The purpose of this article is to add to the conceptual discussion on eSport, analyze the role of eSport within sport management, and suggest avenues for future eSport research. The authors suggest that debates surround the degree to which eSport represents formal sport, and disagreements likely stem from conceptualizations of sport and context. Irrespective of one's notion of eSport as formal sport, the authors suggest the topic has a place in sport management scholarship and discourse. Such a position is consistent with the broad view of sport adopted by Sport Management Review, the perspective that eSport represents a form of sportification, and the association among eSport and various outcomes, including physical and psychological health, social well-being, sport consumption outcomes, and diversity and inclusion. Finally, the authors conclude that eSport scholarship can advance through the study of its governance, marketing, and management as well as by theorizing about eSport.

As scholars conduct more research on the social benefits of community sport, the need for an instrument to measure sense of community is increasingly necessary. Utilizing previous grounded theory research specific to sport and community building, the purpose of this study was to test previous sport and sense of community theory through the creation and validation of a measurement scale to gauge sense of community. The authors tested a 21-item tool comprised of 6-subscales (i.e., Administrative Consideration, Common Interest, Competition, Equity in Administrative Decisions, Leadership, and Social Spaces) among samples of young sport participants using the three-phase method of item generation, confirmatory analyses, and concurrent validation. The resulting analyses yielded a valid and reliable instrument to measure sense of community in sport. This research suggests refinement to previous sport and sense of community theory and provides needed utility for this theory that has been grounded in the sport experience.

2016-12-23T18:49:38

In response to claims that sport event research over emphasizes economic outcomes and mega-event contexts, this research sought to both assess a scale that measures sense of community among small-scale sport event volunteers, and empirically test if the event volunteer experience enhances sense of community. The six-factor Sense of Community in Sport Scale (SCS) was utilized to collect pre-and post-event data from a population of 253 (N=253)

While the sport fan literature suggests that it is common for parents to socialize their children to cheer for specific sports and teams, recent literature proposes that children can socialize their parents into changing the parents’ sport fandom in a process sociologists and consumer behavior researchers refer to as reverse socialization. To ascertain whether children can socialize and influence their parents’ sport fandom, 20 sport fan parents were interviewed. Evidence of reverse socialization was found in 15 of the participants, manifesting itself in ways that can be categorized as either developing new or additional fandom, or changing one’s behaviors or attitudes towards their existing fandom. However, further exploration of the data suggests that future research reexamine the term “reverse socialization,” as we do not see this as a directionality of influence, but as children as socializing agents.