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What Content Makes People Want to Use Sports Websites?

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What Content Makes People Want to Use Sports Websites? Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2010 What content makes people want to use sports websites? Cara Francesca De Carlo Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation De Carlo, Cara Francesca, "What content makes people want to use sports websites?" (2010). LSU Master's Theses. 3128. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3128 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHAT CONTENT MAKES PEOPLE WANT TO USE SPORTS WEBSITES? A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Mass Communication in The Manship School of Mass Communication by Cara De Carlo B.S., Allegheny College, 2000 December 2010 Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………….......... iii Introduction……………………………………………………………….. 1 Literature Review………………………………………………………..... 6 Methods…………………………………………………………………..27 Results ……………………………………………………………………43 Discussion……………………………………………………………….. 75 References………………………………………………………………110 Appendix A: Survey, Focus Group and Interview Questions…………..116 Appendix B: Distributed Instructions for Website Tours……………… 120 Appendix C: Example of E-mail or Facebook Message Including Instructional Steps for the Online Surveys…………………………….. 127 Appendix D: Analysis of Focus Group Responses…………………….. 130 Vita……………………………………………………………………... 137 ii Abstract This study looked at sports websites to see how the variables information, humor, entertainment, community, and credibility affected sports website users‟ intentions to use and re- use sports websites. Three groups of 25 and one group of 30 participants each completed a website viewing activity and corresponding survey. There were four website viewing activities (one for each group). The activities led participants on tours of ESPN.com, Deadspin.com, Football Outsiders, and Yahoo! Sports. Furthermore, the tours were designed to expose participants to the variables (as defined under disposition theory and uses and gratifications). Likewise, the corresponding survey assessed participants‟ intentions to use each of the four websites based on the degrees to which they perceived each variable to be present. In addition to the surveys, the study utilized focus group discussion data as a secondary method. Five focus groups and one interviewee each answered eight open-ended questions. All answers were analyzed according to which of the variables were important to participants on sports websites. Results of the survey data showed that humor and entertainment content had the most positive effect on sports website users‟ intents to use, whereas information and credibility content scored highest among the discussion participants. The community variable ranked last via both methods. The ramifications for this study are that sports websites should develop their humorous and entertaining content regarding athletes and sports figures. Website partnerships with informative and credible sites should be formed to maintain sports information links. iii Introduction Sports websites have seen incredible growth in recent years for both the site creators and their advertisers. One of the few online genres making money, sports sites‟ revenues are predicted to reach almost $3 billion dollars by 2012, up from $1.5 billion in 2007. In that same time period, advertisers are expected to see a 24 percent increase in revenue from $819 million dollars to $1.95 billion dollars (Verna, 2008). One recent example of growth is the launch of new, city-specific ESPN websites. In 2009, ESPN (a division of Walt Disney Co.) launched local sports sites for Chicago, Boston, and Dallas. The Chicago site saw 1.15 million unique visitors in October (of 2009). This was 20 percent more than the site had seen the previous month. For all three of these local sites, 2.3 million unique visitors spent 10.4 million total minutes (Klayman, 2009). To continue this exponential growth, sports sites are developing and tracking the popular content. But what are these features that keep sports sites users (and thus advertisers) coming back? One possible feature is entertainment. Recent studies have shown that online sports fan communities draw users because the users produce content (via message boards, etc.) to entertain each other (Benigni, Porter, & Wood, 2009). Although these fans are producing the content themselves, the examples to follow refer to the entertainment caused by the content, and not by the fan participation. An example worth noting took place on December 3, 2007. The commenter “Belowpar” posted a thread to TigerDroppings.com. He said that ESPN‟s Kirk Herbstreit had reported a false rumor about LSU‟s Les Miles because Herbstreit had taken a prank call as his source (Belowpar, 2007). Belowpar‟s post began a message board thread that continued for 7 pages over 8 days on TigerDroppings.com. Furthermore, Belowpar‟s message became the source for other bloggers 1 and media, such as the December 5, 2007 entry of the blog “Awful Announcing” (Powell, 2007) and a December 1, 2009 posting on the College Football Talk on nbcsports.com (Ramsey, 2009). Comments and blogs blasted Herbstreit and vindicated college football programs (LSU and Michigan). Herbstreit‟s mistake became a rallying point for fans – for their teams and against the media. In examples such as this, online sports fan communities produce a form of entertainment best explained by disposition theory of sports spectatorship. Online community intensity comes from the intensity of fan cultures in general (and their anticipations of outcomes of games) (Raney, 2006). The intensity stems from the ways in which people are socialized as sports fans (family, school, city, etc.) and the team affiliations that they adopt. Disposition theory of sports spectatorship basically states that we are most entertained when good things happen to those teams and athletes we like. Likewise, we are entertained when the world of sports is unkind to those teams and athletes we dislike (Bryant & Zillmann, 2002). This type of entertainment is often amplified by a group affiliation, such as that of an online fan community. In this example, college football fans were brought together by TigerDroppings, and their entertainment was amplified because they could experience entertaining posts like Belowpar‟s as a group (Raney, 2006). The fans read that Kirk Herbstreit made a mistake due to a prank call, and they enjoyed criticism against Herbstreit. The fans were entertained by the negativity directed toward someone they saw as a buffoon, and they enjoyed the absolution of their coach and programs. Sports websites also entertain by using humor, a principle governed by disposition theory of humor. Disposition theory of humor, like disposition theory of sports spectatorship, manifests itself in the way that we form positive or negative dispositions toward characters such as sports teams and figures. We are still entertained by the defeat of teams and athletes we do not 2 support. However, under the conditions of disposition theory of humor, there is something about the “defeat” that makes it funny, as in the debasement or humiliation of that negative disposition entity. In this way, disposition theory can be applied to other humorous entertainment features for sports websites. We are more entertained when good things happen for our positive disposition characters (our favorite team gets a win) and when bad things happen to our negative disposition characters (i.e., Elizabeth Lambert is suspended for behaving violently during a women‟s collegiate soccer match, or Tiger Woods is dropped by his sponsors after multiple incidents of cheating on his wife). Using disposition theory of humor, we can investigate whether humorous stories, photos, or videos featuring the debasement or humiliation of a sports character entertain sports website users. Besides humor, information features are another way sites are attracting users. An example of this is Fantasy Sports Ventures (FSV), which bought 30 sports Web sites along with promotional and revenue-sharing agreements with some 400 affiliates (Van Riper, 2009). The goal was to utilize a handful of small, independent football sites catering to hardcore fans. Such websites allow statistics and other information content to be shared, providing the service of aggregating sports information to help fantasy sports team owners to make decisions from week to week. This use of sports information features attracted users by the millions. FSV is now “the fifth-most popular sports Web business, with more than 10 million unique viewers a month, according to Nielsen Media Research” (Van Riper, 2009). Sports information is, in this case, a classic end goal under the theory of uses and gratifications (McQuail, 1984). The theory of uses and gratifications explains how individuals make media choices based on what they want to get out of the media. Similarly to FSV, Carlson, Rosenberger, and Muthaly (2003) have noted that 3 information was a key satisfaction for the use of sports websites:
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