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This paper aims to provide an integrated legal and marketing perspective on the imminent trademark challenges and opportunities for sports organizations operating in the metaverse.

The approach is a legal commentary that explores the ways in which the current legal framework, especially in the context of trademarks, might need to transform to offer robust protection for sports brands in the virtual marketplaces emerging within the metaverse.

Our analysis reveals that the traditional legal frameworks for trademarks are often inadequate to address the unique challenges posted by the metaverse, such as the issue of virtual goods replication and the global accessibility of branded content. The findings indicate that sport organizations must adopt proactive strategies to monitor and enforce their trademark rights effectively within these expansive digital environments. Moreover, legislative bodies may need to consider reforms or new regulations specifically tailored to the complexities of trademark protection in the digital realm to prevent dilution and misuse of sport brands.

In light of legal and branding issues related to metaverse-based trademarks, this paper is dedicated to examining the legal principles and foundations necessary to enhance the protection of sports brands within the virtual marketplace of the metaverse.

Although current literature offers support for understanding sport consumer behavior from psychological and sociological perspectives, there is a lack of research that examines the effect of one’s emotional response to team outcomes on subsequent economic decisions. The purpose of this paper is to bridge this gap by studying how emotional responses to sport events moderate a typical endowment bias in the secondary ticket market.

This research comprised a 3×2×2 between-participants design with emotional state (positive, negative, and neutral), role (seller, buyer), and fan identification (high, low) as the three factors. Prospect theory and social identity theory guided hypothesis development whereby it was proposed that, depending on the affective response of study participants to positive, negative, or neutral publicity concerning the team, team identification would impact the transaction function (buyers vs sellers) on price values for tickets to a future event.

Findings revealed an interaction effect of emotions and team identification on the endowment effect to the extent that bargaining gaps between sellers and buyers increased or decreased depending on mood states and levels of identification with the team.

This study adds to the literature on emotions and the key role they play in effecting pricing decisions and consumer behavior, especially given fan identification is such a significant area of study with numerous implications for sport business and management.