Daniel S. Mason

What is the sports product and who buys it? The marketing of professional sports leagues

Keywords Consumer behaviour, Corporate ownership, Global marketing, Marketing strategy,Sponsorship, SportAbstract Professional sports have emerged as a lucrative business, with many opportunities forsports marketers to flourish. As this paper will show, professional sports teams unite to produce aleague product that, while initially is produced to provide entertainment for spectators, is now soldto four distinct groups: first, fans who support leagues by attending games, following games ontelevision and other media, and purchasing league- and team-related merchandise; second,television and other media companies which purchase the right to show games as a programmingoption; third, communities which build facilities and support local clubs; and fourth, corporationswhich support leagues and clubs by increasing gate moneys, purchasing teams outright, orproviding revenues through sponsorships or other associations. As a result, professional sportsleagues provide a unique environment for marketing decisions and processes to occur, in anumber of markets and at a number of levels, and should continue to be a growing segmentwithin the broader, global, entertainment industry.

Creating community networks: Can sporting events offer meaningful sources of social capital?

Hosting sporting events has emerged as a means for cities to reposition themselves in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Despite the widespread use of sporting events in urban development, the degree to which the local community fits into the plans of a citys pro-growth agenda has been questioned. None the less, events may provide opportunities for community development. Thus, this paper explores the potential that the hosting of sporting events has for the creation of community networks. Following an overview of sporting events and a discussion of forms of capital, we suggest that the construct of social capital might offer an important theoretical paradigm for understanding how sporting events can be used to build community networks and facilitate improved social relations.

Building a framework for issues management in sport through stakeholder theory

Sport managers are continually challenged by changing constituent environments as they work toward short‐term and long‐term organizational goals. At any given time, decision‐makers may have several issues that must be addressed in order to satisfy the demands of their organizations constituents. As such, managers need robust methods with which to analyze the organizations environment in order to develop strategic planning initiatives. This paper reviews the basic tenets of stakeholder theory and discusses/suggests applications to sports‐related issues, in an effort to show that stakeholder theory has descriptive and prescriptive value for sport management practitioners and academics alike. Stakeholder analysis can be used to identify stakeholders, stakeholder claims, motivations and relative importance, by evaluating stakeholders’ levels of power, legitimacy and urgency related to the issue (Mitchell, Agle & Wood, 1997). These attributes exist at varying levels as an issue develops and solutions are presented over time. In classifying stakeholders based on the attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency, and identifying their underlying needs and expectations, sport managers can more efficiently allocate resources. This paper provides a framework for issue analysis based on the tenets of stakeholder theory and issues management. It also proposes a research agenda to evaluate the framework, as well as considerations for managers wishing to use the framework. In doing so, stakeholder theory allows for new insight into issues management, from both research and practical perspectives.

A Stakeholder approach to Understanding Economic Development Decision Making: Public Subsidies for Professional Sport Facilities

To analyze the politics of economic development decision making through focusing on participants and their interests, this article details a model of stakeholder analysis developed within organization studies by Mitchell, Agle, and Wood for use among policy makers and researchers. Demonstrating the model through the issue of subsidies for the construction of major league sports facilities, a stakeholder map is created to assess the constituent environment based on the degree to which stakeholders possess attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency.With this map, various situational factors are assessed to demonstrate the utility of stakeholder analysis for decision makers to strategically manage constituent groups and to explain case outcomes and the manner in which policies are determined. Although the findings suggest that decision makers should focus their resources on stakeholders possessing all three attributes, monitoring the environment is essential to identify potential threats and opportunities.

An exploratory study of influences on public opinion towards alcohol and tobacco sponsorship of sporting events

The marketing of alcohol and tobacco products and their related public policy implications have become controversial issues worldwide, due mainly to health‐related issues. Uses a telephone survey methodology to compare attitudes toward Olympic sponsorship by a leading US brewer with general attitudes toward the use of sports sponsorship to promote tobacco products. Results suggest that respondents have significantly different attitudes towards the two product categories and their use of sponsorship, accepting more readily the use of the Olympics to promote beer. Respondents’ self‐interest is also found to significantly affect the level of acceptance for the use of sport to promote alcohol or tobacco products, although in slightly different ways. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research, along with their managerial implications.

Social Responsibility and the Competitive Bid Process for Major Sporting Events

The 2016 Summer Olympic Games1 bids were selected as a case study to explore how the focus on social responsibility (CSR) and community development (CD) differs in traditional versus nontraditional bid cities. We employed a media framing methodology to examine how the bids were represented through media and articulated by various stakeholders. Of specific interest was the finding that the discourse surrounding the Rio de Janeiro bid put a greater focus on the capability of sport to reach out to disadvantaged populations and create balance within the global economy. The results from this study will provide insights into how the global media has framed megaevent bids from nontraditional cities, and the social and economic benefits event proponents argue can be accrued from hosting.

Heritage, sport tourism and Canadian junior hockey: nostalgia for social experience or sport place?

Abstract North American cities, working with their respective sports franchises, have built new facilities which have deliberately embraced romanticized notions of their sporting pasts. In this instance, the nostalgia experience is tied closely to the facility itself. However, not all sports facilities have embraced heritage elements in their design and used heritage as a vehicle for nostalgia sport tourism. Facilities built for major junior hockey in Canada have tended more toward functionality, with an absence of nostalgia from the place-experience of attendees. This article reviews the operations of junior hockey and its trends of arena construction over the past decade, in order to determine why this sport has not explicitly sought to use its arenas for nostalgia tourism development purposes. It is argued that nostalgia for junior hockey is reflected in nostalgia for social experience (the act of attending a game) and not nostalgia for sport place or artefact (the hockey arena itself). However, nostalgia for sport place does exist for hockey when considering the sport as part of Canadian identity, where the manifestation of nostalgia for hockey fans takes the game back to its outdoor roots.

“Get the Puck Outta Here!” Media Transnationalism and Canadian Identity

In 1994, Fox television entered into a network broadcasting agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL). To make hockey more viewer friendly for new audiences in underexploited U.S. media markets, the Fox Trax puck debuted during the 1996 NHL All-Star Game. The puck enjoyed a brief and controversial existence and was widely vilified by established hockey fans. More specifically, response to the puck in Canada was framed within a broader discourse that Jackson described as a “crisis of identity,” as the Fox Trax puck became a vehicle to articulate Canadian concerns related to the economic and cultural influence of the United States. This article reviews the design and implementation of the puck, the conditions relating hockey to Canadian identity, and the reaction the puck engendered in popular media coverage. In doing so, reaction to the Fox Trax puck provides an example of the contestation of global-local relations in a sporting context.

Newspaper Framing and Stadium Subsidization

Public subsidies continue to be used to support the construction of stadium facilities for major league sports teams in North America. Within this context, the local newspaper, as a beneficiary of pro-growth development strategies, becomes a platform for the debate surrounding the utility of public subsidization. This article examines local newspaper discourse surrounding 1984 and 1990 referenda in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, and identifies four stadium subsidy frames: (a) economic development, (b) civic status, (c) civic priorities, and (d) financing. Consistent with previous research, the local newspaper was a proponent of the stadium subsidy in both cases. Another key finding relates to the presence of frame coupling in the 1990 debate. This suggests the emergence of a dynamic discourse that fused tangible and intangible stadium subsidy arguments.

Willingness to Pay for Amateur Sport and Recreation Programs

A Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) survey in Alberta, Canada allows estimation of the household willingness to pay (WTP) for enhancements in the province’s extensive sport and recreation programs. The estimated annual WTP of