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Corporate sports hospitality (CSH) is a relationship marketing tool whereby customers and other stakeholders are invited by a company buying CSH from a club to attend a sports event. The CSH product involves premium seating and optional services such as catering. This industry has been perceived to be in decline, especially in times of economic downturn. The purposes of this paper are a quantification of the CSH industry’s value and the development of a formal CSH management process for both companies and clubs.

A case study from the highest division in Belgian football (soccer) is conducted, involving interviews and quantitative data collection as the primary data source, in addition to secondary data and insights from the literature. As opposed to literature, this paper uses a holistic approach, combining the perspective of the club and the CSH buying company with attention for customers.

CSH returns account for an important share of club revenues (>10%), despite the smaller market compared to the American major sports leagues. Since a club experiences the strongest competitive impact from substitutes and other clubs in the league, and CSH is often managed on an ad hoc base, disposing of a formal management process is crucial for both clubs and companies. For companies buying CSH, not only return on investment but also return on other objectives matters. Moreover, CSH is at least as effective to deepen existing business relationships as to create new ones.

The paper provides clubs and companies with a theoretic background and practical key performance indicators (KPIs) to base their managerial decisions on. Although external validity to other Belgian venue-based sports can reasonably be assumed, translating the findings to other countries or non-venue based sports requires caution.

Little academic research about the CSH industry is available. Specific KPIs to define objectives and measure output, as well as feedback loops for clubs and companies, are developed. The proposed CSH management process follows the same high-level steps, but with different specific actions per actor, leading to a better understanding of similarities and differences of both processes, and a better co-creation of the CSH event.

Purpose – The relationship of media influences and school shootings is analyzed on the background of an integrating metatheoretical framework, derived from socialization theory and a media appropriation model grounded in action theory.

Design/approach – Empirical findings and dynamic models of the significance of the media in the genesis of school shootings are integrated into the framework based on a review of the literature. Special focus is placed on the subjective functionality of the perpetrators’ prior media use, which is examined for its dependence on individual, cultural/societal, and interpersonal factors.

Findings – School shootings are a form of extreme violence where monocausal explanations fall short and cannot adequately account for the complex multifactorial causes of the phenomenon. However, we come to the conclusion that particular media do play a special role in the origination of school shootings, but in a way that can only be adequately comprehended if they are examined in connection with specific individual, socio-cultural, and interpersonal dynamics.

Originality/value – The chapter presents a conceptual frame within which possible relationships between media influence and school shootings are identified in the socialization contexts of the adolescent perpetrators.

Purpose – The consumption of violent media contents has been discussed as a risk factor for school shootings repeatedly. The results of research on U.S.-American offenders support this notion. However, to date only little is known about the extent to which these findings may be transferred and generalized to perpetrators from other countries.

Method – We analyzed the case files on seven school shootings perpetrated in Germany between 1999 and 2006.

Findings – In five cases, detailed qualitative content analyses revealed a marked interest in media violence during the years prior to the offense. In some cases, the media consumption slowly replaced other leisure activities, focussed on topics related to the offenses as killing sprees or former school shootings, and was partly described as being addictive. One offender even utilized the media for his own purposes in order to present himself postmortem. However, two perpetrators did not show any peculiar interest in media violence.

Practical and social implications – Violent media consumption is no necessary condition for school shootings, but seems to promote the development toward an offense under certain circumstances. Therefore, intensive media consumption, especially if thematically related to an offense, should be taken seriously and considered in prevention and intervention efforts.

Originality/value of chapter – The findings add to the literature on risk factors for school shootings with regard to violent media consumption. The subject is analyzed in detail in a sample of German offenders, thereby widening the scope of analyzed school shootings.

Football clubs invest in the implementation of scientific insights that improve the quality of youth academies. In the long run, clubs expect their youth academy investments to result in better trained players. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the impact of the attended youth academies' quality on the future market value of a player.

A dataset containing 94 players trained in 13 different academies has been constructed. The dataset contains characteristics of the players and information on the quality of their attended academies. The impact of the quality of the attended academies on players' future market values was estimated empirically through multiple regression analysis.

The quality of a youth academy has a significant positive impact on a player's market value, which in turn is correlated with higher future wages for players and transfer fees for clubs.

Clubs are advised to pay sufficient attention to investments in their youth academy. This will eventually lead to better trained players and higher revenues. Players in turn should strive to be part of the best academies that provide good training and the opportunity to become a top-earning player. For policymakers, such as football federations, the results imply that stimulating club investments in academies can lead to better national team performances.

The impact of the quality of a youth academy on an individual professional football player's career has never been quantified in the literature before. To this end, a new variable has been constructed using scientific assessments of youth academies.

Advertisers frequently use social media for interactive and customer-oriented relationship marketing (RM) purposes. Moreover, sports clubs and players have been using their social media accounts to post content of their sponsors and other advertising companies. Such posts create visibility and have value for these advertising companies, something which has not been empirically quantified in the existing literature. Hence, this paper's purpose is to identify the factors or attributes that influence the value of such advertisement posts.

A discrete choice approach is used to empirically estimate the utility that sponsorship managers derive from a post advertising their company or product on football clubs' and players' social media.

The results indicate that more followers, better on-field performance and a lower price significantly increase the advertising company's utility. Moreover, the used social media channel has a significant influence too, since Facebook and Instagram are preferred over Twitter, due to the latter's limited degrees of freedom for advertisers.

Considering additional factors such as the image fit between sponsor and sponsee and presence on the Chinese social media market offers an interesting avenue for future research.

The empirical estimates allow commercial managers of clubs and players to derive companies' relative willingness to pay (WTP) for changes in characteristics of advertisements on their social media from the calculated utilities. This information can be used in the pricing decision when social media posts are sold or included in sponsorship packages.

This is the first study applying discrete choice modelling to link social media marketing (SMM) and sports marketing.

This is a selective annotated bibliography of the literature on Christopher Columbus from 1970 to 1989. The subject is particularly relevant considering the approach of the Quincentenary of the “discovery” of America in 1992. For that same reason, there has been an outpouring of literature on the subject since 1990, a significant subset of which contributes to are interpretation of Columbus the man, his voyages, and their impact on the new world. It is hoped that this more recent literature will be part of a subsequent annotated bibliography.

Global trading of oil and gas means international markets are more open than at any previous time. As a result, the oil industry oligopoly is being deconstructed and vertically integrated MNCs are being reconstituted to address this fact. In parallel, emergent MNCs in the form of National Oil Companies are now entering the competitive arena. Traditionally dominant MNCs are adopting new operating models focused on technological and financial strength. We examine changes in the once-dominant industry paradigm of vertical integration using several theoretical lenses. These include transaction-cost economics, the resource-based view and institution theory. The giant MNCs operated globally for decades and are an important variant of the MNCs studied in strategic management literature. We suggest the current theoretical models do not explain sufficiently how these MNCs respond to current changes and by using industry observation we contribute to modernization of this literature.

This paper investigates how designers exploit the full potential of additive manufacturing (AM). AM yields a broad range of advantageous properties including the possibility to fabricate mechanical multi-body structures.

This case study explores the possibilities and limitations in designing mechanical multi-body structures for AM, focused on the development of a selective laser sintering (SLS) version of Theo Jansen’s “Strandbeest” walking mechanism, dubbed Animaris Geneticus Parvus (AGP). We discuss the design process and considerations involved and attempt to distill design guidelines.

Novel structural solutions were developed to enable SLS fabrication of the AGP, specifically cross-shaped pivot pins, increased clearance between bodies, spacing studs, restricting axial play with pins, partial disassemblies and increased clearance around extremities. The result is a functioning walking mechanism of 74 components can be fabricated at once without human intervention.

This article represents a case study; although it does mention adapted design rules for SLS, its greatest contribution is the holistic approach – to integrate a number of engineering challenges in one prototypical manifestation.

Part consolidation by AM could bring great benefits in future product design applications. The findings show that complex multi-body mechanical structures with more than 70 elements are feasible by AM without assembly. This presents new business opportunities for AM service bureaus and novel product opportunities for designers.

As a case study, this article provides inspiration of the mechanical complexity beyond regular products – from original idea to end result. For researchers, key contribution is the approach in obtaining design optimization strategies which provides engineering designers with a new language to consider SLS.