among them. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed as they relate to SWB and hedonic adaptation.

The Effect of Advertising on Sales and Brand Equity in Small Sport Businesses

Work in relationship marketing (RM) has implied that most large sport properties fail to enact sport relationship marketing (SRM) tactics that establish meaningful connections with consumers. Work in entrepreneurial marketing (EM) suggests that small businesses must innovate to implement elements of EM due to inherent resource constraints. Therefore, exploring SRM in an entrepreneurial, innovation-dependent context like small sport businesses (SSBs) may help explain why large sport fi rms struggle with SRM. Therefore, we examined whether SSBs’ marketing activities are generative of RM-specific outcomes and attempted to identify when and how these relationships can be augmented. Results from a dynamic panel estimator carried out on a sample of 332 SSBs over a 22-year span indicate that SSBs accrue only some of the benefits to be expected in the presence of successful SRM, highlighting the need to understand why sport properties of all sizes struggle to build meaningful relationships.

An Examination of Partitioned Pricing and the Influence of Culture and Familiarity on Sport Consumer Behavior

Prior research has examined consumer behavior toward partitioned pricing in various capacities, including types and number of surcharges and the use of dollars versus percentages. Given the fact partitioned pricing is not employed in every country, this investigation focused on consumer behavior toward this pricing strategy based on familiarity with partitioned pricing and cultural differences. An experimental design was implemented to examine South Korean and US sport consumers’ attitudes and behaviors related to ticket prices for a mega-sporting event. The findings showed all-inclusive pricing, in general, is preferred and culture does not significantly impact consumer behavior in this context. Additionally, familiarity moderated the relationship between cultural differences and consumer behavior. Consumers who were familiar with partitioned pricing were more attracted to partitioned pricing ticket offers and had higher purchase intentions compared to consumers who were less familiar with the practice. Implications of these findings are discussed along with directions for future research.

A Run for Their Money: Examining Changes in Runners’ Event-Related Expenditures

This study examines spending changes between the first and second year of participation in a mass participation sport event. Previous research has been inconclusive about anticipated spending changes from year one to year two, which may be attributed to the prominence of cross-sectional research designs. This study utilized a within-person, year-to-year design with a seven-year sample from a US running event (n = 247) to track spending from participants. Using a within-subject ANCOVA, expenditures across eight categories were analyzed as individuals progressed from first-time to repeat participant. Results show no significant differences across any of the spending categories. From the same time frame, a sample of one-off participants was generated (n = 6,257) to compare with the repeat participants, and significant differences emerged. These findings provide event organizers and community officials with information regarding the spending behavior of customers in their first and second years, allowing for a more tailored marketing approach.

Applying the Customer-Centric Model to the Investigation of Brand Communities of Professional Sports Teams

This study employs the customer-centric model of brand communities (including fan-fan, fan-management, fan-team, and fan-product relationships) to examine sports fans through the two lenses of team identification and fan loyalty and explore the effect of these constructs on fans’ behavior. The study used an online panel-based survey to collect data from 742 football fans. Also, the study utilized exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and nomological network analysis to establish the validity and reliability of a new scale of fan-centric relationships of team sports clubs (TSCs). Utilizing structural equation modelling, it was demonstrated that all four levels of fan relationships significantly predicted both team identification and fan loyalty. Furthermore, both team identification and fan loyalty significantly predicted intention to attend games. Identifying and classifying the different levels of fan-centric relationships may provide TSCs with the potential to strengthen fans’ identification with and loyalty to the team and, consequently, increase consumption.