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I 111Investigating the Impact of Daily Fantasy Sports Participation on Sports Fandom i 111Investigating the Impact of Daily Fantasy Sports Participation on Sports Fandom: A Performative Sport Fandom Perspective A dissertation proposal submitted to the College of Communication and Information of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Zach Humphries May 2020 ii Dissertation proposal written by Zach Humphries B.A., Youngstown State University, 2012 M.S., Youngstown State University, 2014 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2020 Approved by ________________________________ Danielle Sarver Coombs, Ph.D., Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee ________________________________ Miriam Matteson, Ph.D., Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee ________________________________ Tang Tang, Ph.D., Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee ________________________________ Theresa Walton-Fisette, Ph.D., Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Accepted by Miriam Matteson, Ph.D., Chair, Doctoral Studies Committee ________________________________ Amy Reynolds, Ph.D., Dean, College of Communication and Information iii Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 Background and Problem Statement ........................................................... 3 II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE .......................................................... 9 Fantasy Sports ............................................................................................. 9 DFS and TFS ............................................................................................. 11 Social Identity Theory ............................................................................... 13 Performative Sport Fandom Theory .......................................................... 15 Fan Performance Matrix ............................................................................ 17 Sports Fandom and Levels of Fandom ...................................................... 19 Impact of Fantasy Sports Participation on Fandom .................................. 25 Sport Fandom Motives ............................................................................. 28 Fantasy Sports Motives ............................................................................. 30 Internet Gambling and DFS Players .......................................................... 32 Research Questions ................................................................................... 35 III. METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................... 36 Theoretical Bracketing and Research Quality ........................................... 37 DFS Experts and Player Interviews ........................................................... 39 Sample and Data Collection .......................................................... 39 DFS Expert and Player Interviews ................................................ 40 Data Analysis ................................................................................. 42 Ethical Considerations ............................................................................... 44 IV. FINDINGS ...................................................................................................... 45 Fan Performance Matrix ............................................................................ 46 The Caring Performance Mode ................................................................. 47 Conflicting Loyalties ..................................................................... 48 Performance Based Loyalty .......................................................... 50 No Loyalty Toward Favorite Team ............................................... 52 Conflicting Identities ..................................................................... 54 The Knowing Performance Mode ............................................................. 58 Statistical Knowledge .................................................................... 59 Watching and Following Games as a DFS Player ......................... 63 Financial Incentive to Know Information ..................................... 67 DFS Influences Additional Skill-Based Gambling ................................... 72 iv V. DISCUSSION ................................................................................................... 76 Contextual Factors Lead to Different Performances ................................. 77 Negotiating Life Identities and Conflicting Team Loyalties ..................... 80 Gambling and Fan Performances .............................................................. 83 Theoretical Implications ............................................................................ 87 Limitations ................................................................................................. 88 Future Research ......................................................................................... 90 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 93 APPENDICES A. DFS Expert and DFS Player Quotes ................................................................. 97 B. Interview Protocol ........................................................................................... 104 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 106 v Acknowledgements First, I would like to my family and friends. There is no way that I would have accomplished this task without your support and love. You were always in my corner throughout the ups and the downs of graduate school. A special thank you to mom, dad, Frankie, and Joya. You were in my corner well before I started this journey. I am very grateful to have such a great group of family and friends who believe in me. Next, I want to thank my advisor Dr. Danielle Sarver Coombs. She has made me a better scholar and writer throughout this entire process. I made a great decision with selecting you as my dissertation chair and advisor and I will always consider you a mentor and friend. I would have never made it this point without your unwavering support and guidance. I would also like to offer a special thank you to my entire dissertation committee. Thank you for your patience and guidance. I want to thank the entire Kent State community for making me feel like a member of the institution and the community. I want to offer a special thanks to my many classmates and colleagues. Thank you. Whether we took a class together or worked on a team research project, I will remember the impact you had on me and my journey. I would also like to thank YouTube and a few YouTubers who got me interested in practicing meditation and living a healthy lifestyle. Graduate school is not easy. It is a grind. Meditation is now forever a part of my day-to-day life. Thank you, Michael Sealey. Thank you, Jason Stephenson. I never thought writing a dissertation would lead me to meditation, but it did. vi Lastly, thank you to everyone I crossed paths with during this journey. I made so many special relationships at conferences, in classes, and on campus. There are too many of you to list here but I will remember you all. Thank you 1 Chapter 1 Introduction According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), as of June 20th, 2017, fantasy sports is a $7.22 billion-dollar industry. The same report indicates that there are just under 60 million total fantasy sport players in the United States and Canada, which represents a 3.3% increase from 2016. In other words, roughly one in five people in the U.S. are playing fantasy sports, and 73% of the total fantasy players are playing fantasy football. McDuling (2015) posits that 30 million Americans spent roughly eleven billion dollars on fantasy sports in 2015. The amount of money tied to fantasy sports continues to increase and daily fantasy sports (DFS) players are heavily contributing to the rising interest and money spent on fantasy sports (Billings et al., 2017). DFS is the newest and fastest growing fantasy sports platform, but its players have been understudied (Leishman, 2016). This dissertation focused on DFS players and how they perform their fandom through utilizing the Performative Sport Fandom (PSF) theory. PSF theory is a theoretical approach that treats each sports fan as an individual and contextualizes fandom so that researchers can study each fans’ unique performances (Osborne & Coombs, 2013). Sports fandom research saw a surge in the mid 1990s when Wann and Hamlet (1995) commented on the lack of literature focusing on the sports fan. This has led to great advances in our knowledge and understanding of sports fans and the identity formed as sports fans (e.g., Hirt, Zillmann, Erickson, & Kennedy, 1992; Schlabach, 1998; Shank & Beasley, 1988). Sports fan identification refers to the degree to which a fan feels psychologically connected to a team or sport (Murrell & Dietz, 1992). However, the emergence of fantasy sports, which allow fans to 2 take on the role of team owner by assembling a virtual line-up of real athletes from professional sports competitions, has blurred the lines of sports fan identification (Carlson, 2013). While fantasy sports
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