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This paper reports findings from a qualitative study that analyzed use of traditional and targeted sponsorship approaches by eight companies involved in the 1998-99 Canadian Hockey Association women's corporate support program. The study found the sponsors used methods from direct and relationship marketing to support corporate goals of sales, advertising, community-involvement and brand image and awareness. Several factors are discussed that would improve the sponsorships' effectiveness in the women's market.

In recent decades, significant advances have been made at both the grassroots and professional levels of women's ice hockey in North America. Yet, despite recent achievements, such as the establishment of ‘professional’ leagues, and compelling narratives of progress, athletes and league organisers still face significant challenges. The barriers women face, such as reduced access to resources and opportunity, lack of legitimacy, and league instability, and a continued reliance on relationships with men's sporting leagues, such as the National Hockey League, suggest that women's ice hockey is accommodated into the game in ways that reinforce and perpetuate systems of gender, reproducing a neoliberal notion of failure. Using Halberstam's (2011) notion of failure as the place from which reform and transformation can take place, we offer a critical reading of the (re)formation of the National Women's Hockey League and the developments in women's (semi)professional ice hockey in North America.

Current offerings for women's ice hockey equipment are compared to the data collected in a 1993 study conducted on fit and performance of impact protection equipment for female ice hockey players. The growing athletic participation of women in a variety of sports has led to the need for female specific protective clothing, specifically in the sport of ice hockey where women have made large strides worldwide in the last decade. Anatomical differences between men and women, the injury occurrence when playing ice hockey and the current system of sizing hockey equipment were reviewed. The SizeUSA data, which includes the body scans and measurements of over 7,000 American women, is discussed and compared with current sizing information. The size and fit of protective equipment is crucial to providing adequate impact protection to the ice hockey player. Female ice hockey players were surveyed: evaluations were conducted on the current equipment, and research on a system of impact protective clothing is analyzed. A system of protection using garment layers to protect specific areas of the body, allows for ease of movement and sized in a manner consistent with the most current information available is recommended. Further research is needed concerning the performance and acceptance of such equipment.

It is unclear from Canadian case law what the appropriate legal standards of care and regulation should be in athlete injury cases. This chapter provides an overview of existing legal standards and explores the question of participant liability in sport, especially ice hockey. It reviews the applicability of tort law, including both intentional torts and unintentional torts, and considers the applicability and impact of the notion of ‘volenti non fit injuria’ (or voluntary assumption of risk).

The chapter is based on a review of Canadian case law.

Canadian courts have adopted varying standards whereby it is seemingly easier to prove negligence in certain provinces than others. We discuss the implications of these conflicting jurisdictional standards and the need for clearer and more consistent legal guidelines. Further, we show why appropriate legal standards should extend beyond purely objective and legalistic interpretations to more subjective and sociological factors that place sports violence and sports injury in social context.

Since the 1970s there have been extraordinary changes and growth in Canadian sport in terms of access, opportunity and recognition. Yet, the gains and successes of girls and women’s sport are often written, told and retold as uncomplicated success stories, as progress, with the battles fought and the complex negotiations of the past eerily absent. In this chapter, we turn to the work of feminist poststructuralist Avery Gordon to consider gender, feminisms and sport in the Canadian context. We do this by putting various moments in time in conversation with one another and considering our current moment in light of what has come before but is often forgotten, overlooked or even suppressed. We argue that the need for feminist praxis remains significant in Canadian sport and it is imperative that we continue to shed light on ghostly (dis)appearances in narratives of sport in Canada.

The role of a national sport organization (NSO) is prominent when a country hosts a mega-sporting event since the organization is responsible for athlete preparation and coordinating with other organizations to ensure successful hosting. This research examines the impact of hosting a mega-sporting event on the professionalization of an NSO and its consequences on the sport, using the case of the Korea Ice Hockey Association (KIHA).

The study utilizes a qualitative single-case study approach grounded in an interpretivist perspective. Data for this study included semi-structured interviews with key individuals (n = 16) and archival materials.

The findings indicate that hosting a mega-sporting event was a strong catalyst for the professionalization of the KIHA. KIHA underwent changes in its organizational structures and processes, human resources and interorganizational linkages, all of which contributed to significant transformations in the sport during the event preparation period.

The study elucidates how hosting can lead to increased professionalization and its subsequent impact on the sport. However, the current case demonstrates that the KIHA overlooked certain impacts of professionalization (e.g. internal conflicts and neglected parts of the sport) that should be enacted in order to further the sport’s development. Therefore, NSOs and event stakeholders must carefully assess their sport’s environment and attributes.

The purpose of this study is to explore the shifting power dynamics within an inter-organizational relationship (IOR) over time through an institutional theory lens. Specifically, this manuscript explores power by acknowledging its relationality, temporality and typology through a case study focusing on an international collegiate ice hockey tournament. This study seeks to demonstrate the complexity of power as a multi-dimensional, relational, and temporal concept that can ebb and flow given actors’ positionality.

This study uses a chronological case study that is an appropriate in-depth qualitative framework to explore the how and why of a particular phenomenon. Yin (2018) describes a case study as “investigat[ing] a contemporary phenomenon (the ‘case’) in depth and within its real-world context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context may not be clearly evident” (p. 45). Specifically, I used a chronological case study method as it provides the ability to document the chronology of events to determine important factors shaping the phenomenon (Yin, 2018). This includes collecting various types of data (organizational documents, news articles, interviews and observations) to create a robust understanding of a bounded chronological case over time.

Examining power dynamics is important as “power or its absence influences the mechanisms available to partners for initiating, challenging, and/or enforcing institutional change” (Gray et al., 2022, p. 3). This paper demonstrates the complexity of power as a multi-dimensional, relational and temporal concept that can ebb and flow given actors’ positionality. Further, the paper provides a case study showing how power asymmetries in an IOR can shift over time.

This study provides a case study on an IOR wherein multiple international organizations collaborated to create an ice hockey tournament. Through the case study, I demonstrate how different partners navigate power imbalances and changes over time.

This study provides a textbook case study of a successful IOR. Entrepreneurial actors capitalized on a catalyst event to leverage a boundary-spanning document and their professional networks to form a new identity and shared vision through the formation of the tournament. Further, this study provides insight into how an organization in an IOR can work to balance asymmetrical power relations.

As organizations seek to engage in collaborations, leveraging power through their contextuality can help create more equitable arrangements over time. Even when organizations may truly be at a disadvantage when entering an IOR, such as a local indigenous community partnering with an international corporation or non-profit, the status of particular locals or local organizations can be powerful in balancing an imbalanced relationship.

While a wealth of research documents the relational dynamics of IORs, there remains a significant gap in our understanding pertaining to the dynamics of power asymmetries in IOR partnerships. Existing research primarily focuses on the antecedents leading to sport organizations engaging in IORs and the various processes organizational leaders can employ to ensure an IOR’s success. However, several scholars acknowledge a profound gap in our understanding of how partners experiencing a power deficit in an IOR partnership work to balance power asymmetries.

The purpose of this research is to examine the extent to which source attractiveness and source credibility (or skill in a sporting context) provide an effective marketing strategy for Field Hockey in New Zealand, a minority sport Minority sports struggle to generate capital and have minimal sponsorship backing due to small participation and viewership rates compared to “major sports”. By understanding how source attractiveness and source credibility work in the context of a minority sport such as hockey, more effective advertising towards target audiences can be achieved. We also consider differences between advertising to players and no-players of the sport. This is the first research to consider these issues.

Four advertisements were created in an experimental design that manipulated the two variables: source credibility and source attractiveness, in an advertisement promoting Hockey. A survey was conducted, using an online questionnaire.

Results show that a mixture physical attractiveness and skill (credibility) increase attitudes towards the advertisement. This results in positive intentions to both watch and play hockey. When the respondents were segmented into hockey players and non-hockey players, only skill is effective for the Hockey Player segment, whereas both skill and attractiveness are effective for non-players.

Future research should include comparing hockey to further minority sports codes. Additionally, understanding if male models created the same effects would be particularly interesting for further research.

Management should focus on skill, with physical attractiveness being considered, but not as the most important attribute. If targeting hockey players, skill needs to be especially visible. Even though these elements could be argued to be within the “proverbial eye of the beholder”, the results have shown that in terms of sports advertising, it is possible to portray these two attributes in a generalised way.

This research to focuses on source credibility and attractiveness in a minority sporting context, in particular field hockey, whereas the majority of research considers major sporting codes. In addition, involvement with the sport is also considered.

Since Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) was signed into law, the landscape of sport in the United States has changed dramatically, not only in terms of sport participation rates for girls and women but also increased levels of support, sponsorship, viewership, competition and media coverage. While educational institutions were slow to develop and implement policies to comply with Title IX, decades later, girls' and women's sports have shown clear signs of having reaped the benefits of the law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or gender in educational programmes receiving federal funding. As girls' and women's participation in scholastic and collegiate sport has grown, however, so too have reported incidents and public exposure of harmful hazing activities among female athletes. The purpose of this chapter is to examine hazing practices in girls' and women's sports, including the perspectives of female athletes and the broader community. Based on quantitative and qualitative survey data, interviews with college female athletes and public responses to hazing reports in the media, this chapter presents an analysis of hazing in girls' and women's sports 40+ years post-Title IX. Findings showed mixed opinions about the dangers and perceived utility of hazing ceremonies, highlighted athletes' ideas to promote positive team interactions in lieu of hazing and considered the impact of contemporary social and cultural shifts on athletes' ability and willingness to speak out against hazing and other forms of violence and abuse in sports.