Articles in this issue:

• Cooler Bobbleheads Prevail: Bobblehead Character Type and Impact on Attendance at Major League Baseball Games

  Jeffrey Cisyk

  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

• Gender Equity in Sponsor Decision-Making: A Quantitative Investigation of Sponsor Retention for Women’s Sport Sponsorship

  Jonathan A. Jensen and Danielle Kushner Smith

  As gender equity has become an important issue throughout the sport industry, this research seeks to fill a gap in the literature related to whether sport sponsor retention differs across sponsorships of similar men’s and women’s sport properties. Even aft er controlling for a host of potentially confounding variables, a quantitative analysis of sponsor decision-making related to more than 750 event title sponsorships indicates that sponsoring firms are just as likely to renew sponsorships of women’s events as men’s events and those featuring competitors of both genders. Viewing these...Read more

• Exploring the National Hockey League’s Reverse Retro Campaign: Response to Pseudo-Nostalgia in Uniform Design

  Nicholas Burton

  This study explores the use of pseudo-nostalgic designs in sport marketing, examining consumer response to the National Hockey League’s 2020‒2021 Reverse Retro uniform campaign. By investigating user response to the twelve teams’ Reverse Retro sweater release and promotion on Twitter, the study endeavors to explore the extent to which pseudo-nostalgic designs elicit nostalgic sentiment and the degree to which such nostalgia may impact upon individuals’ perceptions of uniform designs. The findings of the research suggest that while pseudo-nostalgic uniforms can inspire feelings of nostalgia...Read more

• Making Sense of Stimuli-Local Image Fit in the Sport Venue: Mediating Effects of Sense of Home and Touristic Experience on Local and Visiting Spectators

  Yongjin Hwang

  Khalid Ballouli

  Matthew J. Bernthal

  and Wanyong Choi

  Prior scholars provide empirical evidence of how sensory experiences can positively influence spectators’ satisfaction, and the effectiveness of utilizing sense-centric experiences is enhanced when marketers integrate unique characteristics of the local culture into sensory experiences in the venue. The recently developed stimuli-local image fit (SIF) scale measures the effectiveness of this process; however, the SIF scale needs further investigation based on differences between local and visiting spectators. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential mediating effects of sense...Read more

• Perceived Soccer Literacy: A Construct Linking Soccer Video Games Play to Soccer Engagement

  Jeeyoon Kim and Bong Gee Jang

  This study investigates soccer video games as a platform to promote soccer engagement (i.e., involvement, behavioral intentions) among those who do not physically play soccer regularly. Perceived soccer literacy is proposed as a construct explaining the promotional effect, consisting of the four sub-themes of affective attitude, perceived functional knowledge, perceived critical knowledge, and perceived competence. A study was conducted based on an online survey and with US and Canadian adults who do not physically play soccer on a regular basis. With structural equation modeling, (1) the...Read more

• Virtual Reality Technology Induced Flow in the Spectator Sports Context: Empirical Examinations of VR Flow, Its Unique Antecedents, and Consequences

  Yonghwan Chang

  Clinton Warren

  and Taehoon Lee

  This study aimed to investigate how virtual reality (VR) can create the experience of flow among sport fans and how this phenomenon fits into existing sport service consumption frameworks. Two experiments were conducted to explore VR flow experiences and to examine the impact of VR flow on fan outcomes in different game situations. The poison theory, theories of emotion dynamics, affective expectation, and biased competition were used as theoretical backgrounds. Results from Experiment 1 showed that fans with lower spectatorship involvement and those with less prior VR experience were more...Read more