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Sport video games (SVGs) are a highly consumed media source among 18- to 34-yr-old sport consumers. Many corporations have become advertisers or sponsors of SVGs to reach this consumer segment. This case study examined the systematic relationships among SVG motives, consumption levels, and sponsorship effectiveness. Research participants (N = 213) were SVG gamers who responded to a survey. The proposed hierarchical relationships were tested in a structural model analysis to determine the effectiveness of SVGs. The fit indices showed that the model fit the data well, indicating that, sequentially, SVG motivations influenced game play frequency, awareness of sponsoring brands in SVGs, attitude toward the sponsoring brands, and future purchase intentions of sponsoring products. Researchers and practitioners may consider applying SVG motivational factors to enhance SVG play frequency so as to enhance the awareness of and attitude toward sponsoring brands, which would in turn promote behavioral intentions for consuming the sponsoring brands.

Over the past few decades, college sport in the United States has increasingly adopted a commercial institutional logic when engaging in an athletics “arms race.” With decisions by some athletic directors to eliminate certain nonrevenue Olympic sport programs for spending reallocation, it stands to reason that programs such as men’s wrestling will need to enhance their revenue streams to remain viable in future years. The purpose of the study was to investigate the motivational preferences of online wrestling consumers (N = 451) to provide a core foundation for the development of strategies to enhance interest in the college-wrestling product. In addition to illustrating that online consumers responded most favorably to the sport-related wrestling motives, the data also supported the notion that the motivational preferences of consumers varied when focusing on the demographic information of participants.

As online business models have evolved, learning what drives users’ consumptive behaviors has gained increasing interest to sport researchers and sport properties. An increasing number of sport properties are expanding, and deriving revenues from, their presence on digital-media platforms (e.g., MLB, NBA, NFL, UFC, WWE, etc.). Of the sport properties mentioned, none are more reliant on digital-media activity than the Ultimate Fighting Championship. As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the motivations and related consumption habits of users of non-subscription-based (i.e., free-to-use) online message boards. Findings suggest that message-board users find value in the opportunities for interactivity and that heavy online mixed-martial-arts users watch more events and purchase more merchandise than those who spend less time online.

Team sports have become a vital informal learning setting in which athletes are taught, motivated, and mentored by their coaches. This experimental study examined the effects of coach verbal aggression on athlete motivation and perceptions of coach credibility. Results revealed that athletes exposed to a verbally aggressive coach were significantly less motivated and perceived the coach as less credible than athletes who were exposed to a coach who used an affirming style. With respect to credibility, athletes perceived a verbally aggressive coach as significantly less competent, trustworthy, and caring than a coach who used an affirming style. Implications and areas for future research are discussed. Case-study questions are presented for discussion by scholars and students.

An Internet-based survey was posted on the Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of 1 predominantly social and 1 predominantly parasocial athlete to ascertain the similarities and differences between their follower sets in terms of parasocial interaction development and follower motivations. Analysis of the data revealed a sense of heightened interpersonal closeness based on the interaction style of the athlete. While followers of the social athlete were driven by interpersonal constructs, followers of the parasocial athlete relied more on media conventions in their interaction patterns. To understand follower motivations, exploratory factor analyses were conducted for both follower sets. For followers of the social athlete, most of the interactivity, information-gathering, personality, and entertainment items loaded together. Unlike followers of the social athlete, fanship and community items loaded alongside information-gathering items for followers of the parasocial athlete. The implications of these and other findings are discussed further.