Sports Marketing and the Internet: It's a Whole New Ball Game

Abstract

This special issue of Sport Marketing Quarterly describes several aspects of the Internet. It has quickly grown in importance as a medium of the future. Many features of the Internet fit well with characteristics of sport business. Both big business and small clusters of sports participants can benefit from the Internet. Papers in the special issue explore business viability of the Internet, aspects of consumers and consumer behavior, business strategy, and characteristics of new media.

The incendiary growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web (www or Web) as a commercial medium over the past half decade is unparalleled in the history of media. As one might expect, sport and its marketing side have been a part of this firestorm almost from the start. In November 1998, Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal devoted a special issue to the Internet called “Cybersports Explode Online: Teams, Leagues, Media, and Athletes Establish Sites.” The Wall Street Journal claimed, “Professional leagues, major media, online services, and fantasy-game operators are voraciously assembling material and courting advertisers and partners in the unshaken belief that sports is one of the few sure things in cyberspace” (Fatsis, 1996, p. 1). It seems as if hardly an issue of Advertising Age goes by without some article on sports and the Internet. The challenge is for sports marketers to understand how the Internet works for serving sports fans in this new environment.