Retro marketing has become a staple in sport marketing practices. Teams and leagues are attempting to connect their fans to the past in a magnitude of ways. Despite the influx of retro marketing in sport, there has been no examination of it to date. This study examined the various usages of retro marketing in sport and through an inductive approach created a framework that categorized and broadly defined each usage. The five practical areas of retro marketing in sport were constructed: imagery, merchandising, venue, gameday promotions, and advertising. The authors shaped and framed retro marketing in sport through these five dimensions, as they encompassed the retro marketing practices examined and are often relied upon marketing elements. Further, the authors suggest multiple avenues for future research on this topic, including understanding a sport organization's usage of these practices and the impact they have on sport consumers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding of retro marketing in sport through the perspective of sport marketers. Design/methodology/approach Fourteen sport marketers involved in their team’s marketing and utilized retro participated in topical interviews. Interviews were transcribed and open coded to find themes around how retro marketing is utilized and why the marketers think it may be effective. Findings This study discovered prominent themes explaining how retro marketing is implemented (changing marks and jerseys, celebrating anniversaries, milestones and past players and retro nights) and why it may be effective (nostalgia, retro design appeal and connection to the team’s lived history). Originality/value Despite the coverage of retro marketing in popular press, little is understood in the academic field. This current study should expand our understanding of retro marketing in sport and be effective in aiding future scholars who investigate retro marketing in sport.

The current multi-study examination explored explicit and implicit appeal of a prominent form of retro sport marketing: retro team logos. Study 1 utilized the stimuli-organism-response framework to test preference differences between those offered team merchandise with a retro logo and those offered the same merchandise with the current logo. Statistically significant preference differences were not uncovered, yet it was found that previous exposure to the retro logo negatively impacted preference of the retro logo. Based on these results, Study 2 utilized an implicit association test to assess the style appeal of retro and current logos. This assessment, once again, found no difference in the explicit preference for the retro and current logos, yet an implicit bias of freshness toward the current logo and outdatedness toward the retro logo was found. Together, the results provide preliminary evidence of the ephemeral impact of retro team logos within a professional sports context.

Retro marketing in sport has been relied upon for years. Sport fans see more teams and leagues implement retro marketing and merchandise into marketing plans. Despite this, we have little understanding behind the success of retro marketing in sport. Therefore, this paper sought to gain a better understanding of the demographic characteristics of retro merchandise consumers and to examine the impact of two psychographic factors. Surveys collected from fans of various professional sport teams in the United States (N = 1,509), demonstrated novel findings. In this study retro merchandise was preferred overall, younger fans were more likely to prefer retro merchandise, and household income did not explain much of the preference. Most telling was that nostalgic proneness significantly and positively predicted a retro preference. The implications from this study should guide marketers in their usage of retro merchandise and marketing practices and lead to future practical research on the topic.

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