Management Matters
Race and Risk in Professional Football : Adding Insult to Injury - Race-norming and the Long History of Scientific Racism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tyran Steward, Theresa Runstedtler
This paper reflects a current shift in the direction of sport studies, moving away from the triumphal narratives that often situate sport uncritically as a site of racial progress toward critical sport studies that complicate histories that are celebrated and even cherished. Specifically, I explore the fraught relationship between race, sport, and health equity through the prism of the NFL’s concussion settlement and the controversial practice of race-norming, that is, “using a person’s racial classification as a factor in adjusting the results of medical, neurological, psychological, or other similar assessments and tests.” My paper examines how the NFL built race-norming into its concussion settlement, thereby permitting race to become a crucial factor in determining which dementia claims were considered to be valid and in dictating the eligibility of a former professional football player to receive a payout for his declining mental and physical health. In so doing, I reveal the centrality of race-norming to dementia diagnoses, emphasizing how the practice discriminated against African Americans who were kept from securing payments through the landmark NFL concussion settlement that had been acclaimed as a major victory for former players. Aside from exploring the intersections of race and science in relation to the utilization of race-norming within the NFL, I also demonstrate how such practices are rooted in the legacy of scientific racism, which has long guided the development, perpetuation, and structuring of racialized stereotypes and tropes about African Americans and their fitness for full participation in society and sport.
The Effect of Coaches’ Gender on the Burnout and Well-being of Collegiate Female Athletes
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Ignagni
The importance of burnout is especially true for collegiate athletes, as added factors affect their burnout rate and mental health. A student-athlete burnout rate can be affected by their overall well-being and the satisfaction of their perceived social support. Social support can help student-athletes cope with the burnout they may feel due to their sport participation. One such social support factor is the perceived support received by a head coach. Differences in coaching style and socialization of both coach and athlete due to their gender affect both the burnout rate and well-being of collegiate athletes, especially female athletes. Using the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire to measure burnout, the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale to measure well-being, and the Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire to measure athlete satisfaction with their coach, college athletes were surveyed. Results demonstrated that female student-athletes with male head coaches had higher overall burnout rates, higher emotional and physical exhaustion, and higher sport devaluation than female athletes with female coaches. Additionally, female student-athletes with a male head coach had lower satisfaction with personal treatment with their coach compared to females with a female coach. Furthermore, male student-athletes had higher feelings of well-being than female student-athletes. These findings indicate that coaches may need to alter coaching style based on the gender of their athletes, particular female athletes, to aid in alleviating burnout, exhaustion and sport devaluation.
Scoring with Fan Engagement: A New Playbook for Applying CEV in Sports Organizations
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marelo Homrich
The study explores the adaptation of the Customer Engagement Value (CEV) framework within the sports industry, highlighting the unique dynamics of fan engagement and its implications for sports marketing strategies. Recognizing the limitations of traditional CEV components—Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Customer Referral Value (CRV), Customer Influencer Value (CIV), and Customer Knowledge Value (CKV)—in capturing the full spectrum of fan contributions, this research proposes an expanded model that incorporates the emotional and communal aspects of sports fandom, termed "fan value." Through in-depth interviews with executives from professional soccer clubs in Brazil, the study employs qualitative methods to uncover how these organizations perceive and measure fan value. The findings reveal that sports organizations require a nuanced approach to customer value estimation, one that accounts for the passion, loyalty, and communal engagement inherent in sports fandom. The implications of this research offer practical insights for sports marketers aiming to enhance fan engagement and leverage the full potential of fan contributions to sports organizations.
The Most Effective Digital Sports Corporate Strategy for Quito's Soccer Teams View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mario Morales
This research project analyzes the corporate digital sports strategy through a comparative methodology about the official Fan pages of Facebook of Quito's first division soccer teams from Ecuador during the first stage of the championship LigaPro 2022. Networks are the fastest, effective, dynamic and full of creativity ways of communication that allow transmitting emotions through messages in order to connect with an audience. The study is conducted through their content compiled from public information of the teams' network accounts. Additionally, the analytics of these Fan pages is presented in a quantitative and qualitative form; over positioning metrics, trends over time, and the posts that have achieved the best impact overall the interaction from the users.
