The determinants of season ticket holder advocacy in the NCAA football bowl subdivision

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>The objective of this paper is to respond to four research questions. The first two as how likely are college football season ticket holders to recommend (1) purchasing a similar season ticket package and (2) attending a home football game, to a friend or colleague. The third question examines if there is a difference between advocacy toward purchasing season tickets as compared to advocacy toward game attendance. Finally, we identify what factors impact advocacy for college football season ticket holders.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>An online survey of 57,240 season ticket holders from 69 different National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision programs was undertaken. The data were analyzed to build a model of the drivers of advocacy in season ticket holders from a conceptual base of advocacy, trust and loyalty.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>The identified drivers include both institutionally influenced factors and factors related to season ticket holder behaviors/demographics. The season ticket holder is arguably the highest level of fan for any sports organization from an affinity perspective and clearly the most important from a business perspective. This research argues that the season ticket holder should not only be the focus of ticket sales efforts but also leveraged as marketing advocates with the objective of attracting additional fans.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>The value of this research is the large sample of data from season ticket holders of NCAA Division 1 football clubs and the resulting learning it provides to researchers and practitioners.</jats:p></jats:sec>

Game Attendance in Luxury: Purchase Motivations of Suites and Club Level Seating in Division I College Football

“…At the Division I FBS level, the stadium and customer service experience has been denoted to motivate spectator attendance of various fan segments (Lawrence et al, 2020;Wakefield & Sloan, 1995). Additionally, denoted spectators were fans of the sport and of the team, where attendance was motivated by vicarious achievement, aesthetics, drama/eustress, physical skill, knowledge acquisition, escape, social elements, and identification with the organization.…”