Articles in this issue:

  • François Rodrigue
    Gashaw Abeza
    Benoit Seguin
    and Eric MacIntosh

    This study explored stakeholder’s perspectives in building a professional sport franchise brand that is reentering the same marketplace for a third time following the folding of two previous franchises within the same sport league. To accomplish the study’s purpose, a qualitative method was employed where semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 stakeholders of the reentering franchise. The findings uncovered five antecedents: game-extensions, owners’ credibility, community outreach, cross-promotions, and aligning with established brand. Theoretical contributions...Read more

  • Shang-Chun Ma and Kyriaki Kaplanidou

    This study examines relationships among perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR), perceived team CSR, social identities, and corporate brand equity in the context of using Chinese professional baseball teams as brand extensions. Data from online surveys of Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) consumers (N = 467) were analyzed using structural equation modeling and the SPSS macro PROCESS. Findings revealed that perceived CSR and perceived team CSR have a direct positive effect on corporate brand equity. The results also showed that consumer-company identity mediates...Read more

  • Ted Hayduk and Matthew Walker

    Scholarship has established that characteristics of a firm’s upper echelon affect firm-level outcomes in a range of industries. In professional sport, firms depend on live game attendance and, increasingly, the consumption of online content to generate local revenue. The ability to drive these two revenue streams depends on a franchise’s competencies in marketing, relationship management, and brand building. In this research, we speculate those competencies start at the top, i.e., with ownership. Using upper echelons theory (UET), we hypothesize that franchises with owners who have...Read more

  • Sanghak Lee

    Sponsorship is a marketing communication tool used to increase brand awareness, brand attitudes, and sales. Sponsorship activities are realized through various media, but television has been the most important medium to deliver these activities to sport fans. More recently, however, the importance of television has been challenged via the widespread use of smartphones (i.e., second screen). Media multitasking (e.g., using a smartphone while watching television) has become a common phenomenon, and sponsorship exposure through television is affected. Therefore, this study examines how...Read more

  • Elizabeth B. Delia
    Matthew Katz
    and Cole G. Armstrong

    For decades, scholars have sought to understand individuals’ identification with sport teams. As a result, we have great knowledge of how team identification influences a variety of attitudinal and behavioral out-comes as well as the impact of identifying with a team on an individual’s sense of self. However, nearly all studies of team identification have dealt with men’s sport rather than women’s sport. The authors addressed this issue in the current study by using the Delphi technique to solicit expert opinion on the lack of team identification research in women’s sport, including...Read more

  • Antonio S. Williams
    Sungwook Son
    Patrick Walsh
    and Jin Park

    Despite sport rebranding becoming an emerging topic for both academia and industry, there has been a limited number of investigations on how sport rebranding influences sport fans. The aim of this study is to investigate how sport rebranding in the form of logo redesign influences fan loyalty. Through an experimental approach, the results indicate that attitude toward rebranding plays a significant role in fan response when sport rebranding occurs. Additional findings suggest that logo evaluation partially mediates the relationship between logo change and brand loyalty. This study makes...Read more