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There has been a noticeable increase in review studies exploring the relationship between sport and sustainability; however, these studies significantly overlook the marketing function, creating a critical gap in understanding how sustainable practices can be promoted within the sports industry. The purpose of this study is to build a research agenda of the sport–sustainability domain within the marketing field by using an integrated bibliometric and unsupervised machine learning approach.

Bibliometric analysis, along with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for topic modeling, enabled us to identify key trends and themes in the sport–sustainability domain. The study uses the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases to extract a final dataset of 929 texts (titles, abstracts and keywords) from published research on sport–sustainability domain within the marketing field.

We decipher the key trends in the literature and segregate them into four broad topics – places, consumers, markets and strategies – to enhance the understanding of this field of inquiry. This study is the first in the sport–sustainability domain to use this integrated approach to review the literature, and the findings lay the groundwork for future research.

This study uses a combined methodology thereby offering distinct advantages over other review approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to explore attitudes towards ambush marketing at the 2016 Union of European Football Associations European Championships, seeking to examine fan affect towards ambush marketing.

A 24-item survey questionnaire was constructed, exploring consumers’ general cognition and affection of ambush marketing; following Dickson et al.’s (2015) design, industry-specific attitudes were canvassed, assessing supporters’ views of beer and gambling industry ambush marketers.

Results indicate that fans appear to be marginally more forgiving of ambush practices from beer or gambling brands than across ambushing more generally, yet a prevailing antipathy towards ambush marketing from an ethical perspective was observed. Importantly, however, the study’s findings suggest that industry-specific advertising regulations bear little impact on fan perspectives.

The study’s results bear notable implications for marketing theory and practice: for ambushing brands, this suggests that they are rather less likely to be have a disruptive effect on events and their official sponsors. For official sponsors, a level of threat from ambushers nevertheless remains as it would appear consumers do not have strong views about the practice of ambushing.

The study’s methods build upon and extend previous studies into consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing, specifically focusing on the perceptions and affect of fans in lieu of more empirically generalisable consumer populations. Given the target audiences of sponsors and ambush marketers, this emphasis on fan attitudes represents an important direction in ambush affect research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of social media in brand associations, particularly in regard to soccer fan clubs.

The study used a professional English Premier League soccer team to investigate the effects that social media interaction had on brand associations of the team’s fan clubs in two national contexts – England and Greece.

In total, 207 online questionnaires from six fan clubs were collected and analyzed using descriptive and inferential (t-tests and χ² tests) statistics.

The results revealed similarities on Facebook in terms of positive receptions of brand attributes and resonance of perceived brand benefits, while significant differences were observed on Twitter, particularly in terms of brand benefits.

The esports industry has experienced a dynamic growth. In this context, a significant evolution in the logic of corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be observed, particularly in the digital sphere. By extending Carroll’s three-dimensional model to include corporate digital responsibility (CDR), this paper addresses a key research question: How does CSR evolve and develop in the dynamic digital industry of esports?

This study employed a qualitative multiple case study research design. It drew on secondary data from 50 professional esports organisations and key players in CSR development in the global esports industry, such as game publishers, pro-teams, pro-athletes, event organisers, and governing bodies. A content analysis of 50 official websites and 72 public annual, CSR, and environmental reports for the financial years ending in 2021 and 2022 was conducted.

Our empirical findings not only map the territory of esports CSR and CDR but also provide practical insights. These insights are later synthesized to develop an esports CSR/CDR framework that extends Carroll’s three-dimensional model. CSR and CDR domains of esports are theoretically grounded (business performance, responsiveness, social issues, and digital responsibilities), while practical implications for managers and academics are forwarded.

This paper stands out as a pioneering empirical study, filling a significant research gap in the fields of CSR and CDR in esports. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first to illuminate these concepts within the unique ecosystem of esports, thereby contributing to the evolving understanding of CSR in the digital context.

The purpose of this paper is to thematically categorise sports sponsorship-linked Twitter content and, by drawing on uses & gratifications theory, to map the extent to which these categories cohere with known user motivations for consuming social media.

Qualitative content analysis of a sample of 1,502 tweets by London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games sponsors posted between January 2011 and September 2012 was used to develop the typology of sponsorship-linked Twitter content.

From the data, a typology is developed, comprising 17 categories grouped under four main types: informing, entertaining, rewarding and interacting. The majority of sponsor tweets (68 per cent) fell into the informing type, with 17 per cent categorised as interacting. While few (2 per cent) tweets were categorised as entertaining, the link to the sponsored event implies a degree of entertaining content even in ostensibly informative, rewarding or interactional sponsorship-linked tweets. Therefore, the typology categories highlight Twitter content produced by sponsors which engages customers, fostering dialogue alongside providing informative and entertaining content.

The typology can inform practitioners’ future sports sponsorship activation planning decisions and can also aid rights holders in tailoring appropriate sponsorship opportunities to potential sponsors, based on an appreciation of the nature of content sought by brand followers.

The typology extends existing understanding of the use of social media within sponsorship activation campaigns by thematically categorising content and mapping this against known user motivations for consuming brand-related social media content.

The main focus of this paper is a case study of the progression links onto a new undergraduate business programme (Business Enterprise) that have been established for modern apprentices between Coventry Business School and Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, Training and Enterprise. The context of the relationship between the two is initially established and this leads to an overview of the findings generated by a research study designed to highlight the views and expectations of major stakeholders in the apprenticeship scheme. In turn, this subsequently leads to an exploration of the implications for the design of higher education programmes targeted at apprentices.