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The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of social media strategies of sport organizations when an unexpected absence of relevant content occurs. The study explored the typologies of Instagram posts of NHL teams and measured engagement of social media content that was not planned in advance.

A mixed methods approach was utilized through a content analysis of 12 NHL team social media feeds. 502 (n = 502) posts were examined from the period of March 12 – May 26 during which the NHL season was suddenly paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Typologies of posts were identified through a qualitative coding process and ANOVA tests were conducted to examine the effectiveness of each typology in engaging consumers.

This study found that social media strategies of the sampled NHL teams is evidence of disinnovation with digital, as opposed to the previously conceptualized innovative properties that these activities bear. Therefore, in order to achieve the consumer engagement outcomes sought to build stronger relationships with fans and deliver on the expected leveraging capabilities for sponsors, sport marketers must reconsider their current, imbalanced approach and whether the more inherently interactive content should be balanced with entertaining content that requires organic consumer engagement.

This study offers a unique application of UGT, highlighting that social media in a sport context is not just about gratifying consumers, but preventing diminishing engagement and exploitation of users through overuse of sponsorship-laced content.

The purpose of this study was to gather insights from sport marketing professionals and identify key opportunities, challenges and knowledge that sport marketing educators and researchers could utilize in developing curriculum and research agendas.

A qualitative approach was used, and data were collected through in-depth interviews with 15 sport marketing professionals. Participants were asked questions related to the knowledge, skills and experiences that they believe are important for students to have to be successful in the industry, as well as the types of research that would be most useful in their day-to-day work.

Industry professionals noted collaboration, transformation in digital marketing, data and analytics and experiential marketing as key trends facing the industry today. The findings suggest that sport marketing curriculum should focus on soft skill development such as communication, relationship building and empathy alongside hard skill development such as data analysis and storytelling. As well, findings show research areas where scholars can aid practitioners with a focus on consumer insights, technology, measuring ROI and experiential marketing.

With these findings, educators and scholars can better prepare students for successful careers in industry and contribute to the ongoing advancement of the scholarly field. This study serves as a starting point for further research in this area, and it is hoped that it will spark continued collaboration between academia and industry.

There remains a critical issue in sport management scholarship in that the field lacks a well-defined framework for delineating practical implications in research. This research aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What types of practical implications can be identified in sport management research? (2) How can sport management research frame the practical implications of the study in a way that is both theoretically sound and useful for practitioners?

Through a scoping review and within the lens of Jaworski (2011)'s framework for managerial relevance, the study examined 427 articles from European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Management and Sport Management Review published between 2000 and 2020.

This study presents a five-pronged framework that identifies target managers, organizational tasks, time horizons, philosophical impact and desired outcomes. Furthermore, the current research offers suggestions for how to present managerial implications in sport management research.

The findings shed light on the managerial relevance of the recent sport management body of work, developing an important framework for practical implications for the field to reflect and incorporate into future studies. With a theoretical understanding of how to frame the practical implications of sport management research, the gap between academia and industry can continue to narrow, and the relevance to the industry may be more pertinent than ever before.

Built upon the balance theory and schema theory, this study examined the impact of sponsors' intangible attributes, including consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) and brand-event image fit (BEIF), on consumer responses to emerging local events (ELEs), as well as major boundary conditions of this mechanism.

Theoretical hypotheses were tested using multivariate analysis of covariance and structural equation modeling with the data from two experiments: the experiment in the pilot study was used to calibrate sponsor stimuli, and the experiment in the main study was designed to assess consumer responses to different sponsor-event combinations.

Results of this experimental study illustrated the dominant role of CBBE in influencing individuals' perceived event value and intention to participate in the context of ELEs and revealed the noticeable but limited moderating effects of BEIF and sport identification.

This study highlighted the importance of sponsorship in the marketing communications of ELEs and suggested prioritizing the overall attributes of sponsors in the sponsor-selection. This study also called for more research attention directed toward the intangible benefits that sporting events could receive from sponsorship deals.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage scholarly inquiries to critically examine broad perspectives of marketing and business operations in the sport industry of growing economies.

A comprehensive review of literature was the primary research method to introduce the following critical questions, “what are the major challenges in the sport industry of developing economies in a globalized market environment and what to do?”.

Seven articles are selected based on their theoretical and practical contributions.

This special issue is committed to trigger more investigations into sport businesses in developing countries and ultimately advancing theories and seeking solutions.