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The purpose of the study is to ascertain whether sport organizations which outsource ticket sales force management outperform sports organizations which manage their ticket sales force internally, relative to ticket revenue and attendance.

Thirteen years of ticket revenue and football attendance data were collected for National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Football bowl subdivision (FBS) Division I Athletics Departments (n = 126), as well as data on whether the organization employed an external (outsourced), internal or no ticket sales force. The number of salespeople employed was also captured. Within-subjects, fixed effects regression models, which included several control variables such as number of home contests, prior season attendance, team success and population, were run to assess the relationship between sales force type and both ticket revenue and attendance, for one year, two years and three years after sales force establishment.

All models were significant. While both internally managed ticket sales forces and those managed by outsourced firms saw significant increases in ticket revenue (compared to not employing a sales force), internally managed departments outperformed third parties. In addition, departments utilizing outsourcing companies reported lower attendance for the first two years after outsourcing, but attendance differences were negligible by the third year of outsourcing.

The results of the study provide data to help sport managers determine whether outsourcing sales functions within an organization will lead to greater ticket revenue and/or attendance.

While several sport management studies have examined the decision-making process of outsourcing organizational functions, no prior studies have examined the financial implications of doing so.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between growth in social media engagement, as defined by annual percentage increase in Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers, of US college athletics departments and outcome metrics of attendance and ticket revenue.

Regression models were developed to determine the amount of variance in dependent variables (attendance and ticket revenue) could be explained by several independent variables, including team success, team history, conference affiliation, Facebook Likes, and Twitter Followers. Four years of data were collected for each variable.

The regression models predicted between 53 and 88 percent of the variance among dependent variables. Social media measures, however, were not statistically significant predictors of attendance or ticket revenue.

The number of Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers were used as a proxy measure of social media engagement. While growth in Likes and Followers are a popular and convenient gauge of social media engagement, they represent a single measure of a multi-faceted construct. Also, data were limited to public university athletics departments, which are required to disclose annual ticket revenue. Findings may not be generalizable to other sport organizations.

The findings suggest growing social media interactions may not necessarily achieve marketing objectives related to increasing attendance or ticket revenue.

While numerous studies have examined the impact of social media on sport organizations, no prior studies have attempted to draw empirical connections between social media marketing efforts and revenue measures within sport organizations. This study represents the first to begin to examine this relationship.

This paper aims to document the impact of inadequately educated workforce on the extent of financing obstacles experienced by firms.

The authors use the data provided by the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys to test our arguments. The data were collected during the period between 2008 and 2018 in 141 developing countries. A pooled ordered logit regression analysis is performed to arrive at the results.

The study’s results show that firms with inadequately educated workforce are more likely to experience financing obstacles than other firms. The authors argue that poor performance and lack of technical expertise required to access finance are some of the reasons behind greater financing obstacles experienced by these firms. The study’s results are robust across different geographic regions. The authors also show that firms with inadequately educated workforce are more likely to seek informal credit for financing their short-term (working capital) and long-term (capital expenditures) capital requirements.

Understanding the factors that affect the financing constraints faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) should be valuable to managers of SMEs and policy-makers. By removing these constraints, managers can improve their access to financing, and policy-makers can facilitate higher economic growth and better economic conditions.

Prior studies have largely been silent on the impact of inadequately educated workforce on the access to finance. This paper draws attention to this issue within the context of SMEs in an international setting. SMEs are the drivers of economic growth in any country. However, their contributions to economic growth cannot materialize without fulfilling their capital needs.