Articles in this issue:

  • John Grady
    Mark S. Nagel

    On February 15, 2013, Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel’s licensing company, JMAN2 Enterprises LLC, filed suit against Eric Vaughn, who had been selling a variety of shirts that featured the phrase “Keep Calm and Johnny Football” with various uses of Texas A&M’s color scheme and/or protected logos (Watson, 2013a). Manziel filed to register a trademark in his nickname “Johnny Football” during the 2012 season prior to winning the Heisman Trophy (the trademark registration was still pending approval before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office [USPTO] at the time of this writing). His...Read more

  • Cindy Lee
    Hyejin Bang
    Donghun Lee

    The purpose of this study was to examine whether there is a fit between nature of negative incidents (competency-related vs. integrity-related) and response types (apology vs. denial) in recovering trust and inducing forgiveness in the sport context. It was hypothesized that there is an interaction between nature of incident and response types: Apology works better for competency-related incidents while denial has a better fit with integrity-related incidents. The pilot study was conducted with a hypothetical persona, and the results of MANOVA showed that there was no interaction, but main...Read more

  • Patrick Walsh
    Galen Clavio
    M. David Lovell
    Matthew Blaszka

    Research on both brand personality and social media in sport is still in their respective developmental stages, and to date no research has examined the impact of social media use on sport brands. This study was the first to examine if differences exist in the brand personality of a sport event between those that use the events social media page and those that do not. After surveying fans of a major National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) event, the results revealed that eight of the nine brand personality items were rated significantly higher for users of the event’s Facebook page...Read more

  • Aron Levin
    Joe Cobbs
    Fred Beasley
    Chris Manolis

    Advertising, sponsorships, and other marketing communications are commonplace in the contemporary world of sports. Are sports fans irritated and annoyed by this commercial bombardment or are they accepting of the role of sports advertising? This study investigates consumers’ perceptions of commercial messages during televised sporting events. The results indicate that fans of two of the most popular US sports (NFL and NASCAR) generally have high levels of sport commercial acceptance (SCA) in televised broadcasts. NASCAR fans—particularly those highly identified with the sport—are the most...Read more

  • Cody T. Havard
    Daniel L. Wann
    Timothy D. Ryan

    The current study quantitatively investigated how fan perceptions and willingness to consider committing anonymous acts of aggression toward participants of the rival teams differed between a rival in a current conference and an anticipated one in a new conference. A sample of 168 online fans of teams affected by conference realignment were administered a survey containing the Sport Rivalry Fan Perception Scale (SRFPS: Havard, Gray, Gould, Sharp, & Schaffer, 2013) and questions regarding willingness to consider committing anonymous acts of aggression (Wann, Haynes, McLean, & Pullen...Read more