FiT Publishing

The 2008-09 NBA Most Valuable Player race is modeled as a tournament between LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade. Estimations show that James and Bryant significantly increased their scoring in response to Wade scoring more points in his most recent game, and that James also increased his scoring in response to Bryant scoring more points in his most recent game. All significant increases in scoring in response to an MVP competitor’s play were correlated with more free throws taken, suggesting the competitors responded to another competitor’s improved performance with more aggressive...Read more

This paper uses data on players drafted in 1987 through 1989 covering both their collegiate and their professional careers. This time period is chosen because we wanted recent players whose playing days have ended. Our analysis evaluates the role of college productivity on draft position and the relationship between college career productivity, measured by individual performance statistics and as productivity indexes, with professional career productivity measured similarly and with the length of the career. At issue is the effectiveness of NBA executives in identifying college players who...Read more

No other team in sports has had to endure the relocation odyssey that the New Orleans franchise has lived through. The Hornets were born when North Carolina businessman George Shinn was awarded one of four NBA expansion franchises on April 1, 1987, and began play in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1988. As the owner of the team from its inception and the subsequent 14 seasons in Charlotte, Shinn officially filed an application with the NBA on January 17, 2002, to move the Hornets to New Orleans, Louisiana, beginning with the 2002-03 season. Four months later, the NBA’s Board of Governors...Read more

In 2002, the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets exited the Queen City for greener pastures in New Orleans, thus closing the book on a tumultuous 14-year relationship with their host city and fans. Their tenure in Charlotte was characterized by an NBA record for sold-out attendance from 1988-1996, a lengthy and nasty “divorce” with ownership starting in 1996, and a near complete falling-out with fans from 1997-2002 (“Losing the buzz,” 2002). In that span, average game attendance dropped from 23,000 in 1996 to 11,000 in 2002, even though the franchise made the NBA playoffs for the second straight year...Read more

NBA teams use a variety of marketing techniques to try to increase game attendance. However, few research studies have compared their effectiveness. More importantly, no study to date has compared the perceptions of NBA marketing directors and ticket holders with regard to currently used marketing techniques. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to determine whether the marketing techniques that NBA marketing directors viewed as valuable and useful were viewed in a similar fashion by attendees at NBA games. A questionnaire containing the 20 most used marketing techniques—based...Read more

Description: Certain professional sport organizations fall short of educating their corporate clients with respect to all of the benefits and attributes of the sport products they offer (e.g., season tickets, sponsorship programs, and luxury suites). In response to this problem, Sutton, Lachowetz, and Clark (2000) developed a ninestep framework,Read more