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The development of digital technologies and innovations has contributed, in part, to the rise of virtual races. As a type of active leisure event, virtual races have the potential to overcome geographic constraints and attract more participants. To further our understanding of participants’ virtual race experiences, we adopted mindfulness theory to examine components that contributed to participants reporting a mindful experience or a mindless experience, respectively. Qualitative data were collected via photo-elicitation interviews with 20 informants who completed the 2020 Illinois Marathon Virtual Race in the United States. Findings showed that components that led to informants reporting a mindful experience included: 1) a self-created connection to place, 2) bounded creativity, and 3) an adaptive mindset, whilst components that led to informants reporting a mindless experience included 1) the absence of event formalities and 2) anchoring bias. Based on these findings, we developed a model of mindful/mindless virtual race experiences. Implications for active leisure event literature and mindfulness theory were discussed, along with practical recommendations for how event managers and participants can co-create a mindful virtual race experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations choose to sponsor charity sport events (CSE) to achieve a variety of marketing objectives. Sponsoring CSEs is different than traditional sport event sponsorship programmes because CSEs combine sport with charity. The complexity of CSE sponsorship has attracted researchers from different disciplines, which has resulted in a wide-ranging body of literature. The purpose of the current systematic literature review is to synthesise the existing body of knowledge to identify future research opportunities. A systematic literature review of the existing CSE sponsorship literature was conducted. In total, 42 English peer-reviewed journal articles were analysed to summarise the geographic location, methodologies, theories, constructs, and managerial implications of the existing body of literature. The results reveal that a high proportion of the existing research has examined CSE sponsorship programmes in the United States. The majority of the articles reviewed collected cross-sectional data through questionnaires to investigate the outcomes of CSE sponsorship. Based upon the managerial implications advanced within the existing body of CSE sponsorship literature, event participation segmentation can assist in creating meaningful leverage initiatives. Furthermore, event sponsors are encouraged to share their underlying motivation to support the CSE and invite employees to volunteer at the event. Future research should collect longitudinal data from event participants and use the scroll back method to examine CSE sponsorship programmes. Scholars should also adopt physiological measures as a complementary data source to self-reported data to create a more holistic understanding of CSE sponsorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elite and professional sport events have been recognized as potential mechanisms to enhance well-being. This multicountry study investigates how engagement in such events, behaviorally through live spectating and psychologically through team identification, is associated with life satisfaction. Data from Australia (N = 268) revealed a positive association between live spectating and life satisfaction through a two-wave design measuring live spectating and life satisfaction in separate surveys. Data from the United States (N = 564) confirmed the live spectating-life satisfaction relationship found in Study 1. Additionally, Study 2 revealed individuals with higher levels of team identification perceived greater emotional support from other fans, and this perception, in turn, predicted life satisfaction. Our findings provide sport managers with implications for positioning appeals in support of sport programs and designing events that facilitate engagement to promote life satisfaction in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to examine sport tourists’ involvement with a destination that hosts a sport event to enable understanding of how a tourist–destination relationship forms. To bolster this understanding, the psychological continuum model (PCM) is applied as a framework to assess sport tourists’ involvement with a destination across four progressive stages. A questionnaire was administered to sport tourists in an international marathon event in the United States (N = 1,029). To allocate these sport tourists into distinct stages that represent an increased psychological connection to the destination, a three-step staging tool using destination involvement (DI) was applied. The findings indicate the progressive development of DI among these sport tourists results in increasingly high place attachment and revisit intentions. The results provide support for DI as an indicator that allows destination marketers to understand sport tourists’ destination attitude as well as predict behavioral intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]