Commercialization of College Football in the United Kingdom

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Introduction

College sports are popular in most parts of the world, including the United Kingdom. They draw large crowds of supporters, the majority of whom are other college students. With this development, most product manufacturers and service providers have seen an opportunity to promote their goods through partnerships with college and university teams. The partnerships occur through sponsorships, just as is the case with significant league games outside school.

It is worth noting that, while college sport commercialization has been ongoing for many years, researchers have conducted few studies to understand its impact on the motivation of players, team performance, and the appeal of the game as measured by the sizes of spectators at events. As such, the author proposes to conduct a study in this area to see what impact the commercialization of college games has had on various aspects of these sports. The author offers to focus specifically on college football in that it is one of the most popular sports in the United Kingdom.

Scope of the Research

For the best research outcomes, a study should not be limited in any way. However, this is both impossible and impractical. It is necessary to restrain a study’s scope to ensure that it is doable within a fixed budget and time frame. After all, a small examination of a given phenomenon may offer a somewhat accurate representation of the entire situation, provided that the researcher addresses issues about validity, reliability, and authenticity. In this regard, the proposed study will have a limited scope regarding the area covered and the general depth. On matters of geographical location, the researcher proposes to examine college football teams within some parts of England only. The researcher will select ten universities in England at random to form the basis of the study.

Concerning depth, the scope of the study is limited to college football. The main reason is that there are many popular sports in the university, but it is impossible to cover all of them with the given finances and time. Limiting the study to football teams will allow for some research rigor that leads to the attainment of more valid, authentic, and reliable findings. College football is also regarded as the most popular sport in universities, making it the most likely choice for inclusion in a college-corporate partnership. Therefore, focusing on college football alone is enough to reveal vital trends within the sector.

Aims and Objectives of the Research

As noted earlier, the study’s main aim is to examine the commercialization of college football in the United Kingdom and its impact on athlete motivation, team performance, and the game’s appeal to spectators. The aim will guide the author in designing the research questions and conducting the study. From this central aim, specific objectives that will act as key performance indicators (KPIs) include the following:

To examine the relationship between the commercialization of college football and its impact on athlete motivation
To explore the relationship between college football and its relationship with team motivation
To investigate the relationship between college football and its impact on the game’s appeal as measured by the spectator sizes

Research Questions

Research questions will guide and direct the proposed study, ensuring that the author remains focused during the entire work. Notably, without the appropriate research questions, it is possible to deviate in the middle of a study leading to poorly executed research with unreliable and unusable outcomes. Since the research questions are related to the study’s main aim and objectives, the primary one is as follows: What is the impact of the commercialization of college football in the United Kingdom on athlete motivation, team performance, and the game’s appeal as measured by spectator sizes? Three specific questions that the author would seek to answer while conducting the study are as follows:

What is the impact of the commercialization of college football in the United Kingdom on athlete motivation?
What is the impact of the commercialization of college football in the United Kingdom on team performance?
What is the impact of college football’s commercialization on the game’s appeal as measured by spectator sizes?

It is essential to conduct the study because the findings will help forge better policies and regulations in the future. For example, if college football’s commercialization proves more helpful than harmful, then all universities should consider implementing them to benefit from them. Also, the government can use the findings of the proposed study to review its policies about university taxation.

A college or university’s tax obligation benefiting tremendously from partnerships with commercial organizations may have to change to reflect this reality. The outcomes may also explain why some university teams are consistently ranked the best-performing ones in the country. Most importantly, the study’s findings will add significant and valuable information to the existing scientific knowledge body. Like other researchers, the author’s purpose in conducting this study is the impartial and honest pursuit of the truth in the quest for evidence of how phenomena relate.

Literature Review

Commercialization of college games is a recent but popular activity sweeping across universities worldwide. It refers to the creation by schools of an overt business context around varsity games to allow sponsors and corporate organizations to advertise their goods or services by sponsoring these activities (Morgan, 2017; Harris, 2019). Companies may support student-oriented goods and services or include merchandise that the rest of the population can also buy. In some parts of the world, collegiate games are a significant income earner for schools. For example, according to the US Congressional Budget Office [CBO] (2009), sponsors, including corporate organizations, contribute more than 50 percent of major-league collegiate athletics’ revenues.

As such, university and college games – particularly elite ones – may have morphed into profitable ventures from what they used to be – extracurricular activities. In non-collegiate sports, teams often demonstrate high motivation and high-octane performances when they have the right sponsors. Indeed, some groups have attributed their poor performance to the lack of reliable or consistent sponsors. In this context, it is expected that varsity teams behave similarly.

The issue of the commercialization of college sports has interested many researchers. However, most of them only investigate its relationship to sporting values and the participating schools’ profitability. For example, Orlowski, Herter, and Wicker (2017) reported that the commercialization of collegiate games has eroded sporting values because it may lead to doctored or biased results. When there are no stakes involved in competitions and games, the pressure to win is not excessive. As a result, only the best teams win. However, sponsors’ involvement means that teams have to do everything within their powers to win games to maintain the sponsorships. Such pressure may result in the erosion of sporting values as athletes may use drugs to enhance their performance (Zimbalist, 2017; Hillman, 2016).

Unfortunately, drug use may permanently alter the well-being of a sports personality. In the short run, the athlete may be motivated to win, resulting in better team performance and greater appeal to spectators (Simon and Owojaiye, 2019; Hoffman, 2020). However, in the long run, athletes who lose regularly may become less motivated and stressed, resulting in poor performance.

While the returns for teams in the commercialization of sporting activities are mixed and varied from time to time, sponsors always benefit from the greater exposure they get through college games. Most of these teams attract a large following, especially from fellow students, representing a great advertising opportunity (Kowalke, 2017; Meyer and Zimbalist, 2017). Unfortunately, since companies are profit maximizers, they can only partner with teams that provide consistently good results. It is the only way that they can justify their expenditure on those activities. Companies know that the best way to win potential customers’ and clients’ hearts is to associate with winning teams only (Gurney, Lopiano and Zimbalist, 2017; Harris, 2019).

Unfortunately, because only a few teams can be the top ones, companies have to fight to sponsor a winning side every season. While this gesture gives the company greater exposure, it leaves less performing teams vulnerable and less motivated (Gurney, Lopiano and Zimbalist, 2017). Teams without sponsors may also feel left behind, and they may attribute their poor performance to a lack of a reliable sponsor.

Athlete motivation is the outcome of many factors (both internal and external to the player). Internal factors that may contribute to player motivation include a genuine liking of the game, talent, and inspiration. All these contribute to player motivation, evidenced by regular training, great discipline, and continuous improvement. External factors that may contribute to greater participation in sporting events include financial incentives, traveling, popularity among peers, winning, and exposure. Therefore, the involvement of corporate organizations and sponsors results in the availability of an external source of motivation for all players.

The sponsor may give the players an assortment of merchandise and financial benefits both to individual players and the group as one (Starsia, 2020; McDermand, 2018). When players taste the sweetness of corporate money, they may become exceedingly motivated so that they can win more games and retain sponsors. Individuals like John Graham were among the pioneers of sports commercialization, which led to greater interest in money (Golden, 2018). Such an attitude pushes individuals to better themselves and to remain motivated for long. If sponsors withdraw support, the player motivation may dwindle as well.

In terms of team performance, the commercialization of collegiate games has led to various impacts, ranging from positive to negative. The involvement of sponsors and corporate organizations transforms college sports into a high-stakes game rather than a friendly competition that it used to be in the past (Okumura and Toyota, 2018). More participants feel the pressure to outdo their competitors, resulting in sneaky moves and greater enmity between rival teams. Playing rough, illegal substance abuse, and violence may characterize high-stakes games, which calls for more accurate and unbiased refereeing.

Assuming that individuals maintain fair play, individual team performance may improve as each competitor aims at winning more significant sponsorship deals (Amay, 2018; Berry, 2017). In college, talented players may take extra-curriculum activities seriously only when they see financial gains in them. As such, teams may become better performers because they may attract and retain better talent (Yaffe et al., 2021). Morality and Values in Sports Among Young Athletes: The Role of Sport Type and Parenting Styles–A Pilot Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 98., 2018). Meanwhile, internal and external factors that contribute to player motivation may also result in improved team performance.

Lastly, the involvement of sponsors also creates a more significant impact on the game’s appeal. Corporates sponsoring various teams provide enough money to popularize the sport and arouse interest among potential spectators (Cooper, Nwadike and Macaulay, 2018). There are no sponsors involved; games may go unnoticed due to the event’s poor popularization within campuses. The large numbers of people who go to watch games live show that they are away from the event and are excited to see the winner emerge.

Sponsors participating in college competitions may also offer to have some games broadcast live on TV to reach a larger audience, marketing themselves further (Keshavarz, Farahani and Alizadeh, 2017). Since the proliferation of collegiate games commercialization, sporting events at this level have become increasingly popular to the extent that venues get full (Solberg, 2018). Notably, the famous a sport is, the more people are more likely to watch it, leading to a virtuous circle where more famous games attract an even more significant fanatical following on and off-campus.

Games are a great way of keeping people together, contributing to their continued growth and expansion in colleges. Students engage in games to form social bonds and break the monotony of participating in classroom activities.

However, commercial organizations have now taken over as the new sponsors adding some twist to collegiate games. Seemingly, the increased participation of sponsors in university sports has resulted in more motivated players, better team performance, and greater game appeal as measured by spectator sizes. Unfortunately, these facts only seem true for the top teams only. They tend to win championship games yearly, which has given them access to a more excellent pool of finances while leaving other groups frustrated and unable to perform effectively. In this regard, the commercialization of college games is concentrated among the leaders only. In the proposed research, the author will investigate available statistics to determine their accuracy and back what some research works suggest.

Research Methodology

The author proposes to utilize a mixed-method sequential explanatory design to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The researcher will collect the two data types in two stages. The first one would be on quantitative data about athlete motivation, team performance, and game’s appeal in the first stage. The researcher will obtain this information by creating questionnaires and sending them to 10 university football team leaders in England. The researcher will select only those colleges with sports sponsorship agreements for this activity. The leaders will provide statistical data about their teams before and after sponsorships.

For example, they will show the average frequency of players attending training, the number of games won, and ticket sales in home ground sporting events. In the second phase, the researcher will interview different team representatives to gain more insights into their institutions. The researcher will send online questionnaires to reduce the study’s cost while also improving the collection process. The author may utilize survey monkey or similar web-based applications for this purpose.

For the interviews (qualitative research), the author aims for face-to-face conversations with the selected participants. Face-to-face discussions are useful as they allow the researcher to gauge the accuracy of responses given by observing the interviewee’s utilization of non-verbal cues (Creswell and Creswell, 2017). It is also practical because it helps the researcher to ask additional questions to help the respondent clarify issues and avoid ambiguity.

Face-to-face interviews are also cheaper compared to phone interviews. The setting of these discussions would be a quiet and serene environment with the least amount of distraction. The vicinity of the selected university’s library might serve as a good location for the interviews. The researcher will record all the interviews and take supplementary notes to help with the analysis of the final data. The researcher will also enter the interview with the same questions for all the participants to ensure the results are comparable. However, the author intends to interview one or two individuals per day (at different times), depending on their availability. Ideally, one interview in the morning and another afternoon.

The author would analyze the quantitative data using SPSS, and the qualitative data will require sorting, summarization, and comparison. Part of examining and analyzing the data would involve transcribing the collected qualitative records (Meyers, Gamst and Guarino, 2016). Notably, the analysis of qualitative data requires non-statistical processes. One only needs to observe and report on trends and noticeable variables while analyzing and presenting qualitative research findings. Expectedly, it will be a smooth undertaking that results in useful and reliable conclusions.

After analyzing the qualitative and quantitative data, the author would analyze the results and present them in a well-designed discussion section. In that chapter, the researcher will interpret the findings and make them useful to the public. Without proper interpretation of data, the research can be null and void. Indeed, every researcher must interpret their findings to the public and turn ordinary statistical and qualitative data into useful information that all public members can utilize.

Ethical Considerations

One of the most important ethical considerations is to remain focused on the pursuit of the truth. As such, the author will only report what they find; there will be no attempt to doctor results or change them to support a specific point of view. The author will utilize truthful reporting to maintain the reliability, validity, and authenticity of their findings. The other crucial ethical consideration is to operate legally. The author will follow all requirements in conducting the study to ensure there is no flaunting of existing regulations. The author will also seek approval from the schools involved to participate in the study. The author will obtain written permission for the task and the informed consent form for all the people involved. The author will also respect the privacy of the participants. Thus, they will only report on relevant information. The author will not disclose personally-identifying information of the participants to the public to safeguard their security and privacy.

Resources to Carry out the Research

The two primary research resources needed here are original and secondary research. They include books, journals, and other types of research publications about the commercialization of college football. These resources are available in libraries and online databases. The author will access these online databases using Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and other specialized search engines. Getting and retrieving the right resource often requires creativity, innovation, and impeccable researching skills. Additional resources to conduct the study include peers, mentors, and videos. Hopefully, the teams to be selected for the task will have past videos that would help assess changes in their performance over time. Institutions that keep safe and reliable records are more likely to contain this data than those that do not.

The researcher will also contact the university professors for great insights about the topic and how it may proceed. Most importantly, the researcher will be careful with the utilization of the limited time and financial resources.

Organization of the Work

The proposed research will have five chapters. In chapter 1, the introduction, the author will cover the background information, including the study’s aims and objectives and the overarching purpose. In chapter 2, literature review, the author examines some of the available works related to the main question under assessment. Chapter three will be about the methodology used to collect, analyze, and present the findings. In chapter four, the author would provide the research findings or outcomes and discussion. The researcher will not attempt to interpret data in the findings section until the next section. Lastly, in chapter five, the author will give the conclusions and recommendations. All five areas will generate a well-organized paper that communicates meaning to those using it.

Timeframe and Likely Outcomes

The research will start immediately after the school approves the proposal. The author will spend the first two weeks organizing the resources needed for the study. After that, the researcher will spend another two weeks writing the introductory chapter. A literature review completed within two to three weeks will follow shortly after. The actual interviews and online surveys will take another one to two months. The analysis of the data will also last for between one and two months. The author will then spend the last month writing a conclusion and revising and polishing the final work for presentation.

The likely outcome of the first week is a well-organized resource book and schedule. It will help the author comprehend the path to follow to attain the desired objectives. In the following weeks, the author would achieve other outcomes, including a working draft, approved research participants, and the completed paper, which the author must submit on time. Submission will happen after the researcher has read and revised the final draft to communicate the intended message effectively.

Conclusion

The commercialization of college games had become a significant business not just in the UK but also in other parts of the world. It represents the transformation of an innocent activity into a money-making endeavor. Most researchers have not examined the phenomenon yet, but a few studies already exist. The author proposes to examine the relationship or the impact of the commercialization of college games – particularly football in the UK – on player motivation, team performance, and the game’s appeal. The study will reveal these issues to aid with policy formulation and implementation to influence the activity.

It may also affect how governments view colleges and may occasion changes in tax obligations. If the study finds that college games’ commercialization erodes sporting values, people must take appropriate action to prevent other adverse outcomes. More excellent opportunities may arise by preventing the present robust and enigmatic leaders from taking advantage of schools. If the activity yields more favorable results, then it must be supplemented and encouraged at all costs.

Reference List

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Congressional Budget Office (2009) “Tax preferences for collegiate sports,” The Congress of the United States of Congressional Budget Office. Web.

Cooper, J. N., Nwadike, A., and Macaulay, C. (2017) ‘A critical race theory analysis of big-time college sports: implications for culturally responsive and race-conscious sport leadership.’ Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics.

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Golden, M. W. (2018) The Life and Times of John Graham Chambers: Sports and Commercialization of Leisure in Victorian Britain. University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Gurney, G., Lopiano, D. A., and Zimbalist, A. (2017) Unwinding madness: what went wrong with college sports and how to fix it. Brookings Institution Press.

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