As part of a peer-reviewed article in the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, the assistant professor of sport management and his co-authors generated a composite sport fan equity index to estimate the asset value of an individual fan to a sport organization.
Young Do Kim, assistant professor of sport management, published a peer-reviewed article in the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, one of the world’s leading journals for the sports marketing industry. Titled “Developing a sport fan equity index,” the co-authored article sought to quantify the overall asset value of a sport fan.
Collaborating with Kim were co-authors Marshall J. Magnusen of Baylor University, Yukyoum Kim of Seoul National University, and Minjung Kim of the University of Mississippi.
As part of their research, the co-authors generated a composite sport fan equity index to estimate the asset value of an individual fan to a sport organization. The index was developed by applying a simple additive weighting method.
According to Kim, the authors view sport fans as the most sustainable assets for sport teams and one of the key criteria of sport team valuation. With this in mind, they sought to quantify the overall asset value of sport fan equity. The authors’ research focused on a two-fold objective: First, they developed the financial-, behavioral- and psychological-based components of a sport fan equity model. Secondly, they generated/computed a sport fan equity index from the sport fan equity scale data.
From a practical point of view, the sport fan equity index serves as an easy-to-understand and comparable score of individual fan value to the business of sport teams – just as sport teams use player statistics to gauge the on-field performance of players (e.g., player efficiency rating). Furthermore, the fan index functions as an essential indicator for sport marketers to segment fan bases to effectively allocate marketing resources and identify and track profitable fans over time. Overall, it could be a useful proxy for customer relationship management as well as sport team valuation from the fan-related asset value.
The study contributes to sport fan behavior literature by validating the multi-dimensional scale of sport fan equity and adapting a simple additive weighting method to estimate the sport fan equity index.
The International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship (IJSMS) is one of the leading journals for the sport marketing industry, providing a forum for academic and industry experts to advance the study and practice of sport marketing.