Sport Management

The concept of value and its relationship to service quality, satisfaction and behavioural intentions was studied in a sample of 218 sports and leisure centre customers. Using structural equation modelling, this study focused on the role that value may play as a potentially significant mediating variable in the service quality → satisfaction → behavioural intentions chain. Findings indicated that value appears to play an important mediating role in satisfaction judgments of customers. This exploratory study is a step towards developing more comprehensive models to assist managers of sports and leisure centres to better understand the key drivers of satisfaction and customers’ future purchase or visitation intentions.

KEY WORDS: sport organisations, volunteers, human resource management Contemporary business challenges and globalisation pressures have had a significant impact on the human resource management (HRM) practices of many organisations. Whilst the adoption of more sophisticated, complex and strategic management systems is well documented in the general HR literature, organisations that operate with both paid and volunteer human resources have been virtually ignored by scholars. In this paper we report on a study on the adoption of HRM practices by state sport organisations in New South Wales, Australia. Our results indicate that despite pressures to become more strategic in their people management, only a minority of these sport organisations have formal HRM systems. We also found differences between the HRM practices used with paid employees and volunteers particularly in organisations with formal HR policies. Research and practical implications for HRM in sport organisations are discussed as well as future challenges Sport Management Review, 2006, 9, 229-251

The effect of destination advertising and sport event media (advertising and telecast) were compared experimentally on nine dimensions of destination image and on intention to visit the host destination. Participants' images of Australia's Gold Coast were collected in the United States (long-haul market) and New Zealand (short-haul market) following exposure to one of eight media conditions. The event telecast, event advertising, and destination advertising each affected different dimensions of destination image. There was a wider array of effects in the American market than in the New Zealand market. Some effects of each form of media were negative, with event media having a negative impact on participants' image of the destination's natural environment. Destination image was significantly related to intention to visit the host destination, but the dimensions that affected intention to visit were different for the two countries. Among the New Zealand sample, the dim...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted considerable interest in the management discipline, but has rarely been evaluated and explored in the sports management research arena. In evaluating the sports, management and marketing literature, this article considers the role of CSR in professional football. It argues that an increased awareness and integration of CSR into the football business fosters the competitiveness of the game and creates additional value for its stakeholders. The article proposes a conceptual model which outlines the agency role of football in order to create political, cultural, humanitarian and reassurance value. Empirical evidence supporting the model is applied based on case studies from four key countries that currently dominate the shaping of CSR discussion and are vital for the game itself: England, Germany, Japan and the US. The article’s aim is to encourage sports management to see CSR as an opportunity-driven concept, which can assist in achieving better strategic direction, and outlines areas where future research can improve sport management’s appreciation of this rapidly more important topic.

Electronic sports, cybersports, gaming, competitive computer gaming,
and virtual sports are all synonyms for the term eSports.
Regardless of the term used, eSports is now becoming more
accepted as a sport and gamers are being identified as athletes within
society today. eSports has even infiltrated higher education in the
form of an intercollegiate athletic sport, as two university athletic
departments have made eSports an official varsity sport where scholarships
are provided to collegiate eSports athletes. Thus, the intertwining
of eSports and university athletics brings into question
whether eSports should be considered sport by broader society.
This article provides a brief history of eSports, a further developed
definition of eSports, and a comparison of eSports to traditional
philosophical and sociological definitions of sport. The purpose of
this article is to provoke thought on the academically accepted
definitions of sport and debate whether eSports should be considered
a sport. Attention will be given to the following components of
sport: play, organization, competition, skill, physicality, broad following,
and institutionalization.

Sponsorship studies have generally been focused on attitudinal measures of fan loyalty to understand the reactions to abstract sponsors. This study examines the relationships between both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty with sponsorship awareness, attitude toward two actual sponsors, and purchase intentions. Data were collected among fans of a professional soccer team, and the results of a structural equation model provide evidence that attitudinal loyalty impacts the attitude toward both sponsors and purchase intentions. Behavioral loyalty influences sponsorship awareness, and impacts differently the attitude and purchase intentions toward each sponsor. Sponsorship awareness influences significantly the attitude toward both sponsors, while the attitude toward the sponsor was the strongest predictor of purchase intentions. These findings highlight the importance of examining actual sponsors and suggest managerial implications, such as the need for sponsors to help attract fans to the stadium and to design additional activation strategies to improve sponsorship value.

The ability to draw attendees to performances is vital to the success of a sport organisation.  As a result, sport managers and academics attempt to investigate motivations that drive decisions to attend events.  In order to make predictions, academic demands have lead to the proliferation of constructs to capture a wide variety of motives while practitioners demand shorter scales to increase efficiency.  The purpose of this research is to provide a hybrid approach to provide a parsimonious measuring tool of motives for sport event attendance.  Five facets of motivation are proposed: Socialisation, Performance, Excitement, Esteem and Diversion (SPEED) and tested in two studies.  The first study (N=333) was conducted at a sport event, while the second study (N=909) was administered to the general population using multiple sports.  Results suggest that the SPEED facets show promise as valuable measures of sport consumers’ motivation to attend events.  The scale is concise and demonstrates validity, as well as the ability to predict spectator behaviour and intentions.

The Internet has become a significant tool for sport marketing. Professional sport teams' Web sites are now an important component of their marketing mix; yet, little is know about users' consumption motives for Web sites, particularly sport teams' Web sites. The purpose of this study was to develop a valid, reliable instrument to measure motivation for sport online consumption. The Motivation Scale for Sport Online Consumption (MSSOC) was developed in three phases. A literature review identified 102 potential motives in Phase 1. A second, qualitative phase refined and classified the potential item pool, resulting in 67 items. Exploratory factor analysis (N = 175) was used to generate a 10-factor, 40-item scale. The revised instrument was used in a second study (N = 371). Structural equation modeling was used to confirm the factor structure of the instrument and to reduce each subscale to 3 items. The final scale consisted of 10 dimensions of motivation: fanship, interpersonal communication, technical knowledge, fan expression, entertainment, economic, pass time, information, escape, and support. Subscale internal consistency ranged from .77 to .90. All 10 dimensions were positively correlated with Web commitment (.20 < r 2 < .63), providing evidence of convergent validity. Potential uses of the scale are discussed.

This study proposes a multiple mediation model to analyze the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. The study's contribution to the literature is to examine, empirically, the main antecedents and determinants of this endogenous variable in greater depth. Thus, the research fills a gap in the literature through its analysis of the mediating role of perceived switching costs and the perceived lack of attractiveness of alternative offerings. This study applies variance-based structural equation modeling via partial least squares to a sample of 785 customers from 74 insurance companies in the service sector. The results show that perceived switching coststo a greater extentand the perceived lack of attractiveness of alternative offeringsto a lesser extentare significant mediators in the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.

Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) matter because they are used as the benchmark against which people determine who is a leader and who is not. This assessment informs their behavioral responses. People are thought to have a superordinate-level ILT representing their prototypical mental model of leadership and a series of basic-level ILTs. Each of these represents how people conceptualize leadership in particular domains (e.g., sport, politics, and popular culture). In this study, the authors generate the structures of basic-level sport management ILTs for women and men who are about to enter this industry. These form the baseline from which socialization to work, organizational cultures, and the sport management industry begins. The ILTs of women entering sport management careers have a 35-item, 6-factor structure (Sensitivity, Knowledgeable, Physical Attractiveness, Inspirational, Dedication, and Focused), whereas men entering the industry have a 32-item, 7-factor structure (Sensitivity, Dedication, Physical Attractiveness, Focused, Creativity, Inspirational, Courageous). The resulting sport management ILT profiles differ from superordinate ones by emphasizing physical and vitality attributes, incorporating emotional elements, and by eschewing antiprototypical elements. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications for leadership research in sport management.

The purpose of this study was to examine Olympic athletes’ self-presentation on Instagram, a social media outlet on which users post photographs as their primary communication mechanism, in order to develop an understanding of the ways in which athletes use this medium as a communication and marketing tool to build their personal brand. Additionally, this research sought to understand whether differences existed between the utilisation of Instagram by male and female athletes. Drawing on Goffman's (1959) theory of self-presentation, this study examined eight purposively selected Olympic athletes’ Instagram photos. Findings revealed similarities to previous research on athletes’ use of written social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, as the majority of photos posted by athletes were personal in nature, thus reflecting backstage performance strategies according to self-presentation theory. The results indicated that female athletes were more likely to share photos of themselves and photos taken in private settings, but male athletes who posted a wider variety of photos encouraged greater engagement from their followers. Personal brand management implications for athletes and sport organisations are examined in greater detail in the discussion.

In the sport management literature, limited attention has been devoted to the conceptualization and measurement of fan engagement. Two quantitative studies were completed to validate the proposed fan-engagement scale composed of three defining elements (management cooperation, prosocial behavior, and performance tolerance). The results from Study 1 provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the threefactor model of fan engagement. In Study 2, we assess nomological validity by examining the antecedents and consequences of fan engagement and found that team identification and basking in reflected glory played a particularly important role in increasing the three dimensions of fan engagement. Furthermore, the results indicate that performance tolerance has a positive effect on purchase intention. These findings highlight the importance of the sequential relationships between team identification, performance tolerance, and purchase intention.

The field of elite athlete development has been the subject of significant research. Studies have predominantly examined the critical success factors (CSF) of elite performances from a sport science perspective (e.g., Joyner, 1993;, or comparisons of countries and their approach to elite development (e.g., . Despite this extensive focus on elite development systems and CSFs there is a dearth of organisational studies examining how national sporting organisations (NSOs), the organisations responsible for delivering success at the elite level, intend to and/or deliver that success. As a result, developing elite athletes is predominately based on fulfilling athletes' needs with a rather scant appreciation of how NSOs play a part in that process. Consequently, this study is guided by the following questions. How do NSOs perceive elite athlete development and what do they think is involved in that process? These questions combined with the exploratory nature of the study guided the open and theoretical coding of data.

This study applies the multiple constituency model of organisational effectiveness to a sample of Hellenic national sports organisations (NSOs). A 33-item inventory of effectiveness was developed and tested to reflect the common effectiveness-related perceptions of six constituent groups: board members, paid administrative staff, national coaches, elite athletes, international officials, and scientific consultants. Four hundred and twentythree respondents from 20 NSOs participated in the study. Factor analysis resulted in the extraction of five composite effectiveness variables: calibre of the board and external liaisons, interest in athletes, internal procedures, long-term planning, and sport science support. The multivariate and univariate tests of variance revealed that athletes, coaches and scientific staff are the least satisfied groups, while international officials and board members produce the most favourable ratings of effectiveness. Results suggest the value of using a multiple constituency approach when examining the effectiveness of national sports organisations.

Recently, many athletes have been expanding their influence beyond their sport by getting involved in a variety of social activities and businesses. In light of modern media culture, those athletes are considered ''a social sign, carrying cultural meanings and ideological values, which express the intimacies of individual personality, inviting desire and identification; an emblem of national celebrity, founded on the body, fashion and personal style'' (Gledhill, 1991, p. xiii). The concept of 'athlete brand' has emerged from their multi-functional and multi-platform nature. Athletes are considered not only as vehicles for advertisements or product endorsement, but also as cultural products that can be sold as ''brands'' (Gilchrist, 2005). In fact, there are numerous sport agencies currently in existence that provide a vast range of client level services. In this highly competitive industry, managing brands for athletes is becoming an essential task for agents (IBIS World Industry reports, 2008). For example, IMG, the world's largest sport agency announced their mission statement as ''Today, we help hundreds of elite athletes, coaches, industry executives and prestigious sports organizations maximize their earnings potential and build strong personal brands'' (IMG, n.d.). The brand management for athletes has grown in importance because the concept of branding is well suited for athletes as products. Previous branding studies have documented positive consequences of successful branding such as: influencing the probability of brand choice, willingness to pay premium price, marketing communication effectiveness, and promotion of positive word of mouth (Aaker, 1996; Berry, 2000; Keller, 1993; Rein, Kotler, & Shields, 2006a). These benefits are also highly applicable to individual athletes, with well-branded athletes attaining price premiums on their salary, transfer fees, contract monies, and the ability to maintain fan support even when their performance has declined (Gladden & Funk, 2001). Well-branded athletes who carry symbolic messages can attract companies seeking effective endorsers. Furthermore, the Sport Management Review xxx (2013) xxx-xxx

This study investigated how boards of national sport organizations might enhance their strategic capability. Utilizing an action research method and focusing on the case of New Zealand Football (soccer), findings established that greater board involvement in strategy advanced the board's ability to perform its strategic function. Further findings determined the importance of shared leadership between the board and the CEO, the complex interplay in balancing this relationship and the need to integrate strategy into board processes.

In the past decade, The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) has emerged as the fastest growing spectator sport in the United States. The increase in popularity is in part due to the expanded venues and media coverage made possible by multimillion dollar sponsorships, as well as NASCAR diversity promotions. Sponsoring companies have partnerships with drivers, teams, and facilities. With the magnitude of investment and subsequent visibility, it is important to sponsoring corporations to better understand the tendencies of fans to purchase their products. This study examined the conscious purchasing habits of fans towards products that sponsor NASCAR in relation to the frequency of exposure to NASCAR. The frequency of exposure to NASCAR was assessed by how often respondents followed NASCAR on television, the radio or in physical attendance. The Social Identity Theory guided the research as it provided insight into the probability that someone will look for opportunities to act in a way that agrees with the identity of the group. A random sample of NASCAR event attendees (n=128) completed a questionnaire, focused on their purchasing habits and exposure to NASCAR. Correlation analysis tested the hypotheses. Results indicated positive relationships between conscious purchasing habits of products that sponsor NASCAR and television (r=.44), radio (r=.35) and physical attendance (r=.35). Similar research studies could be completed by sponsoring corporations to justify their investment in NASCAR.

Competing at major sport events represents a significant experience for elite athletes. Research has determined that event services can affect athlete satisfaction, yet little is known about any influence on athlete performances. This study adapted the lens of transformative service research to examine, through survey research, the athletes’ perceptions of the impact that the service environment of the Commonwealth Games 2018 on the Gold Coast in Australia had on their satisfaction and subsequent performance. The results from 430 athlete surveys showed the significant relationships between service environment factors and athlete satisfaction and the indirect effects of the service environment on performance, through satisfaction. Thus, satisfaction acts as a mediator between the service environment and athlete performance. The effects of the service environment on athlete satisfaction and performance highlight the areas for future development across the athletes’ experience, from ac...

The article proposes a conceptual model to examine the relationships between service attributes, brand associations, customer satisfaction, commitment, price of membership, and intention to repurchase in a fitness club. The results show that the services offered by the club, its security, and the promoted image of the club impact positively on satisfaction. The customer relations at the club, customer commitment, and their frequency of weekly attendance have a positive direct effect on intention to repurchase. Perceived price has a negative direct influence. Finally, the research showed that overall satisfaction has a slight positive impact on frequency of attendance. These findings create a paradox for managers of health and fitness organizations who will have to balance the need to increase frequency of attendance to positively impact on intention to repurchase with the need to deliver the service attributes that affect satisfaction and intention to repurchase at high quality level.

The aim of this article was to develop a theoretical framework to aid the current understanding of social change practice. Drawing on concepts from institutional theory, the authors proposed and applied a theoretical framework to investigate social change at the intersection of gender and sexuality inclusion in Australian cricket. Qualitative techniques (interviews and document analyses) were utilized to investigate the trajectory of lesbian inclusion in Australian cricket over time. Starting from the perspective that institutional arrangements can be exclusionary (or biased) toward certain groups in society, this research investigated how the actions of institutional entrepreneurs can create more inclusive institutional arrangements. Theoretical and practical implications for future research are discussed.

By integrating social identity theory with brand personality, the authors test a model of how perceptions of human brands affect consumer's level of cognitive identification. The findings suggest that consumers view athletes as human brands with unique personalities. Additional findings demonstrate that athlete prestige and distinctiveness leads to the evaluation of athlete identification. Once consumers identified with the athlete, they were more likely to feel an emotional attachment to the athlete, identify with the athlete's team, purchase team-related paraphernalia and increase their team-related viewership habits. The findings extend previous research on human brands and brand personalities in sports. Marketers can use the information gleaned from this study to better promote products that are closely associated with well-recognized and attractive athletes, thereby increasing consumer retail spending. In addition, the findings offer new insights to sports marketers seeking to increase team-related spectatorship by promoting the image of easily recognizable athletes.

The Internet website has become an effective marketing vehicle for sport organizations. The purpose of this study was to examine theoretical relationships between key variables of online sport consumption behavior such as sport consumers’ perceptions of sport website quality, satisfaction, and behavioral loyalty to the websites. In addition, the mediating effect of e-satisfaction between website quality and e-loyalty was examined. The results of data analyses using structural equation model tests revealed that loyalty to a sport team’s website was more likely to occur as sport fans developed positive perceptions and satisfaction with the website. The results also suggested that consumer e-satisfaction is an important mediating variable between sport website quality and e-loyalty.

Athletes often use social media to help build their personal brand, communicate with stakeholders, and promote endorsements. Research suggests that athletes who elicit greater engagement on social media are more valuable to endorse brands than those who simply have a large number of followers. From a regulatory perspective, it is important for athlete endorsers to disclose the commercial nature of sponsored posts. Therefore, based on social influence theory (SIT), the purpose of this study was to examine Olympic athletes' follower engagement on social media with a focus on brand mentions and disclosures of the relationships. Utilizing a content analysis of 190 US Olympic athletes' tweets during the 2018 PyeongChang Games, findings revealed statistically significant differences in follower engagement based on the athlete's gender. Non-brand-related posts received statistically significant greater engagement than brand-related posts, and only 12.90% of the posts that mentioned a brand disclosed a brand relationship. Implications and future research also are discussed.

The fitness sector is a growing industry worldwide. Its continued implementation of business models makes it an attractive market to study. Precisely, the low-cost model has become popular in countries such as Spain for which the study of variables that could influence one of the biggest problems in this industry, customer loyalty is of interest to investigators. Therefore, this work has as its objective to analyze possible differences between service convenience, perceived value, and satisfaction with the characteristics of clients of low-cost fitness center, and to determine if there is a relationship with client loyalty. The sample consisted of 763 clients (381 women and 382 men). A questionnaire to measures the service convenience, perceived value, satisfaction, and future behavior intentions or loyalty was adopted. Scales from similar studies were implemented these being valid and reliable instruments. The study offers a descriptives results, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, t-Student, ANOVA, and multiple linear regression. Results demonstrate significant differences with service convenience for gender, age, and length of time it takes to commute to the fitness center. Furthermore, there was a positive relationship among all variables, with loyalty resulting as the strongest relationship followed by satisfaction then service convenience. The findings of this study brings an understanding regarding the reality of the low-cost fitness center consumer which could possibly be extrapolated to other countries with an emerging fitness industry.

National governing bodies (NGB) of sport are not-for-profit organisations that typically receive less mainstream media coverage and have much smaller marketing budgets than mainstream professional sports. Therefore, they must seek alternative methods from mainstream media and traditional marketing in order to increase brand awareness and reach fans and stakeholders. While all sport organisations stand poised to benefit from social media, NGBs seem to be a segment of the sport industry uniquely positioned to capitalise on social media's benefits. Because there is currently no known literature on NGBs’ use of social media, this study examined the role that social media plays within NGBs in the United States including employees’ acceptance of social media, motivations to use social media, and the organisation's current usage of social media. An online survey was distributed to NGB employees in the spring of 2012, and results revealed that contrary to studies on other sport organisations, NGB employees reported high levels of acceptance and motivation to use social media regardless of demographic factors. Additionally, NGBs seemed to use social media as a communications tool to a greater degree than as a marketing tool. Implications for international and niche sport organisations are presented in the conclusion.

Indigenous worldviews and scholarship are underrepresented and underdeveloped in sport for development and wider sport management spaces. Given many sport for social change initiatives target Indigenous populations, this is concerning. By adopting a Kaupapa Māori approach, a strengths-based stance, and working together with two plus-sport and sport-plus cases from provincial and national New Zealand rugby settings: the Taranaki Rugby Football Union’s and Feats’ Pae Tawhiti (seek distant horizons) Māori and Pasifika Rugby Academy and the E Tū Toa (stand strong), hei tū he rangatira (become a leader) Māori Rugby Development camps, the authors provide an illustration of Indigenous theory–practice. They argue sport for social change practices that focus on Indigenous peoples would be greatly improved if underpinned by the principles of perspective, privilege, politics, protection, and people. Thus, any sport for social change praxis seeking to partner with Indigenous communities ought t...

Sport governance research is growing in volume and routinely highlights the tension between volunteers and paid professionals in relation to shared leadership, board motivations, and board structures and performance. Using governance as the lens through which progress is viewed, this paper demonstrates sport's transition from an amateur, volunteer-driven pastime to a more business-like sector. Empirically derived data, from a larger action research study examining the strategic capability of New Zealand national sport organisation boards, are integrated with prior research and theoretical developments to exemplify the state of sport governance theory and the sector generally. Outcomes from the review of sport governance research, combined with a selection of results from the study of strategic capability, highlight the challenges associated with volunteer board engagement, given the increasing demands for strategic thinking and action, while also balancing this task with the conformance, policy and operation roles.

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between spectators' emotions, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions at football games. A survey was conducted among spectators of the top Portuguese professional football league during eight games (n0466). The sport emotion questionnaire was used to assess spectators' emotions and the results gathered from a structural equation model suggest that analysis of specific emotions is crucial to understand spectators' responses. Findings provide evidence that only the emotion of joy has a positive direct effect on satisfaction, as well as an indirect effect on behavioural intentions, via satisfaction. In turn, dejection has a negative direct effect on behavioural intentions, while satisfaction positively influences behavioural intentions. These results suggest managerial implications, such as the need to improve stadium atmosphere and social facilitation in order to provide an enjoyable overall experience to the spectators, and contribute to overall spectator satisfaction and positive behavioural intentions.

The goal of this study is to determine what factors effect the attractiveness of both national football leagues and the Champions League from the perspective of fans, and how these factors are viewed by fans of clubs at the top and bottom of the league table. This is of interest as there are differences between the financial resources available to the clubs and leagues. Based on the literature on sport consumer behaviour, we propose that four determinants are relevant to the league’s attractiveness: stadium atmosphere, international success of the clubs, uniqueness of dominating clubs and perceived competitive balance. A total of 1,404 committed fans of 12 selected football teams from the UK Premier League and German Bundesliga participated in the study. The research model was tested using PLS. The results show that the determinants significantly impact perceived attractiveness, and that even fans of financially privileged and successful clubs concede that perceived competitive balance is necessary for the attractiveness to be maintained.

Destinations use sport events to attract participants and spectators, who then hold perceptions of both the sport event and destination. This research aimed to a) understand how active sport tourists perceive the meaning of a sport event experience and b) develop a scale for that meaning. Both aims are studied in a post trip context as evaluative research. Two focus groups were used to understand the meaning of the sport event experience among active sport tourists. Results from the focus groups suggest participants attribute meanings related to organizational, environmental, physical, social, and emotional aspects of the sport event experience. Next, semantic differential items were developed to measure the meaning of a sport event experience in the post trip phase. The items were tested with two different sport event participant samples using surveys. A uni-dimensionsal scale of 11 semantic differential items emerged. These items provide a measure for the evaluative meaning of a s...

This is the first text that encompasses the vast, varied, and exciting field of sport communication. Using communication theory and sport literature, and drawing on the authors’ own rich experiences as sport communication professionals, Strategic Sport Communication introduces readers to all aspects of the sport communication industry and how each is integral to the management, marketing, and operational goals of sport organizations at all levels. Using their Strategic Sport Communication Model (SSCM), the authors outline the process of sport communication and categorize its various aspects into three major components: personal and organizational communication, sport mass media, and sport communication services and support. The SSCM provides the first conception of sport communication as a distinct discipline and gives readers a thorough understanding of sport communicaton and its impact in the world of sport. Students will explore the many careers in the industry and discover how sport organizations can use their knowledge for greater success.

Sport for development (SFD) research and practice has become more critically examined recently, with many scholars calling for better understanding of how and why sport might contribute to the global development movement. Developing and refining theoretical approaches is key to unpacking the complexities of SFD. Yet, theory development in SFD is still relatively young and often relies on oversimplified theory of change models. In this article, the authors propose a new theoretical approach, drawing upon the capabilities approach and critical feminist perspectives. The authors contend that the capabilities approach is effective in challenging neoliberal ideologies and examining a range of factors that influence people’s lived experiences. They have woven a “gender lens” across the capabilities approach framework, as feminist perspectives are often overlooked, subjugated, or misunderstood. The authors also provide an adaptable diagrammatic model to support researchers and practitioner...

The aims of this study were to understand issues that climate change poses for major Australian sport stadia and the organizations that manage them, and any organizational responses to such issues. Like climate-dependent agriculture and tourism, the sport sector is potentially vulnerable to climate change impacts, yet has largely been overlooked in empirical research. The results reveal four primary climate change issues: organizational uncertainty; greater management complexity and cost risks associated with water and energy resources, and waste outputs. No revenue opportunities were evident. The results demonstrate that while most physical impacts are manageable, the primacy of commercial and operational imperatives determine organizational responses ahead of government climate policy, and any direct climate “signal” to adapt. Ten factors shape three organizational responses that we have typed using Berkhout’s [2012] adaptation framework. The results challenge the assumption that climate change impacts and responses are limited to non-sport and leisure industries.

This paper adopts a process perspective on sport entrepreneurship in the fitness industry, utilizing phenomenological inquiry into the entrepreneurial lives of eleven fitness entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to reveal how fitness entrepreneurs strategize and pursue competitive advantage in a non-traditional industry. Our findings show that while fitness entrepreneurs share many similarities with non-sport entrepreneurs, fitness entrepreneurs are affected by a variety of factors attributable to working in a nonconventional industry. The present study contributes to the emerging theoretical discussions surrounding the concept of sport entrepreneurship and highlights the value of process perspectives when examining entrepreneurial activities. No empirical studies thus far exist that seek to illuminate the exact nature of individual sport entrepreneurship. This study is a first step in developing testable hypotheses and to contrast sport entrepreneurship to non-sport entrepreneurship. Additionally, our research provides fitness entrepreneurs in the industry with information on what they may face when pursuing their own business objectives. Finally, sport management and entrepreneurship curricula can be enhanced based on information gathered in this study. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand.

How professional team-based sport organizations can optimize their e-service platform and manage their brand in an increasingly multichannel marketing environment is a critical issue. This study examines how sports consumers' (i.e., fans') perceptions of e-service quality, brand strength, and image congruency between the sport brands' offline image and online image affects the development of consumers' trust in the team's website. In addition, the study explores the role of team website trust in developing team website loyalty, as well the role of loyalty in actual purchase frequency from the teams' website. Data were collected via an online survey of sports consumers of e-services delivered by professional sport teams. The results indicate that sport team brand strength, followed by teams website e-service quality and brand image congruency between the teams online and offline activity are significant determinants of trust in the teams' website, with online trust strongly influencing website loyalty intentions.