Game Attractiveness: The Performance of Game Participants

From the results given in the last chapter, it can be concluded that the most crucial service elements in professional sport are those attributed to the participants. Of all 34 service element expectation, the topmost ranked three elements are about the players and umpire, and eight of the top fifteen are from this category (Game Attractiveness: The Performance of Game Participants). These expectation all focus of the content of the game itself, and tend to meet the conditions that are meant when spectators talk about a ‘good’ game.

According to research, ‘star power’ is one of the core products of a professional team (Braunstein and Zhang, 2005; Zhang et al., 2003). Miller (2002) also implied that the power of stars can serve to benefit that individual both personally and professionally, as well as benefiting other individuals that position themselves with the star.

However, contrary to what might be assumed, the topmost ranked expectation was

‘The umpire’s trustworthiness’ – emphasising that it is not only the players who

‘make’ a game for the spectators, but also the coaches and umpires.

While players are often researched in sport management studies, coaches and umpires – despite their influence on a game – are often ignored or undervalued, due mostly to a number of misjudgements on spectator perceptions of game quality.

Another reason for the neglect of these two important participants is most likely practical: organisers have very little ability to solve problems related to the coach or umpire, so their value is often seen as not worth investigating (individual teams can complain about the conduct of the umpire to the union, who can then investigate and issue warnings or, in extreme cases, fire the umpire in question; however, any and all problems with the umpire need to be dealt with indirectly, through the union).

It is, however, apparent from the results that these participants’ roles are seen as important by the fans (the three service expectation items related to the coach came

in at #20, #14 and #10 out of 34; the two items related to the umpire were ranked #8 and #1), meaning that the quality of umpiring and the abilities of the coach are also

‘core services’ of the game. If problems related to these two participants are not solved, they will influence the quality of the match, which is likely to have negative repercussions on both the expectation of spectators and the development of professional sports. The game itself is the core service and its key components are the players, coach and umpire together, and equal importance should be placed on developing each of these components as each of these components also contribute to the attractiveness of the game overall.

It has been proved repeatedly that ‘game attractiveness’ is a crucial factor to attendance and general market demand associated with professional sport consumption (Greenstein and Marcum 1981; Schofield 1983; Hansen and Gauthier 1989; Zhang et al. 1997; Gladden and Funk 2002; Zhang et al. 2003; Zhang et al. 2003;

Ferreira and Armstrong 2004; Braunstein and Zhang 2005a; Braunstein et al. 2005b).

It is important to note that small flaws can often ruin the perception of the whole:

the author realised during the course of research for this study that spectators’

perceptions of an entire game are negatively affected should an umpire make a decision which fails to completely satisfy their expectation of fair and effective umpiring; i.e., regardless of how well the other services performed, spectators who were unhappy with the umpire would rate the entire experience negative (a positive performance by the umpire however does not make up for a poor standard of other services) . Bodet (2006) investigated this phenomenon by applying ‘the tetraclasse model’ to the satisfaction felt by customers of a health club; he found that there are several service elements which have the characteristics of ‘basic’ service elements and have a larger contribution to overall satisfaction when negatively evaluated by the customer (Llosa 1997; Llosa 1999; Bartikowski and Llosa 2004; Bodet 2006).

It is clear to see from the results that the umpire (and, to a lesser degree, the coach) have the characteristics of being ‘basic’ service elements – that is, they have an influence over spectators’ perceptions of overall game quality that is capable of negatively affecting their entire experience. While organisers may be unable to directly influence and affect these two participants, it is important for them to use

their influence with the relevant associations to solve any problems with them in order to meet spectator expectation and ensure the game is perceived favourably.

7.2.2 Emotional Catalysts: A Convenient, Enjoyable Venue

A large number of extended sports studies (Robertson and Pope, 1999; Rivers and Deschriver, 2002; Kochman, 1995; Hall, O'Mahony and Viecel, 2010) have focused on the sport spectators’ behaviour/psychology and its influence on attendance, market demand, service experience, service quality, satisfaction, the sportscape or the servicescape, and these studies have collected plenty of information and key factors on tangible services (‘facilities’, ‘place’, ‘venue’ etc.). The tangible environment cannot be ignored in sports services, and has indeed been well-researched.

While television has dramatically changed the method of delivering sport to the masses, live professional sports is still delivered though major sporting facilities (Westerbeek and Shilbury 1999), and many of the intangible attractions of a sporting even can only be experienced by attending the event live. The nature of spectator sports itself also makes the tangible environment important. Spectators are required to sit for hours in fairly close proximity to other people, and so are susceptible to even subtle features in the physical environment around them – Wakefield and Blodgett (1996, p.48) demonstrated that the comfort of a seat can influence a spectator both physically and psychologically, and impact on their overall experience at the venue. Participants of this study’s focus groups also suggested that a well-designed facility can inspire people and create an infectious atmosphere.

The results of this study provide further evidence to the importance of the tangible environment in spectator sport: almost half of the top fifteen service expectation fell into this category, the cleanliness of the environment was rated as an important expectation by spectators in all three SSIS groups, and, of the six cluster groups, two clusters had Venue Services ranked as the most important, two ranked it as the second most important and two had it as the third most important factor out of six service factors. It is interesting to note that the service factors chosen were less

about the aesthetics of the venue (i.e. ‘the venue sports attractive characteristics’) but more about the ‘quality’ of the provisions available: the cleanliness of the facilities, the convenience of transportation or movement and the overall environment or joyful atmosphere.

These expectation were what spectators expected most amongst venue services which affected their spectating experiences. These important topics need to be dealt with and managed well, as mismanagement will negatively impact on spectators’

experiences.

7.2.2.1 Cleanliness

While factor analysis categorised the ‘the venue is clean and tidy’ service item into Medical, Sanitation and Disability Service, cleanliness is a basic venue-related quality concept and needs to be discussed in this section. The importance of a venue’s cleanliness has been demonstrated repeatedly: several works showed that the cleanliness of the facilities influenced a customer’s decision to attend (Wakefield and Sloan 1995; Wakefield and Blodgett 1996; Robertson and Pope 1999), and Bodet (2006) showed that cleanliness was the key element which strongly influenced overall customer satisfaction and the positive or negative evaluation outcome in a fitness club. Cleanliness was found to be a basic service which, if rated negatively, negatively impacted the customer’s impression of the entire service experience.

Another work from Bodet and Bernache-Assollant (2009) used team identification level as the moderating variable to identify the different perceptions of satisfaction of ice hockey spectators. This study found the cleanliness of the facilities to be the

‘secondary element’, meaning that it had no significant role in overall satisfaction across all groups of spectators. Firstly, the difference between the results in this study and the results in Bodet’s 2006 study implies the difference between perceptions of

‘participant sports’ (i.e. direct users of a fitness club) and ‘spectator sports’ (i.e. those attending a game to watch others play). However, this paper also focused on spectator sports, and the results revealed in chapter six clearly show that ‘cleanliness’

plays an important role in the service expectation of TPB spectators. There are two possible explanations for the differences in results between these two studies: either a) the sampling technique used in either study was erroneous, preventing the results from reflecting the reality; or b) cultural differences resulting in a different emphasis being placed on cleanliness, either between ice hockey fans and baseball fans or between French spectators and Taiwanese spectators. The exposure of Taiwan's outdoor ball fields to the elements (including typhoons, monsoonal rains and sandstorms) might also contribute to the importance placed on cleanliness by TPB spectators. Whatever the reasons for the differences in findings between these two studies, all available evidence strongly advocates cleanliness as an important service that should not be forgotten by TPB event organisers and venue managers.

7.2.2.2 Convenience

Multitudes of literature have proved the importance of convenience: studies have been done on the importance of ‘car parking or transportation service’ (Tomlinson et al. 1995; Wakefield and Sloan 1995; Wakefield and Blodgett 1996; Robertson and Pope 1999; Hall et al. 2010), ‘stadium accessibility’ (Tomlinson et al. 1995; Wakefield and Sloan 1995; Wakefield and Blodgett 1996; Robertson and Pope 1999; Ferreira and Armstrong 2004; Hall et al. 2010), ‘ease of getting a seat’ (Tomlinson et al. 1995;

Hall et al. 2010), ‘smoke free zone’ (Hall et al. 2010), and even ‘schedule convenience’

(Zhang et al. 2003; Braunstein et al. 2005). Convenience items aim to help spectators save time, avoid problems and ensure a positive experience, particularly for new spectators or those with children.

In this study, the items related to convenience of movement and transport around the venue (‘it is easy to move around the stadium’ and ‘transportation to the venue is convenient’) were both rated as highly important expectation, with both falling inside the top ten most important expectation for all groups except for the high-level identification group (low, medium and overall), where ‘it is easy to move around the stadium’ was placed at #11. Spectators expect for transport – whether inside or to the venue – to be convenient and easy. There are many ways that organisers can be

proactive and arrange for convenient transportation to even the most inaccessible of venues (such as shuttle buses or co-operating with public transport providers) and attention must be paid when designing venues to ensure that a) the hallways and routes for moving are adequately sized for a large amount of foot traffic and b) spectators know where they are at all times and can easily get to one place from another. As most of Taiwan's venues are fairly old there is a conspicuous lack of planning for ease of movement to be seen; many venues have been observed to be virtually inaccessible to disabled patrons. This creates an inconvenience for all spectators, and can impact negatively on their experience at the ballgame. Steps should be taken to remedy the situation, as all of the above mentioned 'convenience services' assist the organiser to meet spectator’s expectation and ensure they have a positive experience at the venue.

7.2.2.3 Atmosphere

A contradictory view of joy at a sports game was put forward by Bouchet et al. (2011), stating that a joyful atmosphere and joy as a consequence of the game are two different and distinct concepts. Spectators are mainly concerned with winning or losing, and this then defines whether or not they think that the game has a good atmosphere (Bouchet et al. 2011). The approach adopted in this study, however, is that a joyful atmosphere is a wide-ranging term encompassing both the happiness from the atmosphere inside the venue and the happiness associated with your team winning; if the spectator’s expectation is towards happy feelings, this can be reasonably seen as expecting a joyful atmosphere. These all count towards an expectation for ‘joyful’ as used in this study.

Spectators expect a sports venue to have a joyful atmosphere and environment.

According to Kuenzel and Yassim (2007), sport spectating is a hedonic consumption.

Hedonic consumption has also been found to generate higher levels of affect (Mano and Oliver, 1993) and joy is often included under the category of positive affect (Soderlund and Rosengren, 2004).

The works of Madrigal (1995) and Chelladurai et al. (2003) are consistent with the outcomes of the focus group meetings and the results of the questionnaire survey in suggesting that attending a live game is mostly done for entertainment; Kuenzel and Yassim (2007) also say that the greatest entertainment value is derived from watching a close game. Joy and the game are intertwined but not inter-dependant, and a joyful atmosphere is one of the expectation indicated by spectators at a game.