Product structure of watching figure skating

Focusing on athletic elements

Abstract

Understanding spectators' perspectives towards a sports competition is one of the major marketing issues in professional sport management. The purposes of this study are (1) to develop a scale to measure spectators' involvement in athletic elements of figure skating which can be deemed as the core product, (2) to examine the relationships of such involvement with antecedent variables and consequent variables, and (3) to examine involvement in athletic elements by the difference in gender of a player supporting. We analyzed a sample of 478 spectators at the 2013 NHK Trophy Grand Prix of Figure Skating. The results of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that athletic elements consisted of technical and aesthetic dimensions. Furthermore, the findings indicated that spectators' involvement had significant relationships with their knowledge regarding figure skating as well as consequent variables such as their intention to support a specific athlete and spectating behavior. This observation could significantly contribute to the development of marketing strategies for figure skating events.