This study examines the role of brand-meaning co-creation in the development of the TMRW Golf League, exploring the discrete role played by new media content creators in framing and communicating the league brand. Through a netnographic analysis of league and stakeholder social media content during the league's creation and staging of its first season, drawing on structural topic modelling and qualitative content analysis, the study investigates actor performativity in brand co-creation. The study's findings highlight the role played by external actors in legitimating and framing the league's novelty, appeal, and competition. The study's findings provide new insight into extended reality gamification and brand-meaning co-creation through new media, and advance performativity theory in branding.
Sports video games (SVGs) have become a lucrative platform for brand marketing through in-game advertising (IGA). However, SVG literature has portrayed IGA as a passive form of in-game brand communication (i.e., billboards). Additionally, the literature has primarily focused on how SVGs serve as catalysts for advertiser outcomes. As a result, the current conceptualization overlooks: (1) SVG IGA methods that reflect modern industry practice, in which developers strategically use brands to cocreate original, core (as opposed to passive) in-game content experiences; and (2) how these methods meet specific developer marketing goals beyond mere realism and the sale of advertising assets. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to introduce cobranded IGA as a conceptually distinct form of IGA activation shaping within SVG mediums. To achieve this, cobranded IGA is conceptualized, theoretically drawn from the advertising and cobranding literature, and illustrated through a case analysis of EA FC and Nike. Results demonstrate developer-driven vertical cobranding to meet specific business goals such as purchasing in-game content through microtransactions, offering preorder incentives, and boosting player engagement with limited-time cobranded content, events, and performance-based rewards. It is concluded that cobranded IGA is emerging as a new form of brand integration within the SVG medium that can help achieve business objectives for both the host brand (i.e., developer) and the ingredient brand (i.e., advertiser) simultaneously. Implications are discussed from the perspectives of the developer, partnering brand, and consumer.
Churn management is a critical challenge for organizations seeking to retain season ticket holders (STHs). Traditional approaches have primarily relied on binary logistic regression to classify STHs as likely to renew or churn, subsequently targeting churners with retention incentives. While effective to some extent, this strategy overlooks advances in data science and the potential to optimize managerial decision-making. Leveraging proprietary data ( n = 23,565) from an National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) collegiate athletic program, we employ random forest and support vector machine algorithms to demonstrate that machine learning methods outperform the traditional logit model in predicting STH renewal outcomes. Building on this, we apply an uplift machine learning algorithm to move beyond conventional churn identification by assessing STHs’ sensitivity to retention interventions. Findings highlight that targeting individuals who are both likely to churn and receptive to retention efforts is a more efficient and economically beneficial strategy, offering actionable heuristics for enhancing the effectiveness of churn management programs.
Stadium advertising boards are a central sponsorship asset in televised association football, yet their recall effects may depend on how viewers relate to the sport, the team, the sponsor, and the viewing context. This exploratory study examined aided and unaided recall of in-field banner advertisements using an in- and out-of-laboratory experiment with 701 participants exposed to controlled footage from a real football match. General fan intensity, game situation (highlight vs. standard scenes), and screen size did not show consistent associations with recall across the 16 sponsor brands. However, recall differed substantially across individual brands, and home-team fans showed higher recall for several prominent sponsors than non-home-team fans. These findings suggest that general football fan intensity should be distinguished from team-specific identification and that sponsor recall in realistic broadcast settings is likely shaped by the interplay of team identification, sponsor–team relevance, prior brand familiarity, and viewing context. The study therefore positions perimeter advertising as a cue-dependent communication format whose effectiveness should not be inferred from exposure alone.
We use Caitlin Clark's last amateur and first professional season to examine the impact on returns to sponsoring firms when engaging in an agreement with a high-profile player. Using event study methods, we find on average that the sponsors of Clark and the Indiana Fever experience an abnormal return of 13-basis points (0.13 percent) on the trading day following a game. The returns tend to reverse on the following trading day. The winning percentage of Clark's team has a positive effect on the returns generated for sponsors. Our study demonstrates the impact of a high-profile athlete on the market awareness of sponsoring firms. However, the reversal of the returns on the subsequent trading days indicates that the market does not view the individual games as value-creating relative to the impact that has already been priced into the stock.
