FiT Publishing

Giveaways such as jerseys, caps, or bobbleheads are part of a host of promotions used to entice fans to purchase tickets and attend live events, particularly in sports. Bobbleheads have often been viewed as the bellwether giveaway in demand-side analytical studies as they are common across sport, league, and team and are viewed as highly prized collectable items. Empiricists typically code promotions as binary variables to measure the impact these additional perks have on attendance, yet each bobblehead event features a distinct figurine distinguished by several previously unexplored...Read more

This study investigates the relationship between consumer discrimination, racial matching strategies, and employer discrimination in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1985 to 2016. Specifically, we assess the extent to which both fan attendance and team performance respond to changes in teams’ and their local market areas’ racial compositions. To this end, we use game-level data (N = 69,239) that we aggregate to the team-season level (N = 866). Using facial recognition software and pictures on more than 7,000 players, each player is assigned to one of three race groups: White, Black, and...Read more

Maintaining a robust salesforce is critical for nearly any business. The sport industry is no exception, as salespeople help sport organizations generate essential ticket revenue. While the sport industry is a popular career option for young professionals, relatively few aspiring sport managers desire to work in sales. As such, entry-level sport ticket sales positions experience high turnover. The purpose of this study is to assess the hiring processes of recruitment, evaluation, and selection of sales candidates among North American professional sport leagues. Qualitative interviews were...Read more

Outsourcing ticket sales operations to the service provider is becoming popular in intercollegiate sport in the US. While much has been reported about ticket sales outsourcing, there is a major lack of understanding in the literature as to how the service provider’s performance is measured by the athletic department. To fill important gaps in the sport marketing literature, this study employed the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined model using one NCAA Division I athletic department to understand performance measure metrics. The result of the AHP showed...Read more

Ticket sales are the lifeblood of nearly every sport organization. Not only do ticket sales generate revenue, outbound sales programs charged with selling tickets aid sport organizations in the development of customer relationships and distribution of marketing materials and messages. Despite the importance of sales in sport, minimal scholarly research has been conducted within sport management literature to determine the effect of sales training on sales performance, as well as perceptions of sales training effectiveness by employees. The current study addresses this gap. Data collected...Read more

Sales coaching has long been considered one of the most important activities influencing sales performance (Corcoran, Peterson, Baitch, & Barrett, 1995). Despite the importance of sales and sales coaching, limited academic or scholarly attention has been directed toward this topic in sport management. While the inclusion of sales-oriented coursework within sport management curricula appears to be on the rise, limited information has been made available on coaching/teaching methods. Similarly, little content has been published on how sport enterprises select, train, and retain sales...Read more

Although ticket sales represent the most important source of local revenues for most sport teams, relatively little research has addressed the relationship of selling activities to marketing performance. Drawing on the sport marketing, sales, organizational behavior, and psychology literatures, this research produces an integrative framework that links the organizational and individual influences on the selling activities of sales representative in sport organizations with the value-creating outcomes of higher customer retention that arise from customer loyalty and reduced turnover in the...Read more

This research explores the challenges of developing a ticket sales force within a collegiate athletic department by investigating the difficulties one BCS college faced over the course of a decade amidst the implementation and management of a ticket sales force. The athletic department at the University of Miami was the first of its kind to establish a ticket sales force similar to that of professional sports organizations in that it would constitute its own directors and management team within the department. Like many metropolitan universities, the University of Miami athletic department...Read more

Nicholas was finally getting settled at his new job as assistant director of marketing at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). He believed his degree and internship experience with his alma mater’s athletic department had prepared him well for his new position. During his interview he discovered that part of his job responsibilities would include working on a task force charged with developing marketing strategies to increase student attendance at the university’s men’s basketball games. The athletic department had recently noticed a pattern occurring with student attendance at home...Read more