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Projecting authenticity is crucial for athletes engaged in personal branding. Prior scholarship has emphasized the “frontstage” of authenticity: what tactics athletes use to present themselves and how audiences perceive such tactics. But it has not yet examined the “backstage”: why athletes pursue authenticity and the strategic considerations involved in such ongoing self-presentations. Using a constructivist grounded theory that draws on interviews with 30 elite athletes engaged in personal branding, we unpack these backstage processes, which are not straightforward but entail an ongoing cycle of authenticity negotiation. Our model of authenticity negotiation identifies conflicting authenticity demands and constraints imposed by various actors, which athletes attempt to resolve over time using a range of authenticity management tactics. By modeling the backstage processes in authenticity negotiation, our research integrates, contextualizes, and suggests extensions to the existing frontstage work on authenticity. It offers guidance to athletes and practitioners on managing athlete brands and stakeholder collaborations.

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.

Athletic Diversity and Inclusion Officers (ADIOs) are novel leadership positions in sport tasked with creating and sustaining diverse, inclusive, and equitable athletic departments. Interestingly, Black women have assumed many of the Division I ADIO positions. Thus, they seek to lead inclusionary efforts in an organizational field with sustained issues of gender and racial exclusion. This hermeneutic phenomenological study applied a Black feminist lens to examine what it means to be a Black woman ADIO who leads diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in gendered and racialized Division I collegiate athletic departments. This study has three themes: (a) the ADIO position elicits the Strong Black Woman stereotype, inducing emotional fatigue; (b) Black women ADIOs are positioned as athletic departments’ conscience, often interpreting substantive and symbolic diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; and (c) Black women ADIOs center their perception of affirmative prescriptions of Black womanhood in an attempt to withstand the adverse realities of ADIO leadership.

Value co-creation for service innovation is a rapidly developing concept in the current competitive market. Prior studies emphasize the conceptual aspects of the value co-creation, with limited research focusing on the interactive effects between firms and their customers created in the process of value co-creation. We propose a framework for synthesizing the interactive concepts associated with service innovation based on the service-dominant logic. We recruited participants (N = 448) from 11 sports clubs in Iran. Results indicated that openness and consumer engagement facilitate value co-creation, which in turn leads to perceived service innovation. Furthermore, perceived brand interactivity moderated the mediating role of value co-creation in the relationship between consumer engagement and perceived service innovation. Results from this research suggest openness and consumer engagement are key antecedents of value co-creation and highlight the significance of perceived brand interactivity and value co-creation in promoting service innovation at sports clubs.