Stakeholder Relationships in Sport and Tourism

Stakeholder relationships in sport and tourism can perhaps be grouped into two areas: relationships in the practice of sports tourism, and relationships concerned with sports tourism research. In terms of practice, the key relationships are likely to be those between participants, policy-makers and providers from the sport, tourism and sports tourism sectors. For those concerned with research into the relationship between sport and tourism, key relationships are those between the researcher(s) and the researched, and between producers and consumers of research. As the only international academic peer-reviewed journal concerned with the relationship between sport and tourism, the Journal of Sport & Tourism might obviously be expected to be a key player in research-oriented stakeholder relationships in sports tourism.

Prior to the re-naming and re-positioning of JS&T in 2006, the former Journal of Sport Tourism also sought to play a role in practice-oriented stakeholder relationships in sports tourism. However, the multifaceted requirements of the range of relationships across research and practice meant that the former JST was often unable to serve either stakeholder community effectively, and it was this that led to Taylor & Francis acquiring the journal from the Sport Tourism International Council in 2006, and the establishment of a new name and look, and a new Editorial team and a clearly academic direction. Unfortunately, these changes took some time and, as a result, JS&T has been attempting to bring the publication of issues back on to schedule over the previous 15 months or so. Importantly, JS&T has not been prepared to compromise on the academic quality of the manuscripts that it has accepted for publication, and this has led to further time-delays as the journal has re-established itself as a peer reviewed publication that has a clear mission to serve stakeholders in the research community. As JS&T aspires to be the leading medium of communication between producers and consumers of research in sport and tourism, I am delighted to be able to say that with this ‘double’ issue of JS&T the Editorial team has achieved its aim of bringing the journal back onto its production schedule within two years. Therefore, as consumers of research, readers of the journal may now expect JS&T to be published regularly and on time, and as producers of research, authors of papers in the journal can continue to expect the timely publication of their research findings, once accepted through the journal's rigorous peer review process.

Of course, stakeholder relationships between the researcher(s) and the researched and producers and consumers of research overlap with the community of stakeholders concerned with the practice of sports tourism. As the previous two volumes of this journal have shown, the relationship between researchers and researched has included, on the researcher side, stakeholders with economic (e.g. Allen et al., 2007), behavioural (e.g. Gillett & Kelly, 2006), sociological (e.g. Harris, 2006) and methodological (e.g. Mansfield, 2007) interests. In terms of those researched, stakeholders have included active participants (e.g. racing cyclists as studied by Bull, 2006), spectators (e.g. basketball fans as studied by Chen, 2006), policy-makers (for example for Scottish adventure tourism as studied by Page et al., 2006) and providers (for example of Dragon Boat Races as studied by McCartney & Osti, 2007). Of course, most of those researchers producing this research will also be consumers of research, as will many of those concerned with the practice of sports tourism who, in the above examples, have been ‘the researched’. As such, it is clear that stakeholders in sport and tourism may fall into different stakeholder groups at different points in time and, consequently, that the relationships between them may change both over time, and as a result of changes in purpose or inclination. It is against this background that I am pleased to present in this issue of JS&T a series of papers that illustrate the complexities of these relationships between various stakeholders in a range of different research and practice contexts.

The first paper in this issue, ‘The Travelling Fan: Understanding the Mechanisms of Sport Fan Consumption in a Sport Tourism Setting’, by Aaron C.T. Smith & Bob Stewart, is a comprehensive review of sport fan literature from a range of disciplines and subject areas, and the implication of the literature reviewed for the travel behaviour of sports fans. In fact, the paper focuses on stakeholder relationships between sports fans (participants) and the teams, sports and events that they support or attend (providers). In discussing sport fan travel behaviour, the focus is on the way in which such stakeholder relationships are constructed, developed and maintained, largely from the perspective of the sport fan him/herself. Smith & Stewart's paper is also significant for stakeholders in the research community as it represents a significant synthesis of previous research produced by researchers with a range of disciplinary and subject backgrounds. As such, I expect that it will become an important reference point for future producers of research on the travelling sport fan.

The relationship between participants and providers is also discussed in the second paper in this issue, but Kiriaki Kaplanidou & Christine Vogt's paper also considers policy-makers, and focuses on active participants rather than spectators. Their paper, ‘The Interrelationship between Sport Event and Destination Image and Sport Tourists’ Behaviours', considers the ways in which active participants in an event are affected by event and destination image (and the interaction of the two). As such, it is concerned with understanding how the activities of event providers and destination policy-makers and marketers can affect behaviour, and also how far behavioural intentions are translated into actual behaviour. In this respect, it considers the relationships between participants, policy-makers and providers. However, the nature of the study is such that the policy-makers and providers studied are also consumers of the research. This is because Kaplanidou & Vogt found that event image can have a significant impact upon destination image, but that the reverse (that destination image might affect event image) is not the case. This is an important finding for these two stakeholder groups, and for the relationship between them, as event providers may assume that a destination is likely to benefit from an association with their event, whereas the event is unlikely to be affected by the destination's image. Consequently, event providers may take the view that policy-makers at a destination should offer the event providers something in exchange for the image benefits they may garner from an association with the event.

Remaining with the event context, Holger Preuss, in the third paper in this issue, ‘The Conceptualisation and Measurement of Mega Sport Event Legacies’ continues with a theme that he has developed in previous papers (e.g. Preuss, 2005). For some time Preuss has argued that the way in which mega sport events and their effects have been measured is, at best, unsophisticated and, at worst, fundamentally flawed. In this current paper, Preuss views events from a legacy (rather than an impacts) perspective, and attempts to disentangle the various aspects of mega-sport event legacy in outlining ways in which legacy might be conceptualised and measured. Preuss' paper highlights issues in the relationship between policy-makers and providers, who commission event-based research, and those who produce it. For a number of years, authors have commented on the problems and pressures in this relationship, and the potential that exists to compromise the integrity of such research (see, for example, Hudson, 2001; Kasimati, 2001), particularly where research consumers are emotionally, politically and economically invested in a particular research outcome. However, Preuss also notes in his paper that many of the assumptions about the nature, impacts and legacies of events are flawed, and that this can only be addressed through a clear conceptualisation and a more efficient measurement of the legacies of such events.

The fourth paper in this issue also deals with events, but focuses on a fairly unique event and an as yet unmentioned stakeholder group. Chris Bull & Jane Lovell's paper, ‘The Impact of Hosting Mega Sporting Events on Local Residents: an Analysis of the Views and Perceptions of Canterbury Residents in Relation to the Tour de France 2007’, focuses on an event for which the number of spectators (and television viewers) is highly significant, but that is dispersed over a considerable distance and a number of weeks. As such, Bull & Lovell have framed their study of the 2007 Canterbury leg of the Tour de France as research into a ‘major’ rather than a ‘mega’ sport event. Like a previous paper in JS&T (Ohmann et al., 2006), Bull & Lovell are concerned not with the visitors to a sports tourism event, but with local residents. Furthermore, such residents are described as key stakeholders as it on their behalf that local governments hosting such events are claiming to act. Somewhat uniquely, Bull & Lovell's study sought the views of local residents prior to the staging of the Tour de France stage in Canterbury so that their views and opinions would not be affected by the perceived success or failure of the event, or by other factors, such as the weather on the day. The research found that both through the staging of the event, and via a number of promotional and media-management strategies, local government in Canterbury had enhanced its relationship with its local population, who were largely supportive of the staging of the event, despite some disruption and inconvenience (for example, road closures) that was an inevitable part of hosting an event such as this.

The final paper in this issue is one of a series of papers in JS&T that have been concerned, at least to some extent, with the way in which research into the relationship between sport and tourism is conducted (see: Weed, 2006; Higham & Hinch, 2006; Harris, 2006; Mansfield, 2007). It is concerned with the relationships between the researcher and the researched, and the implications of such relationships for the generation of knowledge through narrative analysis. The paper, by Brett Smith & me, Mike Weed, is entitled ‘The Potential of Narrative Research in Sports Tourism’, and it seeks to suggest a number of orienting propositions for narrative research that can provide a framework for more specific narrative techniques. It is suggested that narrative analysis can offer a range of perspectives on sports tourism experiences through an examination of the content, structure and performance of stories that people tell about such experiences. Importantly, the paper emphasises that narratives must be invited and that, drawing on Atkinson (1998, pp. 8–9), ‘the interviewee [the researched] … is a storyteller, the narrator of the story being told, whereas the interviewer [the researcher] … is a guide, or director of this process’. As such, narrative research requires a break from the type of organised semi-structured interviews that many researchers in sport and tourism will be familiar with to embrace an approach that generates ‘messy’ rather than ‘neat’ data; high rather than low contextual meaning; and high as opposed to low interviewee control. Smith and I argue that such an approach has considerable potential to illuminate experiences in many areas of sports tourism.

In closing this Editorial, I would like to make a brief comment on JS&T 's policy on Special Issues. There is, of course, a forthcoming Special Issue on ‘Sports Fans and Spectators as Sport Tourists’, edited by Ian Jones of Bournemouth University, for which the closing date for submissions was the 9th November 2007. This Special Issue will be published in 2008, and JS&T would be interested in receiving proposals for themed Special Issues for 2009 onwards. Any initial enquiries should be made by email ([email protected]), following which a full proposal may be invited, which will be considered by the JS&T Executive Editorial Board.