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Sex trafficking is a prominent human rights issue that has been increasingly associated with the hosting of large-scale sport events. Despite insufficient evidence demonstrating a causal or correlative link, event stakeholders have implemented antitrafficking efforts in attempts to prevent and promote awareness of sex trafficking. Using Google Trends data to measure audiences' information-seeking behavior online and Twitter data as a proxy for antitrafficking efforts on social media, we employed a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the change in online demand for sex-trafficking information among the residents of Miami-Dade, the host city of Super Bowl LIV (54). Findings highlight an increase in the online demand for sex-trafficking information in the host city during and after the event. This increased demand attributed to the Super Bowl may offer support for host communities utilizing sport events to promote awareness of pressing social issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand esports consumer demand, this study derived topics from real-time viewer comments during live streams of two professional esports leagues, King Pro League (KPL) and CrossFire Pro League (CFPL). We investigated structural factors that drew viewers' attention to each topic. Using data from Douyu.com, we collected 1,111,177 real-time comments on 126 KPL matches and 233,869 comments on 96 CFPL matches. We employed a digital ethnography approach to discern the fan identification of viewers who contributed to comments. We applied guided Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to extract topics in these comments. We examined structural factors that affect viewers' interest in each topic using a multinomial logit regression. Only a small proportion of viewers who commented during live-streaming esports games were identified as fans of competing teams. Viewers paid most attention to the excitement of the game. Commentators and in-streaming activities also captured viewers' attention. Esports fans tended to focus on players and teams whereas general observers were more attuned to game-related skills and knowledge. We take the attention economy as a theoretical framework to understand esports consumers' interests and demonstrate the structure of consumer demand for various aspects of esports. We provide insight to help esports organizations and live-streaming platforms effectively attract viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturers often try to expand sales by making their products available on an intermediatory platform. This article examines fundamental issues related to firms' decisions to use a platform. Due to favorable services that are provided by the platform, consumers would rather purchase from the platform than directly from the firms. In the absence of a platform, some would purchase from the firms while others would make no purchase. With a platform, on the other hand, strong-preference consumers will continue to purchase from the firms, since they are not within the platform's target market; low-preference consumers will continue to make no purchase; only moderate-preference consumers will switch from direct purchase to platform purchase. Moreover, the firm-direct sales prices are greater than the platform sales price, so the firms take advantage of strong-preference consumers to compensate for the fee of the platform. We also show that the optimal size of the platform is related to consumers' evaluation of the products, the platform characteristics, and consumers' disutility of buying a non-ideal product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]