FiT Publishing

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...Read more

One of the most valuable assets a sport entity possesses is its brand. However, existing sport branding research has largely examined brands at an individual level and not taken into account the relationships be-tween connected brands or the actual behavioral outcomes of branding. Th is article provides an overview of the current state of sport branding research; proposes an extended conceptualization of sport brand archi-tecture within a sport brand ecosystem framework to guide future examination of sport branding research; introduces the four articles published in this special issue; and...Read more