Sports Management Commons^™

Southeastern Conference (Sec) International Student-Athlete (Isa) Career Transitions - A Cultural Intelligence (Cq) Perspective, Tsu-Lin Yeh

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigated international student-athletes’ (ISAs’) transition experiences of being recruited for, matriculating in, and then leaving high-performance and commercialized Southeastern Conference (SEC) institutions. Adopting the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) theory, this dissertation specifically examined how the four CQ elements (metacognition CQ, cognition CQ, motivation CQ, and behavior CQ) existed in an ISA’s transition process. CQ explains a person’s capability for performing well in culturally diverse environments (Fang et al., 2018). Traditional CQ studies have been utilized to manage international organizations’ diversity and inclusion (Triandis, 2006), particularly regarding employee retention, career transition and development (Mangla, 2021). However, although sports management is …

Platform Of Growth: An Analysis Of Earnings And Social Media Engagement Among Esports Athletes, Colleen Marie Dibble

Theses and Dissertations

Esports consists of online gaming, cyber sport, and virtual sport in a highly competitive environment. The industry has grown tremendously over the last 30 years (Leroux-Parra, 2020). Professional esports competitions are often now contested with a large scale, global audience, and millions of dollars potentially at stake in some competitions. Hundreds of esports athletes earn a living from the multi-billion-dollar esports industry. In addition to players earning salaries and prize pool money in a professional setting, many colleges have offered scholarships to enrolled students and have begun to offer esports-related curriculums (Dominguez, 2022). Networks such as ABC, ESPN, and TBS …

Analyzing The Impact Of Salary Discrepancies Between Professional Sports Organizations, Benjamin R. Garner

Senior Theses

While it has long been theorized by sports fans that an organization’s salary influences the success of the team, this thesis will look to examine if the supposed correlation is accurate. This thesis compiles existing research regarding current salary cap systems in American professional sports leagues and examines league-wide methods employed to maintain competitive balance. The discussion then shifts to consider the additional governing factors that determine organizational success, such as team cohesion, the rise in international players, and the increased player movement via free agency. The research then shifts to examine two specific professional sports leagues: Major League Baseball …

An Examination Of Celebrity Product Involvement And Endorsement Effectiveness, Eric Nichols

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate celebrity product involvement and its relationship with endorsement effectiveness. Due to the increased leverage in creating their own brands, celebrity athletes are increasingly engaging in entrepreneurial endeavors such as collaborations on product development, an investment relationship, and outright ownership and creation of a brand or product. This paper also studied the extent which parasocial interactions and athlete identification may moderate endorsement effectiveness in the form of brand attitudes as well as what role product congruence may play.

Participants were recruited to complete an online survey that exposed them to manipulations of narrative …

“No Tits In The Pits!”: An Exploratory Analysis Of The Experiences Of Female Decision Makers In Motorsports In The United States, Alexia Pedo Lopes

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the lived experiences of sixteen women who have decision-making roles in motorsports in the United States. The purpose was to shed light on the experiences of women who broke the glass ceiling in this unexplored male-dominated industry (Glass & Cook, 2016). The challenges these women encountered along with the mechanisms they employed to navigate those, and finally their motivation to continue pursuing a career in this industry, were assessed via in-depth semi-structured interviews and then the data was analyzed following a constant comparison thematic analysis. Challenges and coping mechanisms were classified according to the four levels, namely …

The Impact Of Transfer Spending In Expediting Improvement Of On-Field Performance Of English Premier League Clubs, Brendan Merten

Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes transfer spending and performance data from English Premier League football clubs participating in the 1992-2021 seasons of the English Premier League using regression analysis and Granger causality analysis. The analysis attempts to extend existing research that indicates a significant causal relationship between transfer spending and performance. I then speak to the sustainability of transfer spending necessary to improve performance over a specified length of time. Further discussion considers implications of Financial Fair Play regulations and explores relevant case studies of Blackburn Rovers, Manchester City, Chelsea, Leicester City, and Newcastle United.

Mobile Sports Gambling In South Carolina, Drew Pechulonis

Senior Theses

After the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), sports betting has expanded across the country at a rapid pace. As the sports gambling industry continues to grow, states that have not passed legislation are left wondering whether legalization would benefit their constituents.

The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility and consequences of legalizing mobile sports gambling in the state of South Carolina. This study can inform state leaders on how to implement mobile sports gambling in the state as well as the positive and negative repercussions that would follow legislation. As …

Does The Tendency Of Loss Aversion Depend On The Level Of Competition? Evidence From Multilevel Esports Tournaments, Zeqing Mao

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relationships between the level of experience, the magnitude of payoffs, and the significance of loss aversion within the context of esports. In the behavioral economics literature, loss aversion describes why individuals prefer avoiding losses to obtaining equivalent gains depending on a reference point. While previous studies predominantly capitalize on experimental methods to examine how the significance of loss aversion is affected by market experience and payoff magnitude, there is also a growing body of research that examines the behavioral properties of loss aversion outside laboratory environments, with sport being one of the most utilized settings. This …

The Female Sports Fan Experience: How Women Consume Sports And How Sports Are Marketed To Women, Natalie Elser

Senior Theses

This study analyzes the growing subsection of female sports fans. Through a review of scholarly research articles, this study examines female sports fan motivations and behaviors and how they differ from the classic male sports fan. Additionally, this study aims to investigate how sports marketing executives try to appeal to women as sports consumers and how these practices have begun to change in recent years. This study will provide a summary of existing research on female sports fans along with a review of marketing initiatives used to engage female sports fans.

An Examination Of Sport Ticket Price Acceptability And Surcharge Transparency In Partitioned Pricing, Misun Won

Theses and Dissertations

There has been a recent price policy change in the sport industry that ticket resale companies attempted to reveal any additional fees upfront to increase price transparency and protect consumers in the marketplace. This policy change was announced in early 2020 (Thompson, 2020). However, as the coronavirus outbreak affected live events to be canceled, become virtual, or have a limited facility capacity (Apstein, 2020; Perry, 2020), it disabled the resale companies to see consumer responses to their policy change that may increase or decrease ticket revenues. In addition, charging additional fees to the ticket face value is a form of …

Winning Investment: The Strategic Implications Of The Growth Of Sabermetrics In Japanese Baseball, David Trent Pagliarini

Senior Theses

This thesis examines Japanese baseball and how the use of analytics and statistical research has been implemented into Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), compared to its North American counterpart, Major League Baseball (MLB). Due to the large financial implications of the MLB, teams have fully adopted the use of advanced metrics to find competitive disparities and advantages in roster construction, game strategies, and player development. Because of the long history attached to baseball in Japan, many cultural differences have adapted the game and recently slowed the growth of sabermetrics. While the NPB is beginning to understand the competitive value that analytics …

“The Lifeblood Of College Sports”: The Ncaa’S Dominant Institutional Logic And The Byproducts Of An (Over)Emphasis On Recruiting, Chris Corr

Theses and Dissertations

In big-time college football, successful recruiting is the foundation on which winning programs stand. Power-5 football and men’s basketball operate under a dominant institutional logic that values generating revenue above all else. Winning generates revenue and, accordingly, Power-5 stakeholders are often engulfed in their unique athletic roles. The system propagates adherence to a singular focus that emphasizes winning and revenue generation. This dominant institutional logic governing big-time college football has been dubbed jock capitalism (Southall & Nagel, 2009). While prominent theorists have analyzed college sports through an institutional logic perspective, a systematic examination of the Power-5 football recruiting process has …

Comparing The Success Of Official Sponsors And Ambush Marketers: An Event Study Analysis Of Brazil Following The 2014 Fifa World Cup And 2016 Rio De Janeiro Summer Olympic Games, Timothy Koba

Theses and Dissertations

Mega sporting event hosting and sponsorship garner billions of dollars in investments from countries and companies, but their effectiveness has yet to be definitively determined. If the announcement of a host country serves as a signal to the investors who comprise a market, then there should be an increased return in response to the announcement. Similarly, if companies are activating their sponsorships during a sporting event there may be a higher return than what would be expected otherwise. The evaluation of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates that the announcement did not impact the market …

The Impact Of Consumer Perceptions Of Tanking On National Basketball Association Attendance, Hua Gong

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the impact of consumer perceptions of tanking on National Basketball Attendance (NBA) attendance. The prevalence of tanking in the NBA raised concerns that some teams were purposely avoiding winning games in order to improve their draft position. The majority of previous studies on tanking have focused on developing empirical evidence of the existence of tanking in sport. Yet, no study systematically explored the impact of perceived tanking behavior on consumer demand for sport. As tanking teams rarely reveal their tanking strategy to the public, fans may not correctly identify tanking behavior in sport, and thus are likely …

The Economic Impact Of Tennis In South Carolina, Xue Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

This aim of this study was to estimate the economic value eighteen junior tournaments held in South Carolina in 2019. Over two hundred surveys were sent out to junior player and fifty two responses were received. Factors in the survey including transportation, gender, age, household income, on-site and off-site expenditure contributed to results in this paper. After analyzing the data collected, significant results were discovered.

Newcomer Student-Athlete Perceptions Of Coaches’ Socialization Strategies: Scale Development, Evelyn Su Jara-Pazmino

Theses and Dissertations

In this era of multi-million dollar paydays, the need to fill arenas and the pressure to win has increased dramatically. In order to build a winning program, the coaching staff turns to national and international recruiting. According to David Ching, Senior Contributor of Forbes, “Nearly every Power Five college athletics program spends more than $1 million per year on recruiting” (Ching, 2018). The fact that student-athletes have a limited time of four years of eligibility to perform for their institutions, results in a continuous influx of newcomers to the team. Student-athletes with a diverse cultural background have to adapt to …

The Downside Of National Team Identity: A Model To Measure Negative Outcomes Of Team Identity, Fei Gao

Theses and Dissertations

Team identity has been a prevailing subject and has drawn a wide range of attention from both academia and the sport industry. The previous literature indicates that team identity had significant impact on team-related purchases, game attendance, TV viewership, loyalty, other social identities (e.g., national identity), etc. However, the majority of team identity studies were merely focused on unveiling these positive outcomes of team identity. Little is known about how team identity works on fans’ negative sentiment toward outgroup members. The purpose of this dissertation was to establish a model to measure the effect of team identity on xenophobia and …

“We Need Dawgs!”: Narrative Construction Of Athletic Identity Among Black High School Football Players, Victor Dion Kidd

Theses and Dissertations

Previous empirical inquiry of athletic identity (Brewer, Van Raalte, Linder, 1993) and participation has failed to examine how such identities and roles are developed at the high school level of competition. While focusing on salient athletic identities or role sets are important, research literature should target how devotion to athletic identities, roles, and responsibilities are developed and communicated to adolescent athletes by social interactions. Therefore, while adopting Narrative Identity Theory (Loseke, 2007; McAdams & McLean, 2013; Polkinghorne, 1991; Smith 2010) as an appropriate lens, the current study investigated how athletic identity, roles, and responsibilities are developed through complex interaction and …

Finding The Perfect Match: Dimension Analysis And Development Of The External Sponsorship Congruence Scale, Kelly Evans

Theses and Dissertations

The biggest problem interfering with effective sport sponsorships is marketing clutter and the negative impact it has on sponsorship recall accuracy (Cornwell & Relyea, 2000; Rumpf, 2012; Seguin & O’Reilly, 2008). Previous research shows that external sponsorship congruence plays an important role in how consumers remember and recall sport sponsors (Cornwell et al., 2005; Fleck et al., 2012; Jagre et al., 2001; Olson & Thjømøe, 2011; Solomon, 1996; Stangor & McMillan, 1992), ultimately influencing consumer attitudes and behavior (Close & Lacey, 2013; Gwinner & Bennett, 2008; Lee & Thorson, 2008; Simmons & Becker-Olson, 2006). Great strides have been made in …

Investigating Managerial Priority Of Environmental Inputs And Outputs In Public Assembly Venues, Walker Ross

Theses and Dissertations

This study was focused on understanding how managers of public assembly venues prioritize the various manager-perceived environmental inputs and outputs of the operation of their building when making decisions on environmental sustainability. Such research is necessary as there was little to no understanding of the operational impacts of sport on the natural environment. A survey of managers of public assembly venues that utilized the best-worst scaling method of experimental design and analysis was utilized to gather data that appropriately addressed the research question posed by this study. Findings suggest that managers prioritize the environmental inputs and outputs of their buildings …

Child Sport Fan Behavior: An Examination Of The Effects Of Socialization, Branding, And Alternatives On Children’S Psychological Connections To Sports Teams, Katherine Rose Nakamoto Reifurth

Theses and Dissertations

This three-study dissertation focuses on child fans of professional sport teams and the ways in which they become fans and attach themselves and connect to these sport brands. In Study 1, the researchers focused on the socialization into fandom of young children and the effects of communities and the game-day environment on this socialization utilizing qualitative observations and interviews with children ages 6 to 14 and resulted in an expanded understanding of the dame-day aspects that attract and excite children most. In Study 2, the researchers focused on the aspects of a new team’s brand that children ages 5 to …

Premium Seating In College Athletics: Trends Of Today And The Future, Kendra Holaday

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to assist college athletic departments in attracting more fans to premium seating areas within their football stadiums. Existing research covers professional sporting venues in depth, but lacks volume regarding collegiate athletics. Due to the minimal knowledge and research recorded on premium seating in college football venues, there is a crucial need for the gap in research to be filled. The interviewing method and qualitative research was used to gain information on premium seating within college football venues. During the interview process existing premium seating, renovations in progress, and future addition plans were all explored. …

#Readyforrio: How A Revised Rule 40 Impacted Sponsorship At The 2016 Summer Olympics, Anthony Carson

Senior Theses

When planning and executing the Olympic Games, a premier event in modern sport, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) relies heavily on sponsorship revenue from their official sponsors. “Worldwide Olympic Partners,” the top 11 sponsors of the 2016 Olympics, had exclusive rights during the Olympic cycle from 2013-2016.

With the purchase of these expensive sponsorship deals, brands are looking to capitalize on the “glow” of the Olympics, and use excusive Olympic intellectual property to make ties from their brand to the Games. In order to make these sponsorship deals more valuable, the IOC has historically provided official partners with added exclusivity …

We Are One: The Role Of Group Identity And Self-Sacrificial Leaders On The Generation Of Social Capital Within Youth Sport Programs, Dorothy R. Collins

Theses and Dissertations

Popular culture often assumes that participation in youth sport has a host of positive benefits, including the ability to generate social capital, spur future occupational success and encourage greater levels of civic engagement (Coalter, 2007). There is; however, little empirical evidence to support this ideal (Coakley, 2011). In fact, little is known about the specific conditions within a sport organization that likely to facilitate youth sport organizations to become more adept at generating, maintaining, and distributing social capital to their members. Using the Community of Practice framework (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002) as a lens, the author investigated the conditions …

More Than Meets The Eye: Development Of A Sport Event Stimuli And Destination Image Fit Scale, Yongjin Hwang

Theses and Dissertations

Much research demonstrates an impact of sensory experience on sports fans’ satisfaction with live sporting events (Lee, Heere, & Chung, 2013; Lee, Lee, Seo, & Green, 2012). It was, however, not studied how to enhance those sense-centric experiences. One possible approach would be to utilize unique region-based characteristics to design unforgettable and emotionally engaging experiences. Most sporting events are location-based, and venues are also considered as a landmark of the area where they are placed. Consequently, we can create a natural link between sporting events and the hosting cities or regions. Visual designs, musical contents, famous local food, and signature …

Comparing Two Organizational Structures In Professional Ultimate, Jack Dowling

Senior Theses

Leaders of business organizations have always strived to find the most efficient method of organizing and conducting their business. New strategies are constantly being developed and adapted to new situations. The business of Sport is no different. Over the past century, the sport industry in America has experienced an explosive level of growth, with the largest major sport leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) earning multibillion dollar revenues in recent years.[1-4] In addition to these “Big Four,” there are numerous minor-league and semi-professional sport leagues. Each of these leagues must operate in a way to consider geographic, economic, and other important …

Motivation To Play Esports: Case Of League Of Legends, Yaoyao Sun

Theses and Dissertations

The population of playing electronic sports has increased recently, and the most popular one is League of Legends (LoL). As a multiplayer online battle arena video game, it’s not only a game, but also a competitive electronic sport. The purpose of this study was to assess the motivations of playing League of Legends and to relate them by genders, age groups and frequency groups. The final sample comprised 111 LoL players. The study categorized 12 items into three factors: achievement, socialization and immersion. Results indicated that achievement factors were stronger motives for men than women. For different age groups, there …

Branded For Success: A Longitudinal Examination Of Brand Associations As Drivers Of Team Identification For A New Sport Brand, Henry Wear

Theses and Dissertations

The competition for the sport consumer has intensified over the last decade, and many teams are now seeking to establish a foothold in the marketplace (Baker, McDonald, & Funk, 2016). To form a competitive advantage in the sport industry, many sport organizations are beginning to think of their organizations as brands to be managed (Ross, 2006). From a sport marketer’s perspective, it is difficult to rely on brand characteristics based on success or team composition to promote a sport brand and develop fans due to the unpredictable nature of the sport product. Conversely, brand characteristics regarding the logo, color scheme, …

An Investigation Of Mannequins’ Effect On Consumer Attitude And Intention, Hannah Shealy

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effect of mannequin type on consumers’ purchase decisions. Data was collected from a convenience sample of 165 respondents through an online survey to measure the variables of envisioning, consumer attitude toward the display, and purchase intention in their relationship to mannequin type. Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 were confirmed, confirming the conceptual model and the overall investigation into whether mannequin type effects consumer purchase decisions. Mannequin type was found to have a significant effect on envisioning, and the relationships between envisioning and consumer attitude toward the display and between attitude and purchase intention were found to …

Campus Knowledge Of Esports, Kenny Sugishita

Theses and Dissertations

This research study investigates private college and university admission’s officers levels of familiarity of the electronic sports (eSports) industry along with determining the level of emphasis universities place on academics and co-curricular activities. A thorough examination of the professional eSports space is extensively detailed providing information about the history of video games, the development of professional eSports, and the development of collegiate eSports. Additionally, examination of trends in higher education, especially as it relates to private institutions, is explained in detail. With the eSports industry continuing to expand, this study is timely as small private colleges and universities are searching …