Are You Ready for the Extra Inning? An Exploratory Study of the Evaluation of Professional Sport Teams’ Websites as Marketing Tools to Prospective Meeting/Event Customers

Abstract

Professional sport organizations and stadium administrators strive to create additional revenue sources beyond sports events to maximize profits due to their limited usage of facilities on game days. This study evaluated professional sport teams’ website contents and features/services offered to prospective non-sporting event customers. The results indicated that a majority of the professional sport teams were not efficiently utilizing their websites to market their stadiums as non-sporting event venues. The findings of this study offer a starting point for both researchers and practitioners in the professional sport stadiums segment of the event/meeting industry to identify specific areas to improve their website marketing efforts

KEYWORDS:

• sport facility
• website evaluation
• meeting/event venue
• modified balanced scorecard
• counting method
• content analysis