Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to explore stakeholder response to the increase in corporate involvement in college sports. As tough economic times have been steadily realized into a recession, the rise in educational costs and in amount of money required to run athletic programs have placed a tremendous need on athletic departments for money. As a result, a popular trend of outsourcing or selling, marketing rights to third party entities has been a quick way to raise needed revenues. In the selling of these marketing rights, athletic departments have essentially opened the door to allow for an increase in corporation involvement at these athletic events. This paper utilizes Fishbein and Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to discover how the increase in marketing efforts are impacting their stakeholders, or rather season ticket holders. The universities used in this study have within the last three years recently sold their marketing rights and belong to the same network company, ISP Sports. These universities are: Brigham Young University (BYU), Texas Christian University (TCU), and the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). The first factor studied showed stakeholders of these universities hold negative beliefs about the impact the marketing efforts are having on their purchasing habits. The second factor studied demonstrated a slight negative normative belief towards a social perception of the willingness to support sponsors who support their university. The third factor studied demonstrated a somewhat positive belief towards perceived control over the marketing efforts. As a result, this case study shows a composite negative behavioral intention trend.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Fine Arts and Communications; Communications

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2010-07-08

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd3752

Keywords

Sports marketing, stakeholders theory, convergent theory, theory of planned behavior

Language

English

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