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The purpose of this paper is to examine the community recovery efforts undertaken by Houston, Texas, sport organizations following Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Forty-eight media articles, 138 social media posts from Houston athletes and five semi-structured interviews with Houston sport organization executives underwent a content analysis to categorize responses of disaster relief activities. All eleven categories were identified. Three themes emerged from additional analysis: organizations serving as communication hubs, earned trust and internal organizational support. Benchmark examples in key categories are also discussed.

This paper provided focused analysis of the reactions of several Houston area sport organizations during the immediate disaster recovery period. Organizations participated in both tangible and emotional recovery efforts. The long-term impacts of these efforts will require additional investigation. The findings of this case study are specific to the relief efforts in Houston, Texas, following Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and may not be generalizable beyond this scope.

Sport organizations and community leaders can better prepare for future disaster responses by gaining insight into the roles and procedures enacted by the Houston teams following the Hurricane in 2017.

This study provides a detailed examination of the responses of several Houston sport organizations following Hurricane Harvey, including perspectives from executives inside of the organizations. Utilizing social anchor theory, this paper expands our understanding of the impacts sport organizations may produce in their roles as social anchors during disaster relief and recovery.

Throughout sport, the incidence of commercial sponsorship is increasing and shows no signs of slowing. This case study examines the negative consequences that can arise when a corporate stadium naming rights partner (Enron) becomes embroiled in financial and ethical controversies and how its collapse affected the team that uses the stadium for its home games (Major League Baseball's Houston Astros). It examines public relations strategies and tactics the Astros used to disassociate themselves from Enron and to recapture public support.

The current study examines (1) the relationships among the crisis response, trust and negative behavioral intentions (i.e. avoidance and revenge), (2) the mediation role of trust in the crisis communication of sports organization and (3) the moderation effect of team identification between the crisis response and trust.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from 324 Major League Baseball (MLB) fans who met specific criteria (i.e. background information; knowing about the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal and how the team responded to it). Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings showed that perceived adequacy of the crisis response positively influenced sports fans' perceived trust. This trust was negatively associated with revenge and avoidance intentions. The mediation effect of trust was also found in the relationship between the crisis response and both avoidance and revenge intentions. Regarding the interaction effect of team identification, however, the relationship between the crisis response and trust was not moderated by team identification levels.

The present study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of crisis communication in sports fans' perceptions and behavioral intentions. It illuminates a psychological process through which perceived adequacy of crisis response reduces negative behavioral intentions through trust.

This research examines the fan-team-sponsor relationship. It focuses on how the sports team's response to negative sponsor behaviour affects fan/spectator attitudes towards the sponsor. Results indicate that highly identified fans have significantly more positive attitudes towards the team sponsor than fans who are lower in identification. Highly identified fans informed of a negative action by a team sponsor felt more favourably towards the sponsor if the team continued, rather than terminated, their relationship with the sponsor.

The purpose of this paper is to test empirically the impact of negative information about a celebrity spokesperson on consumers' perceptions of the endorsed brand. In addition, it is the first study to examine the reverse relationship: the impact of negative information about the brand on the celebrity endorser.

A two‐group, post‐test‐only, randomized experimental design was utilized to test the hypotheses. Data were collected by a survey of 247 college students.

The results of an experiment indicate that when respondents are exposed to negative information about a celebrity endorser, a negative transference of affect in the endorsement relationship will occur. However, when the situation is reversed and the respondents are exposed to negative information about the brand, the transference of affect is mitigated.

The present study provides a starting‐point for further research on negative information transference in the celebrity endorsement relationship.

It is crucial that retailers be aware of the risks associated with using celebrities to endorse their stores and products. Given that these results provide tentative support for the commonly held belief that a decline in the celebrity's image can impact the image of the brand, it is important that retailers carefully choose an endorser who currently has a good image and will likely be able to uphold this image in the future.

The paper introduces and empirically examines one explanation of how negative information may impact the celebrity advertising process.

Stadium naming rights programs have proliferated over the past decade, yet we have no direct evidence that these types of sponsorship programs help companies develop their long-term brand equity or even provide a short-term boost to corporate value. This paper examines the impact that naming rights programs have had on the stock values of the corporate sponsors. Using event study analysis, it is found that there are mixed responses to these types of programs. A discussion is provided which helps to explain the mixed results and provides communications mangers with some suggestions on creating more effective naming rights programs.

This chapter covers many angles of the role national identity plays in the production, consumption, and reception of sport via social media channels. More specifically, it explores what sociology specifically brings to the equation regarding theories of group identity, identifies the core studies that represent what we currently know about national identification in the social mediated sports world, and determines fruitful themes and paths for subsequent investigation.

The approach to the chapter largely involves the synthesis of a diverse set of literatures in the academic spaces of nationalism, fan behavior, and social media.

The chapter advances the argument that only a handful of investigations in social media content focus on how national identity is forged within sport. Global events (Olympics, World Cup) seem to be the current areas of investigation, with social media facilitating various forms of BIRGing and CORFing depending largely on real-time results.

Relevant and understudied areas for future investigation on the nexus of sport, social media, and national identity include gendered correlates, GORFing (Glory Out of Reflected Failure), redefinitions of sport fandom, eSports, and the application of new technologies, applications and platforms in the social media space.

The chapter establishes a foundation of knowledge triangulating sport, social media, and national identity while creating warrants for key scholarly agenda advancement in the future.

Sports economists have consistently found that winning positively impacts team revenue fans prefer to allocate their entertainment dollars to winning teams. Previous research has also found that fans do not have a preference for how their team wins. However, this research ignores the significant variability in revenue that can exist between teams with similar attendance figures. The authors contribute to the literature by testing whether profit maximizing teams should pay different amounts for different types of production by estimating the marginal revenue product of a win due to offense, defense and pitching.

Using data from the 2010–2017 Major League Baseball seasons and an Ordinary Least Squares-Fixed Effects approach, the authors test whether a unit of offensive, defensive and pitching production generates differing amounts of team revenue both before and after revenue sharing. The authors then test if team Wins Above Replacement is a good approximation of actual wins while accounting for the previously observed nonlinear relationship between wins and revenue.

The authors found that marginal revenue product estimates in the postrevenue sharing model for mowar, pwar and dwar are nearly identical to each other. Further, after predicting prerevenue sharing, the authors find that fans have no preference for mowar, pwar or dwar play styles.

The findings illustrate that team decision-makers appear to be acting irrationally by paying more for offense than they do for defense. Thus, the findings suggest that team decision-makers should value defensive wins and pitching wins at the same rate as offensive wins on the free agent market.