Articles in this issue:

• Athlete-Centric Employer Branding During Rival Leagues’ Market Entry

  Christopher Michael McLeod

  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

• Using Predictive Analytics to Measure Effectiveness of Social Media Engagement: A Digital Measurement Perspective

  Heather Kennedy

  Thilo Kunkel

  and Daniel C. Funk

  As social media becomes an increasingly dominant and important component of sport organizations’ marketing and communication strategies, effective marketing measurement techniques are required. Using social media data of a Division I football team, this research demonstrates how predictive analytics can be used as a marketing measurement tool. A support vector machine model was compared to a standard linear regression with respect to accurately predicting Facebook posts’ total interactions. The predictive model was used as (i) a planning tool to forecast future post engagement based on a...Read more

• Better Together? Examining the Impact of Official Secondary Ticketing Partnerships on Consumers’ Attitudes and Behaviors

  Koo Yul Kim

  Joris Drayer

  To overcome the negative stigma due to their association with ticket fraud and price inflation, research has suggested secondary ticket market companies partner with professional sport leagues and teams. Moreover, such a partnership can increase revenues of the ticket market companies. However, additional research is needed to explore how official partnerships influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. Relevant findings clarify the mechanism through which official partnerships affect secondary ticket providers’ financial success and provide insight into consumers’ attitudes...Read more

• Developing and Validating a Venue Stimuli-Local Image Fit Scale

  Yongjin Hwang and Khalid Ballouli

  Few studies in sport marketing have examined the formative role of venue stimuli in affecting sport spectators. As such, the fi eld currently lacks methodological direction for dealing with venue stimuli as a means to understand the sport spectator experience. Research is needed to inform academics and practitioners about the appropriate use and potential outcomes of venue stimuli, particularly as they relate to destination image and local place. Given the notable lack of investigation on this topic, this study was exploratory in nature, with the purposes of developing and validating a...Read more

• Delay Effect of Sport Media Consumption on Sport Consumers’ Subjective Well-Being: Moderating Role of Team Identification

  Wonseok (Eric) Jang

  Joon Sung Lee

  and Daniel L. L. Wann

  Although empirical evidence indicates that sport media consumption has a positive effect on sport consumers’ subjective well-being (SWB), there is little information regarding how these enhancements in SWB change over time. Th e current research demonstrates that less identified sport consumers experienced greater levels of purpose in life when it was measured right after they recalled their past sport media consumption than when it was measured aft er a 15-minute delay. Meanwhile, the level of purpose in life was similar for highly identified sport consumers whether it was measured right...Read more

• How Sports Sponsorship Influences a Sponsor’s Financial Performance: A Case Study from the Korea Baseball Organization

  Hyun-Min Kim

  Woon-Kyung Song

  Sanghak Lee

  This study aims to examine the effects of sponsorship on the sponsor’s financial performance. Th is study investigates return on sponsorship (ROS) with a quantitative analysis. Nexen Tire’s title sponsorship agreement with the Heroes baseball club in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) in 2010 is studied. The positive effect of sponsorship on the sponsor’s Tobin’s q is confirmed by comparing the non-sponsorship period (2000‒2009) with the sponsorship period (2010‒2018). It is also shown from an event study that the sponsor experiences negative abnormal stock returns on the news of the...Read more