Franchise Ownership as Individual-Level Sport Brands: Exploring a Digitally Intermediated Process Model

Research suggests when local consumers perceive professional sport team owners as like them, they are more likely to attend games and spend freely ( Hayduk & Walker, 2021 ). We developed and tested an intuitive process model to examine how some owners are better able to increase profitability, incentivize attendance, and induce consumer spending. We built and tested a process model of owners' individualized impacts on franchise outcomes using franchise-level panel data merged with city-level Google search traffic data. Early-tenure owners from the same franchise city demonstrated positive outcomes. This paper contributes to the dearth of literature on franchise owners and their contributions to franchise-level outcomes.