ABSTRACT
Onewould be hard-pressed to find a form of entertainment that has blurred its lines with marketing more than spectator sports. Over the years, marketers have become increasingly adept at using athletes, arenas, scoreboards, race cars, blimps, and the ads aired between the action as platforms to promote their brands by targeting sports fans. For instance, in recent years the ads aired during the Super Bowl telecast have become as important to some viewers as the event itself. Likewise, sports properties and the networks that cover them have become brands unto themselves, which has helped to provide them with new streams of revenue through brand extensions (e.g., ESPNzone restaurants, ESPN Magazine) and licensed merchandise. Despite the proliferation of what has come to be known as sport marketing, relatively little is known about the psychology that draws audiences to televised sports. This chapter focuses on research dealing with the personality trait of sensation seeking, which is a consumer’s individual need for stimulation, and how this might be a factor in audience preferences for viewing certain types of televised sports.
