Purpose This study seeks to explore the strategic use of social media by soccer teams in Ecuador with the explicit aim of securing and sustaining sponsorship relationships. Design/methodology/approach Guided by relationship marketing theory, which highlights the importance of trust, commitment, and engagement in building long-term relationships (Morgan and Hunt, 1994), this qualitative study employed in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Marketing Directors from professional soccer clubs in the top league in Ecuador. Findings The study found that Ecuadorian soccer clubs increasingly use social media, especially WhatsApp, TikTok and Instagram, to engage fans, attract sponsors and measure return on investment. Four key themes emerged: uneven digital ecosystem development, data-driven sponsorship valuation, authentic content alignment with brand values, and proactive trust and crisis management in sponsor relations. Research limitations/implications This study also contains several limitations. The analysis was based on qualitative interviews with a limited number of participants, and detailed quantitative and longitudinal data were not available. As an exploratory study, its findings are context-specific and should not be generalized across all Latin American markets. Practical implications The findings aim to provide best practices for leveraging social media to attract and retain sponsors. These insights will inform best practices for other clubs and leagues within Ecuador and the broader Latin American region. Originality/value This study reveals how Ecuador's deep soccer culture and social context shape digital strategies, with clubs using Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp to attract and retain sponsors.

University athletes have a limited time (usually four years) of eligibility to perform for their institutions. The dynamic nature of university athletics in the United States results in a continuous influx of newcomers to the various teams. Furthermore, athletes with diverse cultural backgrounds have to adapt to the team culture to be able to perform at their highest level. Considering that, the integration of new athletes is a process that happens on a large scale at the beginning of every season and can have an impact on their performance throughout the season and beyond. Delineating the tactics coaches employ to facilitate this process warrants considerable attention. In this study, the authors focused on the onboarding process of newcomer university athletes who have a significant difference between their culture and the team culture. The authors paid special attention to the university athlete's perception of the ability of their coach to structure the onboarding process. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure athlete perceptions of tactics used by their coach during the onboarding process of newcomers into university athletics, based on Churchill (1979) and DeVellis’ (2016) scale development procedures.

The population of international student-athletes (ISAs) at the collegiate level has dramatically impacted the sporting landscape in North America. Whereas a passionate group of fans is vital to the success of a sports team, the development of that athlete–fan relationship has grown due to the increased media attention on athlete personal branding and social media presence. The present study explores ISAs’ perceptions of social media use for personal branding, the challenges they face, and the extent to which they interact with fans through social media in a post-pandemic context. Athletes have pivoted more recently from personal appearances and other face-to-face interactions to more virtual means of interacting with fans. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with ISAs from various sports within Divisions I and II of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Four main themes emerged: (1) social media consumption versus content creation, (2) effects of name, image, and likeness regulations, (3) personal brand building on social media, and (4) fan interaction on social media for ISAs. The study aims to inform various collegiate athletics stakeholders on the potential value of ISAs’ personal branding for fan interaction and how this has been impacted by current name, image, and likeness restrictions.

Sport managers and sport industry professionals must understand how to operate in an ever-evolving, global sport marketplace, and this can be initiated through education and curriculum development (LeCrom & Naylor, 2020). More specifically, the area within global learning that has been applied to the field of sport management in this category is Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). A project incorporating the principles of COIL involves a virtual exchange or telecollaboration whereby faculty members from separate institutions in different parts of the world use online technology to facilitate student collaboration to increase intercultural competencies. In this study, the authors implement a COIL project from the creation of learning outcomes and defining the details of the project, to determining the deliverables and evaluation rubrics. The authors followed Bank’s (2003) Transformation Approach for the integration of multicultural content into a curriculum. The curricular setting for this project is a collaboration between a sport and legal issues course (United States) and a business marketing course (Ecuador) with a focus on the COIL concept to garner student collaboration in the area of personal brand building of student-athletes in the collegiate athletic context.

COPYRIGHT © 2023 Galily, Tamir, Pack and Spaaij. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Editorial: Spectator sport and fan behavior: A prologue

Citation: Galily Y, Pack S and Tamir I (2024) Editorial: Spectator sport and fan behavior: a sequel. Front. Psychol. 15:1414407. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1414407

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant number of people experienced higher levels of depression. Concerning the unprecedented impact of depression on physical health, it is important to combat this situation. Physical activity (PA) has been found to have a positive effect on reducing depression (Schuch et al., 2018). However, there is a lack of a systematic review of the association between PA and depression during these unique times of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was designed to serve as a meta-analysis of the overall effects of PA on depression in studies conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Empirical studies on the link between PA and depression were searched from academic databases including PubMed and EBSCO. A total of 15 studies (total participants were 170,195) qualified for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Comprehensive Meta-Analysis version 3 was used to compute weighted average effect size and random-effects analyses were conducted. The average effect size (odds ratio) across all 15 studies was 0.722 (95% CI = 0.651, 0.800, Z = -6.229, p < .001), demonstrating that study participants with high levels of PA had lower incidence of depression, compared to those with low PA levels. For the subgroup analysis, significant effects of high PA were found in the 11 studies conducting before the COVID 19 as well as in the four studies that assessed the influence of the COVID-19 (odds ratio = .734, p < .001; odds ratio = .683, p < .001 respectively). The Q-value (Q = 41.061, p < .001) and I-squared value (65.904) demonstrated that the studies were heterogeneous. The main finding of this study supported the evidence that PA can play an important role in reducing depression, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health professionals should incorporate the significance of improving PE levels into social distancing guidelines (CDC, 2020).

In times of conflict or crisis, the media tends to “rally round the flag” and express mostly patriotic views in its news coverage. The current study aims to examine whether this phenomenon is also true for other covered topics that are not hard news related—while focusing on the coverage of the sports section. Examining the coverage of the sports sections in three leading Israeli newspapers during the Second Lebanon War (July–August 2006), the findings show that the rally effect was salient in sports coverage in the initial stages of the war. Three central themes were identified: (a) expressions of patriotism, (b) discussions about the foreign players, and (c) minimal criticism. In accordance with previous literature, the evidence suggests that the rally-round-the-flag concept has an effect on coverage of sports news not directly related to the conflict. Here, too, it is shown that sport plays a significant component in the formation and strengthening of the national spirit.

Recent literature refers to internships as one of the most impactful aspects of an academic degree program and a catalyst for developing necessary employability skills (Narayanan, Olk, & Fukami, 2010; Shoenfelt, Stone, & Kottke, 2013). The purpose of this study was to utilize internship site supervisor evaluations to assess interns’ skills, knowledge, and ability as a means of gaining a greater understanding of employability in the sport industry. A total of 420 usable, final supervisor evaluations were gathered from the academic years 2012-2013 through 2018-2019. Interns’ quality of work ( = .49, p < .001) was the most important predictor in explaining their performance as an intern, followed by their attitude ( = .20, p < .001), dependability ( = .12, p = .002), quality of oral communication ( = .10, p < .001) and maturity ( = .07, p = .015). Similarly, interns’ quality of work ( = .37, p < .001) was the most important predictor for their employability, followed by attitude ( = .24, p < .001), quality of oral communication ( = .15, p < .001) and quality of writing ( = .09, p = .020). Students, higher education institutions and industry practitioners are in a constant flux between what is offered within the sport management curriculum and what is required by the sport industry (Emery et al., 2012). Other scholars (e.g., de Schepper et al., 2020) also found this as a challenging balance between developing well-rounded graduates and providing appropriate sport management job opportunities.

National Coaching Standards: Perceptions and the Undertaking of Core Responsibilities by Beginner, Intermediate and Elite Sport Coaches Simon M. Pack, Sungwon Kim, Carol A. Fletcher, David P. Hedlund Abstract In recent years, the responsibilities of sport coaches have expanded to include more than just directing practices, overseeing training and game management. As a result, a greater focus is being placed on providing coaches with education, knowledge and training in-line with the evolving National Standards for Sport Coaches (SHAPE America, 2019) and the seven areas of core responsibilities: (1) setting vision, goals and standards; (2) engaging in and supporting ethical practices; (3) building relationships with stakeholders; (4) developing a safe sport environment; (5) creating a positive and inclusive sport environment; (6) conducting practices and preparing for competition; and (7) striving for continuous improvement. To understand the current state of sport coaching education in the United States, online survey research of beginner, intermediate and elite coaches (n=1,235) was undertaken about (1) how frequently sport coaches use the knowledge and skills listed in the national standards and (2) in order to be a successful sport coach, how important is it to be able to use the knowledge and skills described in the national standards. Analysis of variance testing for 39 of 42 standards focused on frequency of use found statistically significant differences between the three groups of coaches. Additional analysis of variance testing for the three groups of coaches regarding perceptions of the importance of each standard showed that 36 of 42 comparisons had statistically significant differences. A discussion of the results and implications for sport coaches, coaching educators and national sport coaching standards are provided. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jpesm.v8n2a6

The use of advisory boards in higher education has long served as a means for colleges, universities and academic units to gain support and guidance. Sport management is no stranger to this practice as the dynamic nature of the industry requires a concerted effort by academicians to improve program offerings. With this goal in mind, the paper outlines the use of students as stakeholders in their learning process through the formation of a student advisory board in sport management. This advisory board would work together with academic faculty and administration in a similar capacity as would an industry advisory board. The board would serve as a means of providing feedback on curriculum development, networking opportunities, effective teaching modalities, industry trends and other programming facets. Student advisory boards in sport management education is an application of the foundation established in the area of library sciences and from practitioner advisory boards in business and other sectors. Implementation of such an endeavor requires buy-in from faculty and administration to incorporate student voice in the educational process. The paper includes further discussion in relation to student advisory board establishment, role, membership and benefits.

With so many popular and unique sports played around the world, one of the most important challenges for the International Olympic Committee is deciding which ones merit inclusion in the Olympic Games. In recent years, a spirited debate has ensued surrounding electronic sports, also known as esports, and the possible inclusion of this type of competitive video gaming at the Olympic Games. Considerations centre around the sporting legitimacy of electronic sport, which games might be appropriate to play at events such as the Olympics, and whether esports epitomise the values and ideals promoted by the Olympic Movement. There may be substantial and contrasting information on the topic and these aforementioned questions, but the growing popularity and significance of esports are noteworthy. Over the years, numerous policy entrepreneurs and stakeholders, including governing bodies, intellectual property rights holders, teams, players and sponsors, have all put forward various agenda and policy solutions in response to these questions. In this article, multiple perspectives on the potential inclusion of esports at the Olympic Games are presented and discussed in the context of both the Multiple Streams Framework and Actor-Network Theory. It is the hope of the authors that this article will fuel further discussions on the important topic of the possible, future inclusion of esports at the Olympic Games.

Around the world, there is a growing movement to improve sport coaching education. In recent years, the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) has begun to address questions related to the education, training and development of sport coaches through the publication of the International Sport Coaching Framework (ISCF) and the Sport Coaching Bachelor Degree Standards (SCBDS). In the United States, because sport coaches can undertake a wide variety of coaching-related educational opportunities, the United States Olympic Committee has taken steps to address the disparity in training through the publishing of the Quality Coaching Framework (QCF). All of these documents provide valuable information about the best principles for educating and training sport coaches. While principles, standards and theories provide valuable overarching information about how to organize education, specific information about what topics should actually be taught in education programs is still lacking. In this manuscript, utilizing principles of participation versus performance sport and professional knowledge, intra- and interpersonal skills, information about what and when to teach important sport coaching topics is proposed.

IntroductionIn the recent proceedings of the Academy of Management (Maertz, Keith & Dalton, 2015) sought to further explain an age-old question within management and organizational behavior - why do people leave their job? And more specifically, why do the good performers and the poor performers leave? Mounting evidence exists that both and factors impact turnover decisions for employees (e.g., Mano-Negin & Kirschenbaum, 1999). This assertion is largely based on the quality and quantity of opportunities for alternative employment (Hui, 1988; Mueller & Price, 1990). Intuitively it makes sense that poor performers would be driven by the factors to leave a job or organization while the good performers would be pulled away to another organization. Within, American intercollegiate athletics there is a wide variety of mid-level employment from institution to institution demanding on the size and budget of the athletic department and the relative significance of that particular program within the scheme of the institution. These mid-level administrators are vertically moving from institution to institution and are typically looking at these jobs as stepping-stone jobs until something better comes along.As such, human resource professionals (athletic management supervisors) and researchers alike are often confronted with the question of how benefits can improve the predictability of employees' subsequent attachment or commitment to the organization and the job itself. Further evidence suggests that organizational benefits may have a major impact on employee attitudes thus preventing turnover behavior (Allen, Clark & McDermid, 1993). Turnover decisions reflect a balance among the following: (a) career-related preferences, (b) attitudes and aspirations, and (c) the extent to which one's employment is secured. In sum, the research question addressed in this study was whether the factors are able to overcome the impact of the factors in predicting the turnover intentions of intercollegiate athletic administrators.Push factors, or careerist attitudes, are indicative of a stay on the job only until I find a better one attitude (Mano-Negin & Kirschenbaum, 1999, p. 691). In addition, careerists may leave their jobs just simply to leave (Louis, 1982), because of an over-reaction to inhospitable job situations (Landau & Hammer, 1986), or based on perceptions of being more cosmopolitan (Kirschenbaum & Goldberg, 1976) and more narcissistic (Lasch, 1979) than colleagues. In other words, the strength of middle level athletic administrators' careerist attitudes (push factors) has consequences for turnover intentions. On the other hand, factors are more closely related to Meyer and Allen's (1991) conceptualization of continuance commitment.This suggests that the accrual of benefits increases middle level athletic administrators' vested interest in remaining with their particular athletic department because such benefits would be lost upon leaving. This also differs from (Maertz et al., 2015) notion that the push comes from within and the pull comes from outside the organization. In this case the pull from within is strong when commitment is high. Furthermore, such investments, measured at the individual level by the degree of satisfaction with organizational benefits, also dissuade turnover intentions.Beyond the aforementioned notion of promotion from the middle level to more senior positions is quite relevant with this group of administrations and these employees serve a valuable role in the day to day operations of an intercollegiate athletic department. The variables under study in this particular research endeavor necessitate the use of athletic administrators in highly structured, hierarchal environments with several levels of accountability. Moreover, voluntary turnover at the middle level of athletic administration can be extremely costly and detrimental to the success and culture of an athletic department. …

Using a sample of 152 student employees, the authors examined the relationship between organisational justice and Perceived Organisational Support (POS). Specifically this study examined the degree that distributive, procedural, and interactional justice influenced student employee POS. Additionally, the authors explored whether perceptions of justice differed based on sex, tenure of employment, and type of supervision. All three dimensions of organisational justice were significantly related to POS, with distributive justice demonstrating the greatest effect. Based on findings from this study, it appears that employee perceptions of workplace fairness serve as an important determinant of POS.

Given the importance and relative financial investments institutions formulate regarding student-athletes, intercollegiate coaches and administrators must make strategic decisions in recruiting and retaining them. A lack of student-athlete persistence is detrimental to individual teams and athletic departments as a whole; thus, every effort needs to be made to retain these individuals. Furthermore, Riemer and Chelladurai (1998) argue that the success of an intercollegiate athletic department should be, at least to some degree, based on the satisfaction of its student-athletes. An important first step in this regard is to understand the dynamics of student-athletes' continued participation with (or intention to leave) their institution and their satisfaction. Based on Meyer and Allen's (1991) multidimensional conceptualization of commitment (i.e., affective, normative, and continuance commitment), the purpose of this study was to (a) assess student-athlete commitment, (b) apply the multidimensional conceptualization of commitment to three relevant foci (i.e., coach, institution, and team), and (c) relate these components of student-athlete commitment to the student-athletes' intention to leave their current university and satisfaction (with their coach, with their university, and with their team). In addition, differences in levels of commitment were examined based on gender, rank (i.e., upper-vs. under-classmen), and playing status on the team (i.e., starter vs. non-starter).Student-athletes from 11 team sports from a large, Division I-A, Midwestern university were selected to participate in this study (n = 190). Results of the study showed female student-athletes were significantly higher in their levels of commitment to their university and team, while male student-athletes were significantly higher in their affective commitment to their head coach. With regard to playing status, starters were significantly higher in their commitment to their coach.Commitment was significantly related to intention to leave for all three foci examined. Of the three, commitment to team explained the most variance (17.5%) in intention to leave. All three foci of commitment were also significantly related to satisfaction, with commitment to coach explaining the most variance (68.6%). Possible explanations for these findings, along with directions for future research on student-athlete commitment will be discussed.