The National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) has experienced significant growth, making it crucial to understand attendance drivers at matches. This study evaluated the impact of themed events and promotions on attendance during the 2023 NWSL season. Using data from all regular-season home matches (N = 167), an OLS regression analyzed how various factors influenced attendance measured as a percentage of stadium capacity. Results revealed that themed events significantly increased attendance, while traditional promotions showed a positive but non-significant effect. External factors including post-World Cup timing, visiting team marquee players, and market demographics also significantly influenced attendance. These findings provide actionable insights for NWSL teams seeking to optimize marketing strategies and enhance match attendance.

This paper examines the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to the in-person sport spectatorship experience of hearing-impaired individuals. The delivery of the core sport product, especially at the stadium, is not equally accessible to individuals with disabilities, particularly for audience with hearing impairments. While the ADA mandates accessibility in public accommodations, its implementation for communication access within sport venues remains inconsistent. Through a focused review of legal frameworks, venue practices, and emerging technologies, the paper identifies gaps in current accessibility efforts and outlines practical recommendations to enhance inclusivity. Key strategies include the use of AI-powered real-time captioning, availability of sign language interpreters, and staff training. These measures not only fulfill ADA requirements but also represent an opportunity to engage a growing and underrepresented market of sport consumers.

The Journal of Applied Sport Management (JASM), originally launched as the Journal of Sport Administration and Supervision in 2009, has published a total of 231 peer-reviewed manuscripts during its first 16 years. While many other journals within this field have been studied to better understand research topics, types, and impact, JASM has yet to be examined. This content analysis study explored 19 variables related to the research topics, methods, authorship, and impact of these articles, and provided important insights from both descriptive and inferential statistics regarding existing trends and opportunities for development for both the journal as a whole and its contributing scholars.

Sport represents humanity’s largest-scale emotion laboratory where intense competitive emotions are practiced within safe boundaries through collective participation. As artificial intelligence evolves to systematize virtual and digital experiences, sport's irreplaceable embodied practice of collective participation becomes more apparent, not less. This conceptual paper demonstrates how artificial intelligence can optimize emotional learning from large-scale sport experiences while highlighting, rather than replacing, their unique human development value. Authors propose a four-level framework positioning sport organizations as comprehensive emotional development centers that leverage AI-powered technologies, including video analytics capturing facial expressions, body movements, and collective synchrony, to systematize emotional intelligence development. The framework creates measurable competitive advantages through enhanced fan loyalty, operational efficiency, risk mitigation, and new revenue streams. Sport’s role as a cornerstone of human capital development through embodied participation will strengthen with artificial intelligence, positioning sport management as a leader in leveraging technology to enrich, not replace, authentic human experiences.

This study examines the relationship between financial investment and team performance in NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football programs from 2010 to 2023. Key variables include total football spending, head coach salaries and bonuses, and win-loss records. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models were used to examine these associations, controlling for conference affiliation by distinguishing between the so-called power and non-power conferences. The results indicate that greater investment in football operations and coaching compensation is significantly associated with higher win percentages, particularly within power conference programs. However, the impact of financial investment on final rankings differs by conference type. Total football spending is a significant predictor of rankings in power conferences, whereas head coach salary is the only significant predictor in non-power conferences. These findings suggest that financial investment enhances team performance, though its effectiveness varies depending on institutional context.

Over the years, sport management scholars have been interested in sport volunteer research. Considering there is a heavy reliance on sport volunteers to successfully stage of sporting events, knowing how to recruit and retain these volunteers allows sport event managers and organizers to continue this success. One such way is through understanding the engagement of sport volunteers, specifically the influences of engagement. Through survey methodology, this study examined how engagement of 464 sport volunteers at college football bowl games influenced motivational aspects. Structural Equation Modeling found that meaningfulness and safety had a significant impact on love and purposive motivation through engagement, but there was no significant relationship with rewards. With these results in mind, there are implications for sport event organizers to remember when working with volunteers.

In a highly competitive sport marketplace, personal branding is a top priority for athletes. Thusly, marketers should leverage athletes’ talents and influence in creative ways to maximize their earning potential. This research explored the attributes of a marketable athlete, as well as promotional strategies to help secure athlete sponsorships. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposefully selected talent marketing practitioners with sport marketing agencies. The findings revealed relatable story, as well as perceived persona, as prevalent themes for a marketable athlete. Additionally, the themes of athlete-brand alignment and social media marketing were important to securing client promotion and sponsorships. These findings extended previous conceptualizations by illuminating the essential role of brand authenticity not only in quality of fan-athlete interaction, but in appeal to prospective sponsors.

Sponsorship opportunities in college athletics have shifted dramatically as athletes have rights to name, image and likeness (NIL). NIL assets, once illegal for college athletes, are prime avenues for brands to reach college sports fans, the largest and most avid sports fan base in the US (Dosh, 2021). Our purpose is to evaluate how these changes “fit” into the overall sponsorship landscape and what will come next. With the impact on brands, properties and consumers over time, we narrow our discussion around “fit,” the most prevalent factor in academic sponsorship research (Wakefield et al., 2020).

A critical yet understudied element in recruiting success is understanding an athletic program’s strengths and weaknesses relative to influential college choice factors. The purpose of this study is to provide practitioners and researchers with a new approach to assess an athletic program’s recruiting process, improve its effectiveness and efficiency, and close the gap between what student-athletes desire in an athletic program and what the program offers. To achieve that end, collegiate football players (N = 66) at a NCAA FBS school were surveyed using a scale consolidated from past college choice factor scholarship. Exploratory factor analysis using principle-component analysis and Varimax rotation was then used to assess the underlying factor structure of the proposed scale and the commonalities among the 48 scale items. From the results, a strategic recruiting model was created that categorizes college choice factors into a four-quadrant matrix consisting of Urgency, Strength, Support, and Concern components.

Motivated by an increasing interpersonal aspect to the profession of sport coaching, the importance of being socially effective as a coach has multiplied in significance. This review specifically considers the social effectiveness construct, political skill, as a crucial aspect to career success through the perspective of a sport coaching lens. Political skill refers to the ability to effectually understand others at work, and to then use that information to influence others to behave in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organizational objective. Political skill is a means through which sport coaches may be able to build and maintain important and influential relationships with key stakeholders (e.g., athletic directors), thus improving the possibility of a successful coaching career. This article presents a review of theoretical foundations for the association between political skill and career success as well as practical applications (e.g., active listening, empowerment, volunteerism) for sport coaches when managing important stakeholder relationships. Research suggestions for the continued advancement of political skill research are also provided.