The present study examined the financing approaches employed by football-playing institutions in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) 1869 to 2025. The goal of the current research aims to contribute to the literature on modernization by presenting a process of financial modernization. Previously, the notion of financial modernization has only been inferred and not explained or theorized. To date, the researchers discovered cost information on roughly 76.4% of the 2,834 new construction or renovation projects produced by the sample. Using a sport-based historical research approach, a seven-stage ideal-type was developed to showcase the evolution of financing practices and to inform the development of a process model of financial modernization. The process model developed for this study was inspired by previous scholarship focused on explaining the modernity of financial systems. The present explanation of financial modernization shows it to be complementary of both reflective and ecological modernization.

The Applied Sport Management Association’s Distinguished Service and Mentorship Award was initiated in 2022 as a renaming and repurposing of the ASMA Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award presented from 2009 to 2020. This service and mentorship award recognizes an ASMA member who has exhibited continued, exemplary service to ASMA, who connects sport management research with practitioners in an applied manner, and who demonstrates dedication to students and mentorship within the ASMA. Recipients of this award provide a keynote address to the ASMA membership at the annual conference. The content of this address is published in the Journal of Applied Sport Management, the peer-reviewed journal and official publication of ASMA.

The present essay aims to promote further dialogue within the sport management community about research productivity and impact by outlining various considerations that should take place within any potential ranking attempt. Some may question why examining research production and impact matters to sport management education, but the mission of many institutions of higher education is not exclusively centered on teaching and training the next generation of leaders. In many instances, sport management programs and faculty are collectively compelled by their host institution to develop theory and search for answers to important questions that can shape future sport management practices, including classroom activities and materials. In the present essay, a rationale is provided for why sport management programs and individual faculty should be interested in developing their own tailored research output and impact rankings. Next, a list of research product variables is offered for consideration, and a conversation is provided about their need and impact with respect to the uniqueness of sport management-a multiinterdisciplinary field. Finally, recommendations for the weighing of such variables to tailor an approach best suited to programs based on college or department home, faculty appointment/workload, and faculty-to-student ratio are submitted.

Professional sport facility sustainability initiatives offer sport organizations an opportunity to demonstrate congruence with societal concern for the environment, an effort that also affects stadia revenue generation. Guided by diffusion of innovations theory, this study harnessed diffusion modeling and logistic regression to determine how quickly renewable energy source adoption is diffusing across 175 professional sport stadia in the United States and Canada and the factors catalyzing early renewable energy source adoption. Results revealed 86 (49%) facilities adopted at least one type of renewable energy source, with solar emerging as the predominant technology adopted (68 total adoptions). Full diffusion for renewable source adoption was predicted for 2061 ( p = .0094, q = 0.1404, root mean square error = 3.25, mean absolute error = 2.51), while not all renewable energy sources were predicted to fully diffuse (wind; p = .0117, q = −0.0710, root mean square error = .853, mean absolute error = 0.675). New stadia construction during the time of adoption, facility type, and geographical social systems emerged as significant factors catalyzing adoption in the early majority.

Despite extensive research in service industries, fine-grained explorations of customer experience within spectator sports remain limited. This study pioneers a transfer learning approach grounded in a post-positivism paradigm, underpinned by an integrative customer experience framework for aspect-based sentiment analysis of user-generated content, shedding light on the complexity of the college football game day experience. Three fine-tuned large language models were employed to qualitatively identify and quantitatively analyze customer experience from Tripadvisor reviews on college football stadiums. Our findings indicated that fans' positive reactions to stimuli related to core (game dynamics), functional (facilities/services), emotional (intense feelings), and socialization (fan interactions/bonding) significantly increased the likelihood of them giving a five-star rating. Mitigating negative experiences across functional, emotional, socialization, safety, and monetary experience was crucial for achieving a top rating, with reducing negative functional issues and safety concerns having the greatest positive impact. Our study contributes to the sport management literature by establishing a unified view of customer experience, enabling a holistic conceptualization and operationalization of customer experience in spectator sports. Empirically, our research proposes targeted strategies to manage customer experience in college football and offers sport management professionals ready-to-use large language models along with detailed deployment guidelines tailored for distinct use cases.

The rising popularity of professional team esports has brought along an unwelcome increase in toxic behavior during live esports streams. To better understand the dynamics of toxic behavior, we collected a survey sample of League of Legends (LoL) Esports audience (n = 430) members and delved into the influence of Big Five and Dark Triad personality traits, game identification, team identification, as well as demographics on toxic behavior. Employing the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we found that conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism, psychopathy, game identification, and gender were significant predictors of toxic behavior. The fsQCA results highlighted that both high or low levels of toxic behavior would arise from a composite mix of variables rather than a single determinant. This study emphasizes the intricate interconnections between various toxic behavior influencers and provides new insights into the complexity of toxic behavior.

The present study aimed to explain archival research and demonstrate its relevance as a distinct research method to include in sport management research methods course instruction. The current essay implicitly shows how archival research can complement other research methods and possibly improve upon their limitations. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that training in archival research can offer skills to students who might pursue employment in the sport industry. The review outlines what archival research is. Next, the various limitations and considerations to aid course instructors and subsequently researcher or practitioner comprehension are provided. Finally, the paper offers a guide for approaching physical archives and outlines expectations for archival research. Techniques necessary for analyzing information gleaned from archival research are presented and explained along with sample course assignments that are available to not only research methods classes but also potentially other coursework.

PurposeThis study aims to use a theoretical-based case study of two distinct ownership groups of the Jack Daniel's brand to explore how rhetorical history (i.e. malleability of the past for strategic goals) may evoke and capitalize on different forms of nostalgia. Within, the authors configure four forms of nostalgia (i.e. personal, historical, collective and cultural) from the individual or collective interaction and level of direct experience one has with the past as lived or happened.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses an historical research approach which involved the identification of primary and secondary sources, facility tour, source criticism and triangulation to create themes of rhetorical history infused with nostalgic narratives using compelling evidence through rich description of this fusion.FindingsThe findings reveal how nostalgia-driven narratives reflecting different collective longing for the re-creation of an American Paradise Lost used by Jack Daniel (i.e. the man) and later but differently by Brown-Forman. This study uncovers how the company's inherited past was used rhetorically throughout its history, beginning with the nostalgic story of Jack Daniel and the distillery's nostalgically choreographed location in Lynchburg, Tennessee. This study delves into this setting to highlight the importance of symbols, details, emotional appeals and communications for collective memory and identity development and to showcase the ways in which they are influenced by different types and forms of nostalgia.Originality/valueThis study adds to a limited number of studies focused on understanding the impact of founders on an organization's brand and how that is malleable. This study responds to scholarly calls to study the influence of sequenced historical rhetoric on an organization and highlight the relevance of social emotions such as nostalgia for rhetorical history. Finally, the theoretical contribution involves the advancing and construction of a theory typology of nostalgia previously proposed by Havlena and Holak in 1996.

College Football Grounds at Ohio UniversityThe Development of a Social Anchor Chad S. Seifried (bio), Benjamin Downs (bio), and Khirey Walker (bio) Located near the northern bank of the Hocking River, Peden Stadium at Ohio University (OU) received recognition in 2009 as a historical site by the Ohio Historical Society. In that declaration, Peden Stadium, located in Athens, Ohio, was recognized as the “oldest of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) stadiums and one of the oldest of its type in the country.” Opening originally as the Ohio University Athletic Plant in 1929, Peden Stadium was renamed in 1960 to honor former football and baseball head coach and athletic director Don Peden, who worked at the university from 1924 until his retirement in 1949.1 Since its opening, Peden Stadium received many notable renovations inspired by both university and external stakeholders. For instance, the most recent major renovation to Peden Stadium was completed in 2018 when the Perry and Sandy Sook Academic Center opened. Designed by MSA Sport (Cincinnati), the Sook Center cost $7 million to complete and offers classroom space, a computer lab, meeting rooms, and offices for staff who support approximately 425 student-athletes and other student groups that use the facility. For stadium attendees, the Sook Center also adds to the gameday experience by offering new, high quality concession stands, additional restrooms, and other fan and/or hospitality services, such as club space and a reception room.2 [End Page 68] Of note, the Sook Center was constructed in partial fulfillment of Ohio University’s “The Promise Campaign,” which importantly sought to raise $450 million for university students and faculty. OU committed to the Sook Center because their own self-study suggested they were deficient in offering academic space to their student-athletes and that fan amenities were lacking in comparison to contemporary facilities provided by MAC peers. The university believed strongly in a report issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Committee on Academics, which communicated that the emergence of academic centers leads to higher rates of retention, graduation, and overall academic performance.3 Over time, the construction and subsequent renovation of Peden Stadium through 2018 helped establish the facility as a legitimate and significant social anchor for the campus, region, and university fan nation.4 As a social anchor, Peden Stadium supports its fan nation through cultural activities, such as tail-gating, celebrating, and initiating social dialogue, which in turn help to create, promote, or maintain “social capital, identity (group or individual), and/or social networks.” Sport stadia like Peden Stadium can achieve that status because they often generate interaction. In essence, sport stadia “connect entire communities and . . . provide stability for future development, recruitment, and maintenance of communities or fan nations.”5 Stadia can also become social anchors because students, locales, or organizations often feel pride and identification via place attachment because of the memorable and interactional features they offer.6 Inside sport venues, a variety of individuals and groups engage in multiple activities, often simultaneously, to provide people inside those buildings with nostalgic emotions [End Page 69] and practical knowledge that can eventually produce social capital.7 Next, the emotional links between individuals and groups are established through both an interactional past and interactional potential. Interactional pasts include meaningful and actual lived or virtually consumed experiences with a site, people, and events or activities that occurred there. Interactional potential involves the connection to imagined or anticipated experiences with others through pending events and activities.8 In the case of OU, connections to the university students and events, alumni, and the Athens, Ohio, community can form through the football stadium. Lastly, the notion that Peden Stadium is a unique social anchor for the region, school, and fan nation can be further substantiated by the number of times the stadium is featured in Ohio University video and campus tours, in Athens County tourism videos, and during the regular broadcast of Ohio University football games, not just to the local region but often to national audiences across the country.9 To better understand the assertion that sport facilities can be social anchors, the present study reviews the development of Peden Stadium and explores previous football...

A key component of sport as an entertainment product is the construction of state-of-the-art sport facilities capable of capitalizing on the evolving interests and desires of would-be consumers, partners, and lessees in existing or new markets (Shubert, 2016;Tutka & Seifried, 2015).Within sport management, modernization theory has been used to explain how social, economic, and technological changes in the United States (U.S.) influence consumer desires and industry responses or future trends (Downs & Seifried, 2019).In the U.S., politicians create a political economy by responding to those changes through enacting capitalist, liberal economic policies (Hall & Soskice, 2001).Sport facility scholars, in turn, examined the relationship between politicians and facility management (e.g., Dinces, 2018; Seifried et al., 2015;Trumpbour, 2007).Furthermore, and relatedly, Fried and Kastel (2021) stressed the importance of appreciating the politics of facility management (i.e., political economy) to future sport managers, particularly when planning the renovation or construction of new sport facilities.We bring this information to your attention because the status of contemporary, major professional sport facilities in the U.S. garnered increased media attention during the spring and summer of 2023 through as many as 12 potential and emerging stadium and ballpark projects (see Table 1).For example, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo signed Senate Bill 1 on June 15, earmarking $380 million in public financing for a proposed $1.5 billion ballpark, likely to be the future home of Major League Baseball's (MLB) Oakland Athletics (Harrison, 2023).The announcement of this commitment followed years of efforts by the Athletics to develop a more modern stadium in Oakland to replace the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum first built in 1966 and last renovated in 1995 (Seifried & Pastore, 2009a).Elsewhere, in August of 2023, the MLB's Milwaukee Brewers also sought public funding to assist with an estimated $448 million renovation of American Family Field (Spears, 2023).Notably, the Brewers, like the Athletics, suggested they might consider relocation without public funding support to help modernize their 22-yearold facility (Spears, 2023).

This study deciphers the underlying mechanism by which virtual interactions influence sports viewing on a social live streaming (SLS) platform. Survey data was collected from 741 viewers who watched Thursday Night Football (TNF) co-streaming on Twitch and was subsequently analyzed via Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). We identified distinct effects of virtual interactions on co-creation experiences and platform involvement, which served as serial mediators, and in turn, engendered intentions to watch TNF co-streaming. Viewers’ follow status was found to moderate the impacts of co-creation experiences and platform involvement on watching intentions. Our study explores the interconnections between service dominant (S-D) logic and social identity theory (SIT), expounding how virtual interactions may impact sports viewing in the SLS service ecosystem. The findings shed light on the means of fostering an interactive environment conducive to co-creating meaningful experiences and developing lasting relationships in synchronous social media.

General marketing scholars have advocated for historical research since the 1980s, leading to a substantial increase in history-based marketing articles. With general marketing embracing historical research, the present content analysis assesses leading sport marketing journals, their article methodologies, and the presence of any studies that utilize the historical method and/or incorporate historical or archival data for analysis. Comparatively, the present study shows sport marketing scholars primarily analyze the field through pure monomethod (i.e., quantitative or qualitative) approaches, but many researchers also use historical or archival data. With recent calls to improve sport-study through diversifying methodological choices, we suggest the historical method should be an attractive interdisciplinary alternative because it offers a distinct data collection and analytical approach capable of studying important questions. Further, historical research can advance theory, predict future patterns or trends, inform decision-making processes, and identify future research activity. Overall, we see an opportunity for more history-based scholarship in sport marketing journals.

Since the concept of redeveloping Wrigley Field became prevalent, the Chicago Tribune has notably constructed a variety of narrative strands on related urban dynamics. Through a framework that connected post-Gramsci insights of hegemony, discourse, and critics of spatial and economic neoliberalism, this study examined how the newspaper strategically assembled discourses in mediatizing urban politics surrounding the Wrigley renovation. First, the newspaper fostered hegemonic consent that endorsed the redevelopment(s) by promoting old tropes of economic development and market growth despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Second, it also produced a parallel discourse that expressed moderate recognition and sympathy to the interest and experience of the community. Without fundamentally challenging neoliberal power, however, such discursive construction was a strategic and instrumental intervention that reinforced the contingencies and boundaries of neoliberal hegemony. Through such investigations, this study shed light on the ongoing rearticulation(s) of the media regime that strategically produced neoliberal rationalities, subjectivities, and discursive antagonism as it assisted to shape urban imageries and political economies of sporting spaces.

Framed by the diffusion of innovations theory, this paper explored the adoption of natural language processing (NLP) in professional sport. NLP, the ability for computer algorithms to be trained for pattern recognition in text data, is of key interest given the surge in text data available for sport business use. Ninety-one teams (73.98%) from the "Big Four" North American professional sports leagues: the National Football League (NFL; 68.75%), the National Basketball Association (NBA; 76.67%), Major League Baseball (MLB; 73.33%), and the National Hockey League (NHL; 77.42%) participated. A multiple methods approach utilizing a discrete derivative of the Bass model, integrative literature review and qualitative description uncovered the mechanisms, timing and key influences surrounding NLP diffusion. The findings highlight NLP diffusion at near peak adoption for the professional sport industry, reveal the organizational influences catalyzing the adoption timing, and create the context for academics and practitioners to embrace NLP.

The novelty effect has a long history in sport facility research with most research examining new facility construction. The present study explores the impact of renovated facilities, specifically the novelty effect, as it pertains to revenue and secondarily attendance. Within, we also explore four different renovation types as classified by the U.S. National Registry of Historic Places to look at any individual impact or revelation using institutions participating in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. Results from ordinary least squares and Tobit estimations from a sample period covering 1993 through 2017 conclude a novelty effect associated with renovations does exist for attendance. However, the effect is shorter in duration and delayed by a few seasons based upon the type of renovation. As for revenues, we find some positive impact on revenues. Those impacts are delayed are on based on certain types of renovation.

The present study seeks to understand more about the contribution the United States’ New Deal Depression-era programs had on college sport stadia. To complete this research, we examined projects used by the schools and communities connected to the National College Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Division I and provide answers to the following research questions: 1) What New Deal programs (i.e., 1933-1942) are connected to college football stadia construction; 2) What regions took advantage of these programs to support the development of their football product; and 3) How can any differences found between regions and New Deal programs be explained? Within the present work, we differentiate the various NEW Deal programs from one another. Next, we make a case for why sport stadia attracted New Deal monies. The results of our study show a substantial commitment to sport stadia, present an explanation on regional differences, and offer a rationale on why there were differences in funding commitments by the various New Deal programs along with the types of innovations incorporated into the new structures or renovations.

The present study sought to understand more about which individuals or groups influenced the development of the University of Colorado’s (CU) football grounds (i.e., American football) and to determine how their evolving complexity (e.g., increasing size, services, technology, and capacities) shaped the image of an elite institution and the cultural ascension of the Rocky Mountain region in the Western United States. More specifically, the current research showcases how football and early playing grounds served as institutional social anchors and influenced or addressed enrollment growth, cultivated alumni relationships, produced or rallied financial support, and promoted the school. Next, the present study determines whether the various construction projects and renovations of CU football athletic grounds match the larger pattern practiced by other institutions of higher education, both regionally and nationally. Finally, the current research demonstrated that CU used football and its stadia, like other institutions of higher education, as a strategic social anchor for students, alumni, local (i.e., Boulder) community members, and businesses to interact or engage one another. As a social anchor, CU football, and its related facilities, helped the institution create and maintain a unique institutional identity among its competitors.