Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2021 Augmented Reality in Sport Broadcasting Chad Goebert Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.edu/etd Part of the Sports Studies Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.edu/etd/6526 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact libcompass@vcu. © Chad Goebert 2021 All Rights Reserved i Augmented Reality in Sport Broadcasting A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University By Chad Goebert Master of Science in Sport Management, Barry University, 2010 Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Clearwater Christian College, 2005 Dissertation Chair: Dr.
Brendan Dwyer, Ph. Associate Professor, Center for Sport Leadership Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia January, 2021 ii Acknowledgement Thank you to Dr. Carrie LeCrom, Dr. Gregory Greenhalgh, and Dr.
Brendan Dwyer for accepting me into the PhD program at the CSL. This experience was a joy for me from start to finish. I am thankful for the many hours of instruction, support, and guidance you all have given me. I am blessed to have learned from such a talented, hard-working, and gracious group of people and I am forever in your debt for the time you have invested in me and my family.
To my wife Dayna, literally none of this would have been possible without you. You are amazing in so many ways. Maycie, Laynie, and Saydie, you are the best girls in the world, and I am blessed beyond measure to be your dad. I am thankful to all of you for your positivity as we relocated to a new home in a state we had never been to and you treated it like an adventure.
There is nobody I would rather be on this adventure with. iii Table of Contents I.1 Rationale for the Current Study .4 Statement of Purpose .8 Research Question One .8 Research Question Two .8 Research Question Three .9 Research Question Four .9 Research Question Five .9 Research Question Six .10 Definitions of Terms. REVIEW OF LITERATURE…………………………………………………….14 Media-dominant Sport Consumers .15 Media-dominant Sport Consumer Needs .17 Hedonic Viewing Motives .18 Utilitarian Viewing Motives .24 Types of Visual AR Displays .26 Head-mounted Display .29 AR in Marketing .29 AR in Sport Marketing.34 Broadcast Media in Sport.36 AR in Sport Broadcast Media .40 Sport Programming Integration .44 Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) .45 Central Route Processing .46 Peripheral Route Processing .47 Personal Relevance/Involvement .48 ELM Applied in Technology and AR .49 ELM Applied to Sport Management.53 iv Target Population and Sample Design.58 Word of Mouth (WOM).58 Re-viewing Intention .59 Control/Demographic Variables .60 Coach Mode Broadcast .61 Mascot Mode Broadcast .67 Assumptions of ANCOVA and MANCOVA .68 Research Questions One Assumptions .69 Research Question Two Assumptions .69 Research Question Three Assumptions .70 Research Question Four Assumptions .70 Research Question Five Assumptions .74 Research Question One .74 Research Question Two .74 Research Question Three .75 Research Question Four .76 Research Question Five .76 Research Question Six. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS .81 Re-viewing Intention .83 Word of Mouth .95 Sport Involvement and ELM .107 vi List of Figures 1.
Gartner Hype Cycle. Sword of Damocles. Second Spectrum “Full Court Press”. Super Bowl Graphics.
NASCAR’s Virtual Studio. Elaboration Likelihood Model Schematic. Margins Plot Re-Viewing Intention. Margins Plot Word of Mouth.
Margins Plot Utilitarian Attitudes. Margins Plot Hedonic Attitudes. Visual Outputs Moderator Analysis by Sport Involvement .99 vii List of Tables 1. Means and Standard Deviations.
ANCOVA Model Results .80 viii Abstract For a large portion of its history, sport broadcasting has been stagnant when it comes to incorporating new and innovative technologies. However, due to declining viewership and consumer desire for customizable content, augmented reality graphics have begun to be incorporated into multiple sport broadcast products. In fact, the UEFA Champions League, NBA, NFL, and NHL have all used or indicated their intention to utilize AR graphics in future broadcasts. Considering that media rights revenue is the main source of revenue to sport properties and organizations, it is important to carefully consider how the core product (the broadcast) is presented.
The study examined consumer attitudes and intentions towards AR in sport broadcasts by utilizing three types of broadcasts of an NBA game. One of the broadcasts was a traditional broadcast format with no AR enhancement and the other two were enhanced with AR graphics, a coach-mode broadcast that featured AR player tracking and play diagramming while the other enhanced broadcast, mascot-mode, featured AR graphics similar to a video game with over-the-top animations. Results of the current study provide insight into consumer preferences towards AR in sport broadcasting and guidance to sport properties planning to utilize broadcast AR graphics. Specifically, that sport consumers were significantly more likely to re-view (p < .05) and recommend via word of mouth (p < .05) the coach-mode AR than the mascot-mode AR.
Sport involvement was a significant factor for how sport fans perceive the AR broadcast types through incorporating the perspective of the elaboration likelihood model. Keywords: Augmented Reality, Sport Broadcasting, Marketing, Sport fan behavior ix Chapter One: Introduction According to the Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ (PwC, 2018) annual report, the North American sports market was $69.1 billion in 2017 and projected to grow to $80. The four main categories identified by PwC (2018) that make up the sports market are media rights, gate revenues, sponsorship, and merchandising. While gate revenue was the largest source of revenue for the sport industry for a long time, it has recently been surpassed by media rights.
That is not projected to change soon as sport-based media rights were valued at just over $19 billion in 2017 and expected to continue to grow to $23. Television broadcasting and sport have experienced similar growth and adoption curves so much so that some authors have referred to their relationship as symbiotic (McChesney, 1989; Neal-Lunsford, 1992). One of the main drivers in the growth of sport broadcasting has been the rapid technological advancements and improved broadcast capability (Potts & Thomas, 2018). Thanks in large part to the improved broadcast capabilities, sport broadcasting holds a unique position in television broadcasting as it is one of the last genres of television that consumers choose to view in real time (Paul & Weinbach, 2015).
In fact, Funk, Alexandris, and McDonald (2016) stated that one of the most attractive aspects of sports to broadcasters is that it is consumed as it happens. This real time consumption of sport through television broadcasting has been very successful due to the loyalty of sport consumers (Gladden & Funk, 2001). However, even with a loyal audience of sport fans, there are concerns among some broadcasters related to an ever-increasing number of potential sport viewing modalities including computer, tablet, or even smartphone (Turner & Shilbury, 2010). With more ways to watch and consume sports than ever before (Fujak, Frawley, McDonald, & Bush, 2018) it is vitally 1 important that sport media managers understand how to attract and retain an audience.
In order to satisfy sport media consumers that have a plethora of options, Karg, McDonald, and Leckie (2019) suggest that media stakeholders such as teams, leagues, and broadcast companies need to customize their products to meet consumer preferences. The big question with regard to the future of sport media is stated clearly in the PwC (2018) North American sports outlook report “How will media rights suitors cater to the personalized experience that audiences have come to not only seek, but expect?” (p. One emerging option to create a customized and interactive viewing experience for sports consumers is broadcast augmented reality (AR). AR, like virtual reality (VR) is a technology that is categorized as an immersive technology.
However, while VR completely immerses the user in a virtually created digital environment, AR incorporates digitally created graphics or visuals into the real-world environment (Azuma, 1997). VR is almost exclusively experienced through a headset of some kind while AR is not limited to one piece of hardware such as a headset (Handa, Aul, & Bajaj, 2012). Instead, AR can be experienced in a myriad of ways including head-mounted displays, projector-based AR, smartphone AR, and broadcast AR (Schmalstieg & Hollerer, 2016). Each of these classifications of AR will be discussed in greater detail in the literature review.
However, this study focuses primarily on broadcast AR and its use in sport broadcasting. Broadcast AR augments a sport broadcast by overlaying digital images and game information on the sport action that is taking place (Han & Farin, 2007). According to the Gartner Hype Cycle (2018), AR is currently five to ten years from being a fully accepted and productively used technology. However, there are many sport industry executives that believe the time to invest in and develop AR uses in sport is now (Moore, 2017).
2 Among them is NASCAR’s Vice President and Chief Digital Officer Tim Clark, who thinks AR and sport seem to be a perfect fit: Augmented reality is helping us revolutionize the way that NASCAR fans engage with the sport. Our goal is to bring fans as close to the sport as possible, and AR is an ideal medium to help us accomplish that as we look to engage the NASCAR fans of both today and tomorrow. To further bolster the belief that AR will play a significant role in sport, the technology was named one of the five biggest sports marketing trends of 2019 (Mulcahy, 2019). In much the same way that the sport industry and media rights in the sport industry have grown, the AR market is projected to experience massive expansion, growing from $11.14 billion in 2018 to $60.
AR could potentially enable broadcasters to educate and entertain viewers by supporting the game product with informational and hedonic content (Ogus, 2019b). While AR is a potentially powerful tool to utilize during sport broadcasts, it is important to keep in mind that it should be seen as a complimentary technology and not one that will replace the core sport contest product itself (Goebert & Greenhalgh, 2020). Second Spectrum CEO Rajiv Maheswaran believes sport broadcasts customized with AR graphics will soon be the norm saying: “There will be a day we look back and say, I can’t believe we used to watch everything the same way at the same time” (O’Connor, 2018, para. While AR has been examined in a variety of academic disciplines (Cipresso et al., 2018), little empirical research has been conducted on AR use in broadcasting.
Specifically, there has been a dearth of research into consumer attitudes towards AR enhanced sport broadcasting. One factor that bodes well for the potential acceptance of AR technology in sport broadcasting is that 3 sport audiences have been shown to be receptive to new forms of consumption (McCosker & Dodd, 2013). As AR use in sport broadcasting becomes more common, it is important to understand consumer attitudes and intentions towards the enhanced broadcasts. Rationale for the Current Study It is vitally important for sport broadcast managers to understand consumer behavior and the attitudes of sport media consumers (Trail, Fink, & Anderson, 2003).
Media rights are the largest source of revenue for the sport industry (PwC, 2018). Broadcast revenue now outpaces all other types of revenue including ticket sales for sport franchises (Foster, O’Reilly, & Dávila, 2016). It is important to specifically investigate the motives of sport media consumers as they have proven to be unique even amongst other types of media consumers (Gantz, Wang, Paul, & Potter, 2006). To that point, sport media consumers are one of the last groups of media consumers that overwhelmingly watch their programming as it happens in real-time (Rowe, 2018).
