No games to watch: empirical analysis of sport fans’ stress and coping strategies during COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

PurposeThe global outbreak of the COVID-19 forced most sport leagues to cancel games in March–April 2020, leaving no sport games to watch for sport fans. The present study examined how sport consumers appraise stress and engage in coping behaviors resulted from sport lockout due to the global pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis study examined the relationship between sport fans’ psychological dispositions, threat appraisal and coping strategies among professional sport fans in the USA. A panel of sport fans (N = 446) representative of the US adult population participated in an online survey in the fourth week of April, 2020 when no major sport leagues made a return from the lockout due to the COVID-19 outbreak.FindingsResults of this present study showed that anger, aggressiveness and need for affiliation increased threat perceptions toward the COVID-19 lockout, which subsequently had significant effect on emotion-focused and disengagement coping behaviors.Research limitations/implicationsThis is the first empirical study that examined stress and coping behavior among sport fans in the global public health crisis context. Our findings show what triggers stress appraisals and how fans cope with them.Practical implicationsFindings suggest that segmenting sport fans based on psychological dispositions could be useful in predicting fans that will engage in coping behaviors.Social implicationsWhile the hope is to return to normal postpandemic, COVID-19 might not be the last. We are uncertain whether there might be another potential pandemic-related sport lockdown. Understanding how lack of sport events can create distress in sport fans and have important public health implications.Originality/valueThe findings provide empirical evidence on how sport consumers respond to the pandemic-related sport lockdown and cope with the unprecedented situation. The findings of this study contribute to the sport management literature as we are unsure whether the sport industry might face this challenging situation in the future again.

Consumers’ coping strategies when they feel negative emotions in the face of forced deconsumption during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns

“…Additionally, the model created in this study supports that, compared to a valence-based approach, an appraisal tendency approach better defines the circumstances in which various emotions are activated to anticipate and explain how emotions connect to IT usage through adaption actions. Kwon and Kwak (2022) offer factual proof of how sports fans react to the pandemic-related sports lockdown and deal with the unusual circumstances. By classifying consumers according to their psychological tendencies, it may be possible to anticipate which sports fans would participate in coping strategies.…”

“…Additionally, employees' attitudes about using a cutting-edge reservation system positively impact their intention to do so. Kwon and Kwak (2022) claim that the global COVID-19 pandemic drove the majority of sports leagues to postpone games in March and April 2020, leaving sports enthusiasts without any matches to watch. Their research investigated how sports fans assess stress and participate in coping strategies due to the global pandemic-related sports lockout.…”

LDA-based topic modeling for COVID-19-related sports research trends

“…Sports events, including pro-sports leagues and the Olympics, were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During that period, the number of sports games and events abruptly decreased, and the relationship between players and fans was broken ( Chan et al, 2021 ; Cho et al, 2021 ; Kaplanidou et al, 2021 ; Kwon and Kwak, 2022 ). As a result, several sports businesses might be close to bankruptcy.…”

The quest for sustainable sports management: evidence from the football industry

“…The sport-related mission statement, on the other hand, separates football firms from ordinary small enterprises (Sato et al ., 2022). In fact, football clubs are, in theory, victory maximizers rather than profit maximizers, reinvesting profits or even assuming losses or loans to finance new player transactions (Kwon and Kwak, 2022). In short, the clubs spend as much money as they can in order to win.…”

“…This sets off a type of rat race, driving certain clubs to overinvest beyond their financial means and, in some cases, into insolvency (Feiler et al ., 2022). In this context, smaller organizations, in particular, appear to suffer more than larger organizations from crises owing to a lack of resources, limited expertise and a less formalized crisis management planning (Kwon and Kwak, 2022). It is also more difficult for these enterprises to estimate the financing required to handle the stage of recovery, particularly in a high-risk industry like football.…”