Sports 2.0: A Look at the Future of Sports in the Context of RFID’s “Weird New Media Revolution”

Abstract

This article examines the myriad ways in which RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) technology will impact the world of sports. In this paper,
we look at how this “weird new media revolution” will have
a transformative impact both on the games themselves and the fans’
experience at the stadium. We will examine how RFID is being used in sport
applications from golf to soccer to racing of all forms to add previously
unimaginable real-time richness and accuracy to the sports. We will also
look at the use of RFID in ticketing and payment applications that will
add security, control, and new revenue streams to sports operations, while
giving enhanced value and services to the fan. We will conclude with a
look at what this new version of Sports 2.0 will mean in the future both
in and out of the sporting arena.

Introduction

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and it is poised to be
the successor technology to the bar code in identifying “things”
in our economy. Using small microchips embedded in objects, RFID can create
unimaginable levels of control and visibility in a whole host of applications.
Evidence of such can be seen in the mandates of major retailers, such
as Wal-Mart, Target, and Albertson’s, along with the U.S. Department
of Defense, to have their suppliers begin affixing RFID-enabled labels
to shipments of goods to their distribution centers (Morphy, 2005, n.p.).
As outlined in Table 1, RFID is currently being employed in a whole host
of areas.


Table 1 – RFID Applications

Traditional RFID Applications Emerging RFID Applications
  • Security/Access Control
  • Electronic Article Surveillance
  • Asset/Fleet Management
  • Mass Transit
  • Library Access
  • Toll Collection
  • Animal Identification
  • Warehouse Management
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Reverse Logistics
  • Shipment Tracking
  • Asset Tracking
  • Retail Management
  • Document Tracking
  • Anti-counterfeit
  • Advance Access Control
  • Mass Transit– Monthly and Single Trip
  • Airline Baggage Handling
  • Aircraft Parts and Tools
  • Health Care Applications
  • Regulatory Compliance
  • Payments

Source: Wyld (2006, p. 159)


While creating new efficiencies in distribution and new opportunities in
retail may mean billions of dollars and while the application of RFID in
pharmaceutical and animal tracking applications may save thousands of lives,
the wide world of sports is no doubt one of the sexiest applications for
RFID on the horizon. It is also an area where RFID can enhance both the
participant and the spectator experience, impacting people’s lives
in a positive manner. As such, innovative companies across the globe are
rushing into sports applications for the technology.

Take golf balls for example. Anyone who has picked-up a golf club has
been there. You hit your drive off the 1st tee, and it goes, and goes,
and goes – where? All golfers have spent countless hours combing
the banks of creeks, looking in crevices, and pouring through thickets
in often fruitless searches for their wayward shots. But what if there
was a high-tech way for the ball to tell you where it was and guide you
to it? Radar Golf is a small company, based in Roseville, California,
seeking to RFID-enable the game of golf with its Radar Golf System. Such
a prospect led Stephanie Stahl (2005), the editor of InformationWeek,
to say that finding lost golf balls may be the “killer app”
for RFID in the consumer world.

Radar Golf has developed a golf ball that is manufactured by a Chinese
contractor that has an RFID tag embedded inside its core. The ball has
been certified as conforming to the rigorous standards of the United States
Golf Association (USGA), enabling it to be used in tournament play. The
company’s patented Ball Positioning System (BPS) is built into a
handheld unit, which is essentially an RFID reader that transmits a specific
radio frequency signal to search for the lost ball. It provides a visual
LCD signal strength display and pulsed audio tone feedback to the golfer
looking for his/her ball, with the beep increasing (like a Geiger counter)
as the golfer nears the location of the wayward ball. The BPS presently
has a detection range of up to 100 feet (LaPedus, 2005). The company began
marketing the system in mid-2005. The Radar Golf System retails for $249,
which includes a dozen golf balls (additional dozen balls sets retail
for $39). It plans to license the technology to other golf ball manufacturers
to equip their branded balls with RFID tags (LaPedus, 2005).

We are seeing that, as with the golf ball example, games themselves can
be enhanced through the use of RFID technology. We are also seeing that
RFID can be used to secure ticketing and enhance the in-stadium spectator
experience. RFID can also create new metrics – and new gambling
opportunities – in the sports world. In this article, we will take
a look at Sports 2.0, as RFID helps reshape the sporting life and experience.

RFID on the Field

RFID is fast getting “in the game,” as we are seeing exciting,
in-event applications of RFID technology in sports ranging from the “beautiful
game” to road racing of every form.

Football (Soccer)

Indeed, the most noteworthy in-game example to date comes in the world’s
most popular sport – football (or soccer as we in the U.S. know
it). The Erlangen, Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits
has developed an RFID-based system to give complete visibility to the
soccer field. Both the ball and a shin-guard on each of the twenty-two
players are outfitted with RFID-chips, and readers positioned to scan
the entire field can read the position of both the players and the “Smartball”
up to two thousand times each second. The Fraunhofer system will not only
allow for referees to consult the data to potentially aid in correctly
calling disputed goals and troublesome off-sides penalties, but it will
permit soccer clubs and their fans to access performance metrics on their
teams and individual players. Although FIFA (Fédération
Internationale de Football Association), soccer’s world governing
body, passed on using the technology for the 2006 World Cup, the system
is likely to be approved for tournament use later this year (Collins,
2005).

Racing

We have also seen that RFID can add value and visibility to racing events
of all types. One of the longest standing applications of RFID has been
in the area of marathon racing. The ChampionChip Company pioneered the
use of RFID-chips attached to runners in the Berlin Marathon in 1994.
Since then, the firm’s namesake tracking device has been worn by
millions of road racers, cyclists, in-line skaters, cross-country skiers,
and triathletes in thousands of events worldwide. The tracking device,
which uses passive RFID technology with antennas built into specially-designed
mats over which the athletes must pass, allows for the racers’ real,
net times to be recorded as they pass the start-finish and other intervals
along the course, as well as the “value-add” of for real-time
tracking via the Internet for friends, fans, press, and family members.
It has been used in the New York City Marathon, where five thousand runners
per minute crossed the thirty-six meters-wide starting line at the Verrazano
Narrows Bridge. And in the June 2000 Broloppet Half Marathon, in which
runners raced across the new bridge connecting between Denmark and Sweden,
a record 79,837 competitors were tracked using the ChampionChip (ChampionChip,
2006). Commenting on the state of marathon technology, Judith Donohue,
manager of the HP’s New England Initiative, whose firm has worked
with the Boston Marathon for over a decade, observed: “We’ve come
a long way from when we used to draw a line in the street with chalk”
(quoted in Ewalt, 2004, n.p.).

RFID has moved into a motor racing. Texas Instruments has developed the
Race Timer system for motorcycle racing, in which an RFID transponder
is placed either on the motorcycle’s front fender or in the rider’s
chest protector. The system is a quantum improvement over the former use
of single-file gates and either manual recording or scanning bar codes
attached to riders’ helmets. With the TI system, the size of motorcycle
events can grow significantly, supporting up to one thousand riders in
a single event (Texas Instruments, 2005). RFID has also been adopted by
the IRL (Indy Racing League), with active transponders being positioned
in the same point in the nose of the Indy Car and with antennas positioned
around – and in – the track. With speeds of over two-hundred
miles per hour, the system can distinguish between two or more racecars
passing the same point within 10,000ths of a second of each other. The
system allows for real-time race tracking via the Internet for all IRL
races, including the Indianapolis 500, where antennas are installed in
the track surface in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s famous Yard
of Bricks at the start-finish line of the “Old Brickyard”
as the track is known (Karle, 2004).

While NASCAR has not announced a similar in-race system, the fast-growing
racing circuit is employing RFID for tracking tires used by all racing
teams in its three racing circuits. The system will enable for centralized
control over the Goodyear tires used in NASCAR events, in order to allow
for an even playing field between the race teams and better control over
tire stock (Anonymous, 2005). RFID also presents a very practical advantage
over the former bar-code based labeling of tires for NASCAR events. Goodyear
had in the past attempted to track tire inventory for race teams by applying
bar code labels to the sidewalls. However, they quickly found that the
bar code labels could be intentionally rubbed off or smudged when in use
(Sullivan, 2005). With the new system, the tire inventory is centralized
by NASCAR, and race officials can use handheld readers to quickly scan
both cars and the pits to make sure they have the proper quantity and
type of tires in their possession before, during, and after the races
(Swedberg, 2005).

Finally, in a slower speed form of racing, RFID has been introduced in
the ancient sport of pigeon racing. In the past, to determine timing and
ranking in pigeon races, handlers had to catch pigeons one-by-one and
read an identification number from metal rings attached to their legs.
Today, the standard practice for almost a decade has been to attach RFID-enabled
plastic bands to the birds’ legs with the positioning of antennas
at points along the course from the release point to the home loft (Anonymous,
1997).

RFID in the Arena

RFID-enabled Paper Ticketing

There have been exciting developments recently to integrating RFID chips
into a paper-form ticket. Doing so has several advantages, including:

  • Preventing counterfeiting
  • Promoting security
  • Inhibiting the secondary “black market” for prized tickets
  • Facilitating faster patron entry into sports venues.

The recently concluded FIFA World Cup in Germany was the largest use
of RFID in sports ticketing to date, with:

  • Twelve venues
  • Sixty-four games
  • 3.5 million tickets (Blau, 2006a).

FIFA had previously employed RFID-equipped tickets in its “dry
run” for the 2006 event in staging its Confederations Cup in Germany
in 2005 (Blau, 2006b).

The World Cup ticketing was based on Philips Electronics MIFARE technology,
enabling ticket-holders to gain entrance to the venues by sliding their
tickets into fixed scanners, positioned at the entry gates to the stadiums.
As can be seen in Figure 1, the tickets are personalized with the name
of the ticket buyer. While FIFA collects identification information on
all ticket buyers, the RFID tag does not contain info on the ticket holder,
only access information for the FIFA ticketing system (Stensgaard, 2006).

Figure 1 – World Cup Tickets

Figure 1

 

Besides security concerns, one of the principal reasons FIFA chose to
employ RFID-based security in its ticketing for the World Cup was out
the organizer’s desire to significantly cut down on the secondary
or “black market” for these highly coveted tickets, which
FIFA prohibits from sale or transfer outside of family members except
in cases of undue hardship (Blau, 2006b). According to Carrie Johnson,
an e-commerce analyst for Forrester Research, the size of the global secondary-ticket
market is difficult to precisely pin down, with projections ranging anywhere
from $2 to $25 billion annually (cited in Sandoval, 2006). While World
Cup tickets for this year’s event averaged approximately a $180
face value, one estimate from the United Kingdom projected that FIFA leaves
as much as $3.6 billion (US) on the table by not charging market rates
for tickets (Blau, 2006a). FIFA’s prohibition on illegal ticket
sales, whether by what are known as “ticket brokers,” “scalpers,”
or “touts” by region, has not stopped those engaged in the
banned practice from trying to sell tickets. In fact, bids rose to $3000
or more per seat on eBay for World Cup tickets, even though the buyer
had no assurance they could actually enter the venue with a ticket, the
name on which could not possibly match the ticket holder (Kelly, 2006).
Buyers were betting on the fact that gate personnel would not bother checking
the ticket holder’s ID to match the name on the ticket to the person
presenting it at the turnstile – a bet lost by some fans, according
to media reports from the game sites. One sports industry analyst stated
that better control over the pricing of tickets brings FIFA additional
worldwide revenues in areas such as licensing, sponsorship, and broadcast
rights through marketing the World Cup as a “people’s game,”
rather than as entertainment for the wealthy and powerful (Higgitt, 2006).
Still, it is not a fool-proof system, as even one member of the FIFA Executive
Committee, Ismail Bhamjee of Botswana, was asked to leave Germany during
the World Cup when it was discovered that he had sold match tickets for
the England versus Trinidad and Tobago game for more than three times
their face value (Anonymous, 2006a).

Certainly, preventing counterfeit tickets from being presented at the
turnstile is a concern of any promoter of a sporting event – from
one as large as the World Cup, as pricey as the Super Bowl, or for hosts
of professional sports events and even prestigious amateur competitions,
such as college football games and skating championships. For instance,
at this year’s Super Bowl XL in Detroit, local police arrested twelve
people on felony charges for selling counterfeit Super Bowl tickets, and
seventy-three bogus tickets were confiscated from people who tried to
enter Detroit’s Ford Field on the day of the game (Anonymous, 2006b).

How can RFID help to curb counterfeiting? In November 2005, Texas Instrument’s
Tag-It RFID inlays were embedded into all 100,000 tickets for the Tennis
Master’s Cup 2005, held in Shanghai, China. The event organizers
used sixteen stationary readers at the entrance gates to Shanghai’s
Qi Zhong stadium, which is slated to host the event for three consecutive
years through 2007. As Yang Yibin, Deputy General Manager of New Sports
and Entertainment (Shanghai) Ltd., a subsidiary of the Ba-Shi Group, explained:
“Prior to using RFID, spectators were required to purchase a pre-event
ticket holder and then exchange it for the physical ticket at the stadium
box office. This new system not only offers peace of mind that the tickets
purchased are genuine, it puts tickets in the purchaser’s hands faster
and provides more efficient entry come event time” (quoted in O’Connor,
2005b, n.p.). In addition to the gate verification of the ticket, New
Sports and Entertainment outfitted event staff members with handheld RFID
readers to spot check tickets inside the stadium for an added level of
security (O’Connor, 2005b).

Many of the best practices and lessons learned emerging from the FIFA
World Cup and other high profile events will be employed at the next global
sports event on the horizon at which organizers plan to use RFID-based
ticketing – the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics (Campbell, 2005).

RFID-enabled Smart Cards – The “Golden Ticket”?

The hybrid solution of RFID-enabled, paper-form tickets may be a short-term
solution to the problems of crowd control, security, and resale prevention.
Indeed, the longer-term solution may be a move away from hard copy tickets
entirely to an electronic “Golden Ticket,” – a smart
card solution that offers benefits in both ticketing and payments.

That is the vision of a number of competing firms today. Stadiacard,
a division of the UK-based TelCo Management Limited, is working with several
leading football clubs in the UK in proving the viability of such a contactless
card solution. Most notably, there is the example of the Liverpool Football
Club, which has been at the forefront of using contactless technology
in its stadium since 2003. For the upcoming 2006/2007 season, the Liverpool
Club, winners of the 2006 FA Cup, will be shifting its season ticket buyers
entirely to Stadiacard’s contactless solution, providing them with
what they are branding as the Fan Card. Liverpool has now equipped its
historic Anfield Stadium, which dates back to 1884, with readers at all
of its entry gates. The Liverpool Club believes that the system will not
only speed entry of season ticket holders into the stadium, but also eliminate
the possibility that these buyers could resell individual game tickets
from their season-long package or provide them to “ticket touters.”
This is because the Fan Card will be required for entry throughout the
season. If sold, the season ticket purchaser would lose the right to enter
the stadium for not just a single match or series of games, but the remainder
of the season. While Anfield only has a capacity of 45,400 seats, the
Liverpool club has issued over 130,000 Fan Cards to date. Supporters who
are not season ticket holders can use their Fan Cards as ID when purchasing
individual game tickets via the phone or the Internet (Stadiacard, 2006).

A similar solution, also aimed for the football market, is being marketed
by the St. Andrews, Scotland-based Scotcomms Technology Group. Scotcomms
TeamCard contactless solution is being employed by several leading football
clubs in the UK, including:

  • Bolton Wanderers
  • The Celtic (Glasgow)
  • Chelsea
  • Crystal Palace
  • Everton
  • Ipswich Town
  • Millwall (Scotcomms Technology Group, 2006).

One of the significant benefits of such contactless ticketing is the
ability of the sports’ team/club to derive incremental revenue from
what would have been unused tickets by season ticket holders. One of the
British football clubs making use of the TeamCard, the Bolton Wanderers,
has turned a season ticket holder’s inability to attend a game into
a “win-win” for all parties. Gareth Moores, a director of
the club, estimates that 5-8% of season ticket holders can not attend
a given game. The Bolton Club rewards season ticket holders who notify
the organization in advance of their inability to attend a game with £10
worth of points loaded onto their TeamCard. These points can then be used
for purchasing either refreshments in the club’s stadium or team
merchandise from the club. The club is then able to resell that unused
seat – for an average profit of £15. Likewise, football clubs
have begun to offer seating upgrades to better sections on an availability
bases to card holders, with the ability to charge their registered payment
option immediately should they choose to sit in a better seat for an event
(Thomas, 2004).

There is also a significant security benefit to the use of contactless
tickets for sporting events in general and for football specifically.
Unlike with paper-form tickets, if a fan’s ticket card is lost or
stolen, the team can simply issue a replacement and cancel out the original
lost item. Also, the team retains significant control over the use of
the card, which is especially important in venues such as football in
England, where crowd rowdiness and hooliganism has been of paramount concern
in recent years. If a team can identify trouble making fans, they can
simply deactivate that person’s contactless ticket card and ban
them from the grounds. In the same fashion, as has been done in Liverpool
since the 2003/2004 season, stadium security and support personnel have
themselves been issued contactless cards, allowing for the club to maintain
required staffing levels throughout the stadium and monitor staff movement
for both management and payroll purposes. Finally, since the fan’s
card also operates as a form of payment in the stadium, the benefits of
contactless payments at concessions and merchandise sales locations can
be reaped. And, in the United Kindgom, unlike at sports venues in the
United States, where sports betting is not legal in the stadium setting,
fans can place wagers before and even during games using the same contactless
ticket card (Scotcomms Technology Group, 2006; Stadiacard, 2006; and Thomas,
2004).

Michael Richardson, Chief Technology Officer of New York-based Smart
System Technologies (SST), points to the fact that professional sports
teams “have to look for new ways to raise incremental revenues beyond
selling seats” (quoted in Collins, 2004, n.p.). Contactless payment
technologies, integrating RFID into either credit cards or key fobs, may
indeed be the key to unlocking more revenue potential from fans inside
the stadium. Early trials of such systems have been promising. In one
pilot, fans using the PowerPass system of New York-based Smart System
Technologies (SST) consistently bought double the amount of brewskis,
hot dogs, foam fingers, and other concession items, while speeding the
transactions (between two and six times faster than cash or credit card)
and taking cash-handling out of the equation (Collins, 2004).

This season, Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers have worked
in partnership with Chase to provide their fans with the convenience of
contactless payment technology. During the 2005 season, only one concession
stand at Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas was even equipped to accept
credit-card payments. For this season, the Rangers have installed more
than two-hundred contactless credit-card terminals throughout the ballpark,
at a cost of approximately $150 each. According to Scott Rau, a Senior
Vice President for Chase, contactless cards can take thirty seconds off
the time required for each cash transaction. Thus, fans can speed through
the process of buying concessions and souvenirs in the stadium, enhancing
the spectator experience by reducing their time waiting in lines and not
enjoying the event. Rangers Vice President Brad Alberts is excited about
the new technology, believing “it’s easier for the fans, it’s quicker
for the fans, and people will probably spend more money” (quoted
in Koenig, 2006, n.p.). The system is expected to grow in use as Chase
distributes more of its branded credit cards with contactless payment
capabilities. As of June, the company has distributed over seven-million
of their “blink” cards in major metropolitan areas in the
U.S., including the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, home of the Texas Rangers
(Koenig, 2006).

At present, MasterCard is undoubtedly the leader in the field. MasterCard’s
PayPass technology has been implemented to date in a total of nine Major
League Baseball ballparks and seven National Football League stadiums
(Anonymous, 2006c). These current installations are detailed in Table
2 below.

Table 2 – Stadiums in the United Stateswith PayPass Installations


Major League Baseball National Football League
  • Atlanta Braves (Turner Field)
  • Boston Red Sox (Fenway Park)
  • Cincinnati Reds (Great American Ballpark)
  • Los Angeles Dodgers (Dodger Stadium)
  • New York Mets (Shea Stadium)
  • New York Yankees (Yankee Stadium)
  • Philadelphia Phillies (Citizens Bank Park)
  • San Diego Padres (PETCO Park)
  • St. Louis Cardinals (Busch Stadium)
  • Baltimore Ravens (M&T Bank Stadium)
  • Detroit Lions (Ford Field)
  • Kansas City Chiefs (Arrowhead Stadium)
  • New York Giants/New York Jets (Giants Stadium)
  • Philadelphia Eagles (Lincoln Financial Field)
  • Seattle Seahawks (QWEST Field)
  • Washington Redskins (FedEx Field)

Source Info: MasterCard International – June 2006


From the perspective of Lawrence Flanagan, Worldwide Chief Marketing
Officer for MasterCard International, “stadiums represent the ideal
venues to showcase the promise of PayPass,” which the firm is fast-expanding
in its credit card operations (quoted in Anonymous, 2006c, n.p.).

What’s the next level for contactless payments? Well, it can be
found in Atlanta’s Philips Arena. In a test that began earlier this
year, 250 season ticket holders of the Atlanta Thrashers NHL hockey team
and the Atlanta Hawks NBA basketball team are receiving a specially NFC
(near field communication)-enabled Nokia cell phone which they can then
use in the arena for concession payments. Moreover, the cell phones can
detect the passive RFID tags embedded in “smart posters” positioned
around Philips Arena. With the phone held within a few inches of the poster,
they can download news, graphics (such as pictures of players or wallpaper
images) and promotional video clips which are presently inaccessible by
the general public (O’Connor, 2005c). According to a recently released
study from Philips Electronics and Visa International on the utility of
Near Field Communication (NFC) and contactless payment technology, consumers
like the convenience, ease of use, and “coolness” of making
transactions with their mobile phones (Philips Semiconductors, 2006).

Analysis

Will RFID be “the next big thing?” At this point in the technology’s
life cycle, it is too early for anyone to tell, but the stars certainly
seem to be in alignment for the next decade to be a tremendously exciting
one. Many share the sentiment of Kuchinskas (2005) that: “RFID will
change business and society as much as cell phones and the Internet have”
(n.p.). Futurist Paul Saffo believes that we are in the early stages of
“a weird new kind of media revolution,” in that “RFID
will make possible new companies that do things we don’t even dream about”
(quoted in Van, 2005, B1). Saffo views RFID as a media technology, making
it possible for what he categorizes as “’smartifacts’
or intelligent artifacts, that are observing the world on our behalf and
increasingly manipulating it on our behalf.” Saffo thus stresses
the importance of thinking outside the box on RFID and looking beyond
today’s problems to find “unexpected applications,”
which is where “the greatest potential for RFID lies” (quoted
in O’Connor, 2005a, n.p.).

Today, we are seeing the first fruits of this “weird” new
media revolution that RFID is sparking, including those found in the sports
field. What we are seeing with the advent of RFID in the sports marketplace
is the introduction of a technology that has the power to transform the
experience of playing and watching games. Sports 2.0 promises to be an
exciting – and richer – experience, and it will be interesting
to observe the innovations that will surely come over the next few years
as RFID-based applications become more commonplace in sporting venues.

What does all this portend for the “Average Joe Six-Pack”
sports fan? As a player, as a coach, as a spectator, and as a gambler,
RFID is on tap to transform the sports world over the next decade. We
will see RFID-based systems replace some of the fundamental rule elements
of sports, to the betterment of the game. After all, it is hard to believe
that in 2006, the way we measure first downs in football is with a chain!
We may also see the automation of some routine scoring and statistics
compiled in major sporting events, such as line crossings in a wide variety
of sports and distance calculations in golf. RFID will also bring heretofore
unimaginable levels of information and intelligence to our games. Already,
there is speculation that RFID may enable new forms of wagering on sporting
events with the new metrics that can be uncovered by RFID-chipping of
balls and players, making new opportunities for casinos and sports books.
In baseball for instance, RFID could enable gamblers to bet on things
– in real-time – like the precise distance of a home run and
the positioning of individual pitches. Finally, there is speculation that
some players and teams may not want to release such new statistics, such
as how far they ran during a soccer or football game, for fear of revealing
efforts that they may not be especially proud of. This is hardly information
overload; it’s revolutionary on many, many levels.

References

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  15. Higgitt, Duncan (2006). “Still a fan’s World Cup?” Western Mail, June 10, 2006. Retrieved June 30, 2006, from http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/features/tm_objectid=17207626&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=still-a-fan-s-world-cup–name_page.html.
  16. Karle, Patrick (2004). “Indy 500 keeps score with RFID: Race officials use an active-tag system to drive real-time reports on racers’ performance.”
  17. RFID Journal, May 31, 2004. Retrieved February 14, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleprint/965/-1/1/.
  18. Kelly, Maxim (2006). “Tech sector set to score at World Cup.” Electric News, May 19, 2006. Retrieved June 16, 2006, from http://www.electricnews.net/ffocus.html?code=9688040.
  19. Koenig, David (2006). “Banking on credit cards at the ballpark.” USA Today, June 6, 2006. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-06-06-ballpark-devices_x.htm.
  20. Kuchinskas, Susan (2005). “RFID tags a booming biz.” Internetnews.com, (January 12, 2005). Retrieved from the web on January 16, 2005. Available at http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/3458331.
  21. LaPedus, Mark (2005). “Radar Golf claims breakthrough with RFID golf balls.” Silicon Strategies, (January 25, 2005). Retrieved from the web on February 12, 2005. Available at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57703713.
  22. MasterCard International (2006). “MasterCard PayPass – Frequently Asked Questions.” Retrieved June 30, 2006, from http://www.mastercard.com/us/personal/en/aboutourcards/paypass/faqs.html#1.
  23. Morphy, Erika (2005). “RFID is here: What is your customer plan?” CIO Today, (June 17, 2005). Retrieved June 21, 2005, from http://www.cio-today.com/news/RFID-Is-Here–What-Is-Your-Plan-/story.xhtml?story_id=1010000274YP.
  24. O’Connor, Mary Catherine (2005a). “RFID and the media revolution: Renowned futurist Paul Saffo predicts that RFID’s biggest impact will come from surprising applications.” RFID Journal, (April 13, 2005). Retrieved April 20, 2005, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1508/1/1/.
  25. O’Connor, Mary Catherine (2005b). “RFID takes a swing at ticket fraud: By embedding RFID tags into tickets for the Tennis Masters Cup 2005, organizers were able to curtail counterfeiting, increase revenues and speed patrons’ entry into the stadium.” RFID Journal, (April 13, 2005). Retrieved May 14, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2060/1/1/.
  26. O’Connor, Mary Catherine (2005c). “Sports fans use RFID to pay and play: A group of season ticket holders at Atlanta’s Philips Arena can use RFID-enabled cell phones to download video clips and pictures of players—and, eventually, to make purchases.” RFID Journal, (December 16, 2005). Retrieved June 30, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2051/1/1/.
  27. Philips Semiconductors (2006). “How would you like to pay for that? Cash, card or phone? Philips and Visa usability study shows consumers like the convenience of contactless payment using Near Field Communication.” Semiconductor News, April 5, 2006. Retrieved July 6, 2006, from http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/news/content/file_1231.html.
  28. Sandoval, Greg (2006). “Can the Net make ticket scalping legit?” News.com, June 5, 2006. Retrieved June 15, 2006, from http://news.com.com/Can+the+Net+make+ticket+scalping+legit/2100-1032_3-6079684.html.
  29. Scotcomms Technology Group (2006). TeamCard. Retrieved June 28, 2006, from http://www.scotcomms.co.uk/pdfs/teamcard_all.pdf.
  30. Stadiacard (2006). “Membership Card – One customer, one membership card and one record.” Retrieved May 12, 2006, from http://www.stadiacard.com/marketing/membership_card.html.
  31. Stahl, Stephanie (2005). “Editor’s note: RFID at the core of biz processes.” InformationWeek, January 31, 2005. Retrieved from the web on February 1, 2005. Available at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59100620.
  32. Stensgaard, Anne-Birte (2006). “Philips and the 2006 FIFA World Cup.” AME Info, June 8, 2006. Retrieved June 15, 2006, from http://www.ameinfo.com/88301.html.
  33. Sullivan, Laurie (2005). “RFID rolls into NASCAR races: Goodyear will provide to racing-teams tires that have RFID devices embedded into the sidewalls.”
  34. InformationWeek, November 28, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006, from http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174401417.
  35. Swedberg, Claire (2005). “RFID tracks tires at NASCAR: Goodyear used handheld interrogators and embedded tags to keep track of leased racecar tires.” RFID Journal, November 25, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2006/1/1/.
  36. Texas Instruments (2005). “Sports timing: Changing the profile of racing events.” Retrieved July 7, 2005, from http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/applications/sports.shtml.
  37. Thomas, Daniel (2004). “Sports clubs kick off with smart ticketing.” VnunetNews, February 6, 2004. Retrieved May 13, 2006, from http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2124268/sports-clubs-kick-smart-ticketing.
  38. Van, Jon (2005). “RFID spells media revolution, futurist says.” Chicago Tribune, 124(104) (April 16, 2005): B1.
  39. Wyld, David (2006). “RFID 101: The next big thing for management.” Management Research News, 29(4): 154-173. For a detailed and highly readable look at RFID technology, please consult the following report: Wyld, David C. (2005) RFID: The right frequency for government, A research monograph published by The IBM Center for the Business of Government, Washington, DC, October 2005. Retrieved October 23, 2005, from http://www.businessofgovernment.org/main/publications/grant_reports/details/index.asp?gid=232.
2020-06-02T11:24:24-05:00September 9th, 2006|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management|Comments Off on Sports 2.0: A Look at the Future of Sports in the Context of RFID’s “Weird New Media Revolution”

Letter to the Editor – The Sport Journal Pierre de Coubertin, arts administrator

Ed:

During the preparation of this issue of the Sport Journal, we received a piece sent to us by Mr. Raymond Grant, the artistic director of the 2002 Olympic Art Festival, reflecting on the historic and modern cultural aspects of the Olympic Games. Although the article does not fall within the normal editorial plan of the Sports Journal, it is very insightful and we felt, as such, it would be of interest to the readership

With the permission of the author, we are reprinting the piece titled “Contrast, Culture, and Courage: A Cultural Administrator’s Tribute to Pierre de Coubertin” in the form of a letter to the editor. We trust the readership will find as much value in reading the piece as we did.

As Beijing, Vancouver, and London prepare to host future
Olympic Games, it seems fitting to remind readers of The Sport Journal
of the value of cultural programs within the Olympic Movement and the
connection between artists and athletes. That value, and the corresponding
cultural development surrounding the successful hosting of the Olympic
Games, has deep roots within the Olympic Movement thanks to the vision
of Baron Pierre de Coubertin. de Coubertin was both a sports and arts
administrator.

The recently completed Turin Olympic Winter Games and Athens Olympic
Games warrant reflection brought about by the cultural legacy of Pierre
de Coubertin. The very public challenges surrounding the hosting of the
Olympic Games, the reforms of the IOC, and the successful return of the
Summer Games to Athens suggests that this contemporary period in the Olympic
Movement has elements of the historic.

The on-going research of Norbert Muller, Manfred Messing, and Research
Team Olympia of the University of Mainz (Germany) in their new publication
From Chamonix to Turin, holds significant value in the study
of cultural programs within the context of the Olympic Games. In their
research on the meaning of the cultural program for spectators in Salt
Lake in 2002, the authors found that 84% of respondents agreed with the
statement that “The Olympic idea combines sport and art.”
This significantly high response compares with 72% for the Olympic Games
in Sydney 2000, 23% for Atlanta 1996, and 40% for Barcelona 1992. Can
this be a trend in the growth of awareness and significance of Cultural
Olympiads and Olympic Arts Festivals? If so, as the communities of Beijing,
Vancouver, and London prepare to host upcoming Olympic Games, much can
be celebrated and learned by engaging artists and encouraging their role
in community development and the creative economy.

The magic of the Olympic Movement – its power, if you will, is
in how individual communities who are invited to host the Games reinvigorate
the Movement. And, local participation is a defining element of this reinvigoration.
In her article More Than a Game. The Value of Arts Programming to
Increase Local Participation
, author and Olympic researcher Beatriz
Garcia points to “ways in which some of the less known – but
more meaningful – dimensions of the Games could place participation
back at the centre of the [Olympic] celebration.”

The arts were always at the center of Pierre de Coubertin’s vision
for the Olympic Movement. In the years of preparation required to deliver
a credible Olympic Cultural program, I have found that de Coubertin’s
unflagging belief in the power of music, dance, and words was sustaining.

In Dr. Norbert Muller’s opus Olympism, we have the wonderful benefit
of the selected writings of Pierre de Coubertin. To any cultural administrator
of the Games, the historical event of the Olympic Movement in Paris in
May of 1906 is singularly defining. The festivities in the great amphitheater
of the Sorbonne, which ended the 1906 Advisory Conference in Paris (the
Conference itself was held in the historic foyer of the Comedie Francaise)
on the inclusion of the arts and humanities in the modern Olympics, is,
for all intents and purposes, the birth right for those of us who use
the arts to help define the atmosphere of the Modern Games.

In a circular letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) dated
April 2, 1906, de Coubertin invites members to an Advisory Conference
to determine “to what extent and in what form the arts and literature
can participate in the celebration of the modern Olympiads.” Thanks
to the vision of de Coubertin, his question is as applicable today for
the organizing committees of Beijing, Vancouver, and London, as it was
for the nascent Olympic Movement of 1906.

The announcement of the 1906 Advisory Conference was attached to the
invitation to IOC members to attend the Games in Athens. As completely
as de Coubertin believed in the merger of sport and art, the summoning
of this “Consultative Conference on Art, Letters, and Sport”
was not completely altruistic. In his Olympic Memoirs, de Coubertin said
“I would be able to use this (the conference) as an excuse for not
going to Athens, a journey I particularly wished to avoid.”

Excuses aside, de Coubertin, I believe, understood that artists provide
communities with a sense of place and the Olympic Movement of 1906 was
missing a vital link to this sense of place. A distinct challenge remains
today as arts and culture programs within the context of host organizing
committees fight for survival, respect, resources, and presence. de Coubertin’s
vision of Olympism – what the Olympic Movement aspires to be –
is inextricably linked to the arts and humanities “harmoniously
joined with sports.”

Celebrating the achievements of athletes alongside the accomplishments
of artists became the vision of the 2002 Olympic Arts Festival.

In an article I wrote for The Olympic Review entitled Contrast, Culture,
and Courage
, I reflected on the cultural legacy of de Coubertin citing
the seminal meetings he convened. In that article, I said ‘I will
leave it to greater minds to decide if the 2002 Olympic Arts Festival,
in any substantive way, realized this broad de Coubertin vision’.

Now, I am especially encouraged by the results of the studies conducted
by Research Team Olympia in 2002 and just released in which the researchers
(Muller, Messing, and Preub) say, “It can be concluded that the
Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Arts Festival was a relatively successful one.
Although not all of the projects could be realized, the understanding
of the inner connection of Olympic sport and art was higher than at three
former (Summer) Olympic Games and the biathlon spectators were more involved
in visits of the Cultural Program. It seems that the Arts Festival in
Salt Lake 2002 has set a benchmark for Winter Games which needs further
study to measure the achievements of cultural programs in the future.”
Hopefully, the sports and arts administrators of the Games of Beijing,
Vancouver, and London, can engage in, commission, and contribute to this
Olympic research area.

Participation is the key to promoting the role culture plays in great
social gatherings. And, the Olympic Movement stands as the great social
gathering of our time.

I posit that the Olympic Movement is furthered, as well, by the perspective
and point of view of artists, for it has been said that “only artists
find the uncommon in the commonplace.” I, for one, look forward
to the role that gifted artists, poets, playwrights, and essayists will
play in future Games. If history is any judge, they will leave a cultural
legacy for the Games and the communities which host them.

Twenty-five years after the 1906 Advisory Conference, de Coubertin reflected:

I have already repeated – so often that I am a trifle ashamed
of doing so once again, but so many people still do not seem to have
understood – that the Olympic Games are not just ordinary world
championships but a four-year festival of universal youth, “the
spring of mankind”, a festival of supreme efforts, multiple ambitions
and all forms of youthful activity celebrated by each succeeding generation
as it arrives on the threshold of life. It was no mere matter of chance
that in ancient times, writers and artists gathered together at Olympia
to celebrate the Games, thus creating the inestimable prestige the Games
have enjoyed for so long.

Today, the Olympic Games have as compelling an obligation and opportunity
to gather writers and artists together as they did in 1906.

If “this was how the reunion of the muscles and the mind, once
divorced, was celebrated in the year of grace 1906,” let us look
toward years of grace in 2008 in Beijing; 2010 in Vancouver; and 2012
in London.

2015-03-27T14:13:02-05:00September 8th, 2006|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Facilities, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on Letter to the Editor – The Sport Journal Pierre de Coubertin, arts administrator

The Prevalence and Focus of Workplace Fitness Programs in Denmark: Results of a National Survey

Abstract

Purpose: This study describes the prevalence of physical activity
programs at Danish workplaces with one-hundred or more employees

Design: Cross-sectional

Setting: Denmark

Subjects: All private and public workplaces of the designated
size (n=2422).

Measures: A two-phase research model was used. Phase 1 consisted
of telephone interviews involving all workplaces. Phase 2 was conducted
using a structured, self-administered questionnaire which elicited more
detailed descriptions of workplaces identified as promoting physical activity
(n=449). Response rates were 92% and 69% in Phases 1 and 2 respectively.

Data Analysis: Data were analyzed using StatView statistical
software.

Results: 18.6% of all workplaces (n=2422) offer employees opportunities
for physical activity on a regular basis. Analysis of the data from workplaces
included in Phase 2 (n=449) showed the following: The most frequently
cited motive for providing opportunities for physical activity is to promote
social contact between employees.
63% of the workplaces have instructors for the activities on offer, while
39% mention that some form of assessment is linked to the offer of physical
activity. 50% of the programs have been implemented within the last ten
years.

Conclusions: The results indicate that the concept of physical
activity as part of everyday working life has acquired real momentum in
Denmark in recent decades, but nevertheless is still at an early stage.

Physical activity at the workplace—a historical outline

Physical activity at the workplace is not a recent phenomenon in Denmark.
Traditional company sports began more than half a century ago and were
organized in a national association. The primary aim of this association
over the years has been to organize competitions and tournaments among
various firms and companies. However, only recently has physical activity
received much attention as a catalyst for health and well being among
employees, or as a building block in corporate culture.

Thus, marked promotion of physical activity at the workplace first emerged
in 1987 when the Danish government presented the Government Preventive
Program, influenced by WHO’s strategy Health for All—Year
2000 (Ministry of Health, 1989). In the subsequent action plans, it is
the relationship between physical activity and the prevention of specific
illnesses that has been the constant theme—although the 1990s saw
a change of emphasis, with concepts like well being and social determinants
of health coming to the fore. This latter trend is reflected partly in
a variety of educational initiatives dealing with the promotion of physical
activity and fitness, and partly in official governmental guidelines for
the implementation of physical activity at workplaces from 1997 onwards
(National Board of Health, 1997). The overall development has been borne
out through the publication and promotion of the ambitious 2002 government
strategy entitled Healthy throughout life – a follow-up on The Danish
Government Programme on Public Health and Health Promotion 1999-2008 published
in 1999 (Ministry of Health, 1999. Government of Denmark, 2002).

In continuation of these political and health policy trends, this article
presents one of few comprehensive overviews of physical activity programs
at Danish workplaces. The results obtained and experiences gained from
this survey should be used to promote the continued implementation of
workplace fitness programs in particular and of workplace health promotion
in general. Furthermore, this article seeks to make a contribution to
the collection of fundamental knowledge and facts which is needed in order
to make possible international comparative research into minor or major
aspects of health promotion.

Methods

Design

The results presented in this paper are from an exploratory survey which
was conducted with the aim of systematically collecting background data
on a subject of which relatively little is currently known, namely health
promotion and physical activity at the workplace in Denmark. It was decided
to collate a limited amount of information from a large number of survey
returns concerning key variables related to both structural and human
resources.

The aims of the national survey were thus:

  • To determine the number of Danish workplaces offering physical activity
    to employees on a regular basis
  • To identify trends underlying the programs offered
  • To determine who is responsible for these programs
  • To describe how and where programs are made available
  • To document who meets the costs of establishing and running programs.

Sample

The sample included all private and public workplaces in Denmark with
one-hundred or more employees. Statistics Denmark provided information
as regards the name, addresses, and telephone numbers of each workplace,
the type of workplace, and the number of employees. The data were arranged
geographically, listed by municipality. Statistics Denmark updates information
on roughly ½ million Danish workplaces every sixth month, and supplies
information requested within ten days. The basic data can be regarded
as extremely reliable, because of the close co-operation between Statistics
Denmark and the Danish taxation authorities.

The grounds for selecting one-hundred employees as the lower limit were:

  1. The lower limit was chosen in the light of the time and resources
    available for the study. 2,422 Danish workplaces were registered as
    having one-hundred or more employees. This was considered to be a practicable
    number of workplaces to investigate, given the above mentioned conditions.
  2. Experiences gained from a pilot project carried out some years ago,
    concerning the extent of opportunities for physical activity at workplaces
    in a selected region of Denmark, indicated one-hundred employees as
    a suitable threshold value. The pilot study investigated all workplaces
    with at least twenty employees. It was found that only one of the workplaces
    offering physical activity on a formal, planned and regular basis had
    less than one-hundred employees (Berggren & Skovgaard, 1995). This
    finding is somewhat different from results presented in other research
    studies where physical activity, defined in much the same way as mentioned
    above, is frequently cited as a current health promotion initiative
    at workplaces employing less than one-hundred people (Wilson et al.,
    1999).

Measures

Collection of data was divided into two phases:

Phase 1: Selection via telephone contact
The 2,422 workplaces were contacted over the telephone. The use of a protocol
assisted interview system made it possible to discriminate between a group
of workplaces that were to take part in the later survey and a group that
did not live up to a criterion concerning workplace promotion of physical
activity.

Workplace promotion of physical activity was defined for the respondents
as: activities which lay outside the auspices of the three national Danish
sports associations and offered employees at least thirty minutes of physical
activity once a week or more frequently.

Furthermore, it was a requirement that respondents could answer ‘yes’
to one or both of the following sub-criteria:

  1. The ongoing initiatives regarding physical activity takes place solely
    or partial at the workplace;
  2. Workplace management bears some of the running expenses in connection
    with the activities.

The protocol assisted interview system included a standardized interview
guide. This gave a detailed definition of the term workplace promotion
of physical activity. There was a set of instructions related to the interview
guide which stipulated a specific order in which questions were to be
asked. This meant that the sub-criteria were mentioned last. The interview
protocol required that if the initial contact person (typically someone
in the secretariat) was unable to provide the information requested, this
person should be asked to transfer the request to another contact person
(usually someone in the personnel or administrative department).

The telephone interviews were conducted by qualified personnel with experience
in working on questionnaire-based projects. Before the work started there
were two preparatory meetings in which the interview protocol was reviewed,
commented upon, and revised.

Of the initial 2,422 workplaces listed, it proved impossible to get in
touch with 163. A further twenty workplaces either could not or refused
to participate in the survey. There was thus no information available
for a total of 183 workplaces. Ninety-two percent of the companies in
the sample were reached in Phase I, and this was judged to be acceptable.

Phase 2: Detailed questionnaire survey
This part of the survey covered all workplaces that fulfilled the requirements
set out in the definition of workplace promotion of physical activity.

All workplaces that fulfilled these conditions agreed to take part in
the subsequent survey, based on a structured, self administered questionnaire,
which was to be answered in writing and returned in an enclosed addressed
reply envelope. The questionnaire had a total of thirty-two questions
with multiple choice response categories, frequently with the possibility
of adding further comments in marked sections.

The questionnaire form was sent to a named contact person at the workplace
who was selected as being a knowledgeable and appropriate informant in
this context.

Of the 449 workplaces that received the questionnaire (corresponding
to 18.6% of all Danish workplaces with at least one-hundred employees),
310 (69%) responded. An analysis of the non-respondents showed no systematic
and consistent pattern when respondent and non-respondent groups were
compared with respect to:

  • Number of employees
  • Whether the workplace was in the private or public sector
  • Type of workplace
  • Geographical location (postal code)

Analysis

This article is mostly based on the information collected by means of
the questionnaire survey. The internal missing response rate, i.e. the
proportion of a given questions to which no response was made on the survey
forms returned, never exceeded 3% and followed no systematic pattern.
The internal missing responses are therefore considered to have only minor
effect on the reliability of the survey results.
The data from the forms were entered into a database by a firm specializing
in this type of work.
The data entered were then checked for errors against the original questionnaire
forms.
Descriptive data analysis was carried out using the StatView statistical
software package.

Results

General data—the size of workplaces
18.6% of all Danish workplaces with at least one-hundred employees offer
regular physical activity as previously defined. A comparison with the
results from the pilot study cited above suggests that a large increase
in the number of Danish workplaces offering physical activity has taken
place over a short period of time. The national survey also shows that
roughly half of the workplaces have begun to offer opportunities for physical
activity within the last decade. It is also noteworthy that in only one
in five states were making such an offer before 1980.

As shown in table I (part A), nearly half (48%) of the Danish workplaces
offering regular physical activity have 100-199 employees, while about
a third of the workplaces (32%) lie within the 200 499 range. The somewhat
smaller figure for larger workplaces (those with five-hundred or more
employees) that offer opportunities for physical activity corresponds
quite closely to the overall number of such larger workplaces existing
in Denmark. Indeed, Table I suggests that as a rule, the proportion of
Danish workplaces, which fall within a given size group, tends to tally
with the share of workplaces offering physical activity within the same
size group.

From the outset, it was assumed that physical activity programs at the
workplace would be more prevalent among smaller and medium sized workplaces.
This expectation was based on the conjecture that it would perhaps be
easier to agree on perspectives and aims of physical activity at smaller
and medium-sized workplaces. The findings described above do not support
such an assumption.

Who initiates physical activity at the workplace, and why?
At almost half the workplaces investigated (44%) it was the employees
who had taken the initiative. If one includes joint initiatives between
employees and employer, the involvement of employees grows to 79%. The
initiative came from management alone in only 19% of workplaces.

Table I suggests that within the last decade a shift has taken place
in the primary reasons given for introducing physical activity at Danish
workplaces. Surveys conducted at selected workplaces in the early and
mid 1990s pointed to a clear emphasis on such aims as ‘to reduce
absence due to illness’ and ‘to increase efficiency’
(Andersen, Berggren, & Lüders, 1996). The national survey, on
the other hand, shows that the three most frequently cited aims are:

  • To promote social contact between employees
  • To accommodate employee requirements
  • To contribute to the overall work environment

Activities offered

The national survey shows that the three most frequently offered activities
at Danish workplaces are weight training, cardiovascular exercise using
fitness equipment (e.g. steppers, treadmills, ellipticals, and rowers),
and various kinds of aerobics.

Table II shows that while almost 80% of all workplaces state that weight
training is offered, this figure falls to 70% if the requirement is for
both weight training and cardiovascular exercise using fitness equipment
to be offered. The fall becomes even more dramatic if activities such
as aerobic dance and general gymnastics are included as well.

It is noteworthy that just over 10% of all workplaces have such wide
ranges of activities on offer that they include all the four types of
activity mentioned above.

Establishing and running activities

Financially, the provision of physical activity at the workplace involves
both employers and employees. Table II shows that meeting the costs incurred
in establishing the facilities for physical activity involves the employer
to a considerable extent. In 35% of cases this is done in cooperation
with the employees. In roughly one out of ten cases the economic burden
of establishing the activities is the sole concern of the employees.

The employer is also involved in the running costs, as just over 30%
of companies state that the employer covers the annual running costs,
while another 40% report that the users and the employer share these costs.

In 20% of cases it is the employees alone who cover the running costs,
while in a small proportion of workplaces (6%) the running costs are financed
in some other way, for example through grants from unions or foundations.

Access to facilities for physical activity

Workplaces were asked to what extent they offer physical activity within
and outside working hours. It is a motivating factor for the employees
that the workplace offers such facilities during working hours. Furthermore,
the use of working hours for physical activity implies that the workplace
takes the task of activating employees seriously.

Sixty-two percent of the workplaces investigated stated that physical
activity is only offered outside working hours. Thus, at most of the investigated
workplaces the willingness to invest in employees’ physical activity
by reducing the hours spent working is not present. It is, however, notable
that 32% of workplaces state that such activity is available both within
and outside working hours.

In almost 90% of workplaces the offer is predominantly taken up immediately
after work. To some extent, this might be because it can be awkward to
return to the workplace once one has started on domestic or other commitments.

Who provides instruction?

The survey shows that 63% of workplaces provide instructors in connection
with some of the activities on offer. It transpires, however, that in
only 32% of cases are all activities conducted under some form of guidance.
The activity that most typically lacks such guidance is the use of weight
training equipment.

Only two out of five instructors state that they have some form of relevant
formal training for the job. Furthermore, the survey reveals that the
majority of those who have had such training acquired their knowledge
through weekend or other short courses.

Family

Just over 40% of the workplaces state that members of employees’
families also have access to the activities. A slightly higher proportion
(43%) does not admit other members of the family or partners. The difference
in the size of these two groups is, however, so small that it cannot be
said that there is any clear tendency for workplaces to either give or
deny family members access to physical activity facilities.

Evaluation

Thirty-nine percent of the workplaces state that some form of evaluation
is linked to the offer of physical activity, but it is only very few (11%)
of these that can be said to conduct a systematic, regular assessment
of their activities. This is not, however, a distinctively Danish phenomenon,
but rather an indication of a general trend whereby the majority of health
promotion programs are not subject to evaluation. Useful evaluation demands
adequate resources: the availability of time, money, and regular staff
or consultants skilled in carrying out evaluation activities. Company
budgets rarely allow room for such ideal provisions (Chapman, 1999).

Discussion

Summary

This study constitutes one of the first Scandinavian attempts at a national
survey of workplace promotion of physical activity. In general, the data
presented in this article should be seen as an attempt to provide the
fundamental information and analysis that is needed for cross-national
comparisons on health promotion topics.

Just under 19% of all Danish workplaces with at least one-hundred employees
make regular provision for physical activity. The results suggest that
the size of the workplace appears to have no independent effect on the
extent to which opportunities for physical activity are provided. Interestingly
enough, four-fifths of the programs currently in operation began during
the last twenty years. It is also worth mentioning that in around 40%
of cases, employees and employers both contribute to establishment and
running costs for the programs. Furthermore, it should be noted that the
majority of workplace exercise programs only offer a limited range of
activity types, and make no provision for systematic evaluation of the
programs through user surveys, measurement of results, etc. This last
finding is to be viewed in light of the fact that the three most frequently
named goals of the provision of opportunities for physical activity are
related to the well-being of employees and general working conditions.

Limitations

This study has a number of limitations.

First, there has been no previous attempt to measure the extent and nature
of the provision of opportunities for physical activity at Danish workplaces.
In 1997, 2002, and 2005 the National Board of Health commissioned inventories
on health promotion activities and strategies at Danish workplaces (National
Board of Health, 2006). The reports coming out of this work also deal
with physical activity. However, the National Board of Health applies
a much broader definition of workplace promotion of physical activity
than the one used in the present study. The various dataset are therefore
non-comparable and dynamic studies of development over time are not possible.

Second, the data collecting process was designed with the analysis of
aggregated data in mind. It is therefore not possible to use the data
to evaluate exactly how the various physical activity programs operate
and why they have been set up as they are, or to determine whether there
are typical decision-making and amendment processes which lead to the
establishment, revision, and abandonment of physical exercise programs.

Third, although the survey instruments used standard items, estimates
of reliability and validity are not available. However, for Phase 1 of
the survey, the protocol assisted interview system was developed by a
working group comprising people who all had previous experience with questionnaire-based
projects. The questionnaire used in Phase 2 was constructed on the basis
of a form used in the mentioned pilot study concerning a respondent group
very similar to that in the national survey.

Implications

Official action programs promoted by Danish Government at central, regional,
and local levels, and networks such as the WHO project Healthy Cities,
have frequently stressed the need to offer physical activity as part of
general strategies related to workplace health promotion (Ratzan, Filerman,
& LeSar, 2000. Danish Healthy Cities Network, 2004). Recently, focus
on this area has increased due to new legislative initiatives that obligates
municipal authorities to be the driving force in prevention and health
promotion matters. The workplace has been pointed out as an obvious setting
through which to reach the adult population (National Centre for Workplace
Health Promotion, 2005).

Initiatives such as the ones mentioned have included only brief comments
related to the problem of adherence to and compliance with workplace exercise
programs, and to the role of instructors in this perspective. In contrast
to the situation in many other western countries, there are no Danish
guidelines or rules that regulate and promote the trainer/instructor dimension
of the field of fitness and physical activity at the workplace. Partly
for this reason, most Danish workplaces offering physical activity have
still not fully accepted the consequences of the relationship between
the earlier stated reasons for implementing workplace fitness programs
(cf. Table 1, part B) and the central role of the instructor when what
is expected is both improvement in the physical condition of individuals
and a general improvement to the overall work environment. The results
presented indicate that only a small proportion of workplaces ensure that
their instructors have or obtain relevant pedagogical experience and theoretical
knowledge.

This state of affairs can be linked to the survey finding that only about
10% of all workplaces have multi-range fitness programs that include more
than three types of activity (Table II). Greater variation and breadth
in developing and implementing workplace physical activity schemes could
very likely influence the number of participants and the pattern of employee
exercise adherence and compliance. In general, careful planning and making
exercise a more pleasurable part of the work environment appear to have
at least a short-term positive effect on exercise adherence (Blue et al.,
1995. Andreasen & Møller-Jørgensen, 2005). However,
for many longterm adherence to exercise programs is a greater challenge.
As Chen et al. (2005) point out “The biggest challenge of a work-site
fitness program is to sustain long-term interest and enthusiasm”.
This conclusion could be applied to both the individual and organizational
level (Atlantis et al., 2006). Workplaces wanting to support such long
term efforts must be prepared to invest many types of resources (eg. human,
financial, organizational) (Nurminen E, 2002). Another challenge is engaging
the more sedentary part of the workforce. In general participation rates
in workplace health promotion programs are not that impressive and those
who do take part tend to the employees whose general health and health
behavior profile is better than average (Healthy People 2010, online documents
A).

It is important to stress that though this survey shows that only approximately
20% of Danish workplaces with one-hundred or more employees offer exercise
programs, compared to, for example, the situation in the United States,
where the corresponding figure is about 50% (Healthy People 2010, online
documents B), this is not to be taken as a precise indication of the overall
physical activity level in the Danish adolescent and adult population
as a whole. Thirty-seven percent of men and 23% of women in Denmark over
the age of 15 are members of one or more sport associations and 72% of
the total adult population state that they engage in leisure time sport
activities on a regular basis (Fridberg, 2000, Larsen, 2003). Moreover,
while about 80% of the Danish adult population is moderately active at
least four hours a week this is the case for roughly 40% of the same group
in the United States (Kjøller & Rasmussen, 2002. US Department
of Health and Human Services, 1999).

At the same time, it must be noted that about half of the Danish adult
population is not physically active in a degree that complies with the
primary public recommendation of minimum thirty minutes of moderate-intensity
physical activity per day (National Board of Health, 2002: Jørgensen
and Rosenlund, 2005). This dismal figure corresponds quite well with the
WHO estimate that at least 60% of the global population fails to achieve
the recommendation of at least thirty minutes moderate intensity physical
activity daily (WHO, 2003, WHO, 2004).

Lastly, it must be pointed out that the vast majority of Danish workplaces
have hitherto not considered workplace exercise promotion as a task in
which they played any major role. Only with the stronger political signals
of the last ten to twenty years, concerning the workplace as an important
setting for health promotion and disease prevention, has it been possible
to see much movement and shift of perspective regarding the area of workplace
physical activity among the many decision-makers of importance in this
nexus.

Perspectives: Implications for practitioners and researchers within sports-
and health promotion science

The survey data and other information presented in this article indicates
that workplace fitness programs in Denmark have been gaining ground, especially
in the last ten to twenty years. Combined with other research suggesting
that the Danish labor market as a whole is putting more and more energy
into the general field of health promotion, there seems to be support
for the assumption that the amount of work available for health promotion
practitioners is on the increase and that workplaces are interested in
using health activities as a means of promoting their employees’
well being. If this assumption is correct, future effort should ensure
that:

  • the personnel engaged in physical activity and health promotion at
    workplaces should receive better training and education in exercise
    and health related issues. With a view to encourage development of educational
    programs and tailored personnel engaged in workplace health promotion,
    national guidelines should be considered in order to increase the standards
    for the education of health promotion and/or exercise professionals
    in workplace settings. Countries such as the US, Germany, and the UK
    offer suitable models for established standards for exercise professionals.
    A future objective could be to implement a common reference system in
    the EU to promote good practice as regards Workplace promotion of physical
    activity. An effective starting point is the general quality criteria
    for workplace health promotion developed by the European Network for
    Workplace Health Promotion (ENWHP).
  • the many separate initiatives concerning health promotion, including
    physical activity, must be linked to general efforts made by public
    authorities to improve workplace health and safety.

 


Basic information concerning workplace fitness
programs I
Total sample (n=2,422)*
Part A
Number of employees 100-199 200-499 500-999 1000+ Unknown
Variable
Percentage of all Danish workplaces (100+ employees) 52 33 11 3 1
Percentage of all Danish workplaces (100+ employees) with fitness
programs
48 32 12 5 3
Part B
Most frequently mentioned reasons for implementing physical
activity at the workplace
Variable %
To promote social contact among employees 28
To meet employee requirements 18
To contribute to the work environment 14

* While the total sample size was 2,422 workplaces, the
number responses to questions included in this table ranged from 2,349
in Part A and 2,400 in Part B.


Basic information concerning workplace fitness
programs II
Total sample (n=310)*
Range of activities on offer
Establishing
Programs
Running
Programs
Variable: Variable: Variable:
activities included in workplace fitness programs who covers the preliminary expenses? who covers the annual running
expenses?
n % n % n %
1i 239 78 employees 37 12 employees 62 20
1+2ii 214 70 employer 127 42 employer 102 34
1+2+3iii 86 28 employee/employer 105 35 employee/employer 121 40
1+2+3+4 iv 34 11 others 32 11 others 19 6

* While the total sample size was 310 workplaces, the number
responses to questions included in this table ranged from 301 to 306.

iWeight training
iiWeight- and cardiovascular exercise training
iiiWeight- and cardiovascular exercise training and aerobics
iv Weight- and cardiovascular exercise training, aerobics,
and general gymnastics


References

  1. Andersen, B., Berggren, F. & Lüders, K. (1996) Det Batter – stadig. Odense: Working papers from Institute of Sport Science & Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark.
  2. Andreasen, M. & Møller-Jørgensen, N. (2005). En settingstilgang til sundhedsfremme på arbejdspladsen – TDC erhvervscenter i Odense. In K. Lüders & N. Vogensen N (Eds.), Idrætspædagogisk Årbog 2004/5 (pp. 140-167). Gerlev: Forlaget Bavnebanke.
  3. Atlantis, E., Chow CH., Kirkby, A. & Singh MAF. (2006) Worksite intervention effects on physical health: a randomised controlled trial. Health Promotion International, 21 (3), 191-200.
  4. Berggren, F. & Skovgaard, T. (1995). Aktivitetstilbud og motionsfaciliteter på fynske arbejdspladser. Odense: University press of southern Denmark.
  5. Blue, C.L. & Conrad, K.M. (1995) Adherence to worksite exercise programs – an integrative review of recent research. AAOHN J, 43, 76-86.
  6. Chapman, L.S. (1999) Evaluating your program. TAHP, 3, 1-12.
  7. Chen, S., Cromartie, F. & Esposito E. (2005) The Fitness Assessment on the Employees of a Sport Institution — A Case Study of the United States Sports Academy. The Sport Journal, 8, 1.
  8. Danish Healthy Cities Network (2004). Sund by netværktøjskassen – Sundhed og trivsel på arbejdspladsen http://www.sundbynet.dk/PDF/Netv%E6rkt%F8jskassen/Revideret%20Netv%E6rkt%F8jskasse%20nov.04. Accessed January 4, 2006.
  9. Fridberg, T. (2000) Kultur- og fritidsaktiviter 1975-1998. Copenhagen: The Danish National Institute of Social Research.
  10. Government of Denmark (2002). Healthy throughout life http://www.folkesundhed.dk/ref.aspx?id=190. Accessed January 4, 2006).
  11. Healthy People 2010 Online Documents A http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/HTML/Volume1/07Ed.htm#_Toc490550857. Accessed January 7, 2006.
  12. Healthy People 2010 Online Documents B http://www.healthypeople.gov/document/html/tracking/od22.htm#physactadult. Accessed January 4, 2006.
  13. Jørgensen, ME & Rosenlund, M. (2005). National monitoring  fysisk aktivitet – et metodestudie. Copenhagen: The National institute for public health.
  14. Kjøller, M. & Rasmussen, N.K. (2002) Sundhed & Sygelighed i Danmark 2000 & udviklingen siden 1987. Copenhagen: National Institute of Public Health
  15. Larsen, K. (2003). Den tredje bølge – på vej mod en bevægelseskultur. Copenhagen: Lokale- og anlægsfonden
  16. http://www.loa-fonden.dk/cache/article/file/Den_tredje_boelge.pdf. Accessed January 4, 2006.
  17. Ministry of Health (1989). The health promotion programme of the Government of Denmark. Copenhagen.
  18. Ministry of Health (1999). The Danish Government Programme on Public Health and Health Promotion 1999-2008  http://www.folkesundhed.dk/media/detgamlefolkesundhedsprogr.pdf. Accessed January 7, 2006.
  19. National Board of Health (1997). Official Guidelines for the implementation of Physical Activity at Workplaces. Copenhagen.
  20. National Board of Health (2002). Sundhedsstyrelsen: Befolkningens motivation og barrierer for fysisk aktivitet. Copenhagen.
  21. National Board of Health (2006). Sundhedsfremmeordninger på arbejdspladser 2005
  22. http://www.sst.dk/publ/Publ2006/CFF/Sundhedsfremme_05/Sundhedsfremme_05.pdf. Accessed march 7, 2006.
  23. National Centre for Workplace Health Promotion (2005) Borgerrettet forebyggelse og
  24. sundhedsfremme på arbejdspladsen http://www.ncsa.dk/fileadmin/template/ncsa/pdf_filer/Kommunalforebyggelse.pdf. Accessed January 10, 2006.
  25. Nurminen, E., Malmivaara, A., Ilmarinen, J., Ylstalo, P., Mutanen, P., Ahonen, G. & Aro, T. (2002) Effectiveness of a worksite exercise program with respect to perceived work ability and sick leaves among women with physical work. Scand J Work Environ Health, 28 (2), 85-93.
  26. Ratzan, S.C., Filerman, G.L. & LeSar, J.W. (2000). Attaining Global Health: Challenges and Opportunities. Population Bulletin, 55[1].
  27. US Department of Health and Human Services (1999). Promoting Physical Activity. Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers.
  28. WHO (2003) Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. Geneva.
  29. WHO (2004) Global strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/en/. Accessed January 4, 2006.
  30. Wilson, M.G., Dejoy, D.M., Jorgensen, C.M. & Crump, C.J. (1999) Health Promotion Programs in Small Worksites: Results of a National Survey.  American Journal of Health Promotion, 13, 358-65.
2019-10-28T14:01:25-05:00September 7th, 2006|Sports Exercise Science, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on The Prevalence and Focus of Workplace Fitness Programs in Denmark: Results of a National Survey

World Wrestling Entertainment: Achieving Continued Growth and Market Penetration through International Expansion

Abstract

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is best known for its
promotion of professional wrestling as sports entertainment. Today, World
Wrestling Entertainment is an integrated media and entertainment company
principally engaged in the development, production, and marketing of television
programming, pay-per-view programming, and live events, and the licensing
and sale of branded consumer products featuring the highly successful
World Wrestling entertainment brand. As the WWE brand continues to grow,
a strategic decision has been made to place a greater emphasis on the
expansion the WWE brand globally. This paper will present an overview
of WWE from its beginnings as the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation)
to its recent decision to capitalize on the significant operating leverage
of its business model through increase in its brand in markets throughout
the world.

Background

Originally named the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation),
then the WWW (World Wrestling Federation), and currently called the WWE
(World Wrestling Entertainment), professional wrestling has come a long
way from its beginnings in the 1930’s. Today, nearly 50 million
fans admit to watching the Monday night WWE flagship television program,
WWE Raw Is War on the USA television network. This is the number one regularly
scheduled cable TV program among young women. Among men aged 12 to 24,
it topped Monday Night Football. More people attend the WWE’s live
shows than attend an average music concert; the WWE’s Website gets
more viewers than either the NFL or the NBA sites (Sully, 2005).

Wrestling was an early favorite of network TV, but it faded
when the Dumont network folded in 1956 (Assael, 2002).

In an October 5, 2005 interview Kurt Schneider, Executive
Vice President of Marketing, provided a macro perspective on the corporation’s
international expansion efforts, outlining four reasons why logic would
suggest that the WWE will be successful in this venture: 1. Unlike major
sports leagues, there are no game “rules” to understand. It’s
just a “Good vs. Evil” premise; 2. Fans do not need to understand
a “language”; 3. Every single country has wrestling (in some
form) as part of their culture; 4. WWE wrestling is seen as a “uniquely
American export” (Schneider, 2005).

The WWE is, in effect, a hybrid of entertainment and sport.

Viewer Profile – Age Demographics

  • 71% male / 29% female 73% are 18 or older
  • 37% are between the ages of 12 and 34
  • 23% are between the ages of 18 and 34
  • 50% are 34 or younger
  • 14% are younger than age 12

Perhaps most importantly, WWE made a conscious decision
to create and develop two distinct brands: Raw and Smackdown! Each brand
is unique and has different story lines and separate talent. This creates
opportunities to capitalize not only on television programming, but also
on highly profitable live event tours, doubling the merchandising revenue
streams. Also, in keeping with its known youthful fan demographic, the
company has fostered and encouraged new media ventures and a heavy internet
presence (Rosner and Shropshire, 2004). The division of the WWE talent
roster into two distinctive and separate entities proved to be a stroke
of genius, reviving a company and sport that had previously suffered sagging
ratings and significantly lowered attendance numbers from live events.
This shift – a change in production strategy – was a necessary
one, and resulted in higher quality for both entities (Lamb, et al, 2005).

Beginning to formalize its expansion process, WWE Corporate
held true to its business model, a model which was highly successful domestically,
which has proven even more successful in internationally. Figure 1 depicts
the WWE model.

Figure one

WWE Expands Internationally

The internationalization of professional wrestling can be
traced back to Japan at the end of WWII, specifically the 1950’s.
Originally, no Japanese wrestler ever won a match, being associated with
being the loser after WWII. In effect, wrestling became a metaphor for
international politics.

The internationalization of wrestling then moved on to the
United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, its primary markets.

As early as 2002, the WWE had already begun to position
itself within the international market. “WWE provides us with a
global identity that is distinct and unencumbered, which is critical to
our U.S. and international growth plans” said Linda McMahan, President
of WWE. “As WWE, we will launch our further expanded U.S. and international
touring, our international expansion of branded merchandise and licensed
products, and further integration into the film, publishing, and music
business” (Wagner, 2004.)

International expansion represents an important component
of the continued growth of WWE. The broad appeal of its content has yielded
high international demand for its television programs and its live events.
To further nurture this growing demand, WWE plans to continue its international
television distribution, currently available in more than 100 countries
in thirteen languages, and increasing its television penetration internationally
has the potential for increasing the demand for WWE live events, which,
in turn, has the potential to greatly increase the sales of its branded
merchandise. These brands enable WWE to execute its strategy by freeing
up schedules for talent to perform at more events in more countries.

“From an international standpoint, I don’t think
we’ve done a very good job, quite frankly, of exploiting the international
market like we really should. We’re on television in many, many
markets and do extremely well television ratings-wise, but that’s only
one aspect of what we do. We do licensing; we do merchandising, and live
events, and publications, and DVD’s and everything else imaginable.
And we haven’t integrated all of that in our international platforms,
and (doing that) is one of our goals” (McMahon, 2004).

Regardless of country and culture, the insemination process
at WWE is shockingly consistent and regimented. WWE Corporate Headquarters
adheres to a simple three-step plan when tapping into new markets: 1.
Sell TV programming first; 2. Sell live events tour; 3. Bring merchandise
overseas.

As of 2003, admittedly, the process of expanding internationally
was not overly formal within the company. There were essentially 3 groups:
a) TV Sales (with a goal of disseminating product (ex: Raw, Smackdown),
b. Live Event Touring (many “one off” events), and c. Licensing
(completely dependent on a & b). Shortly thereafter, Jonathon Sulley
was hired to handle the expansion efforts, with an overall goal of integrating
all existent strategies. The new process helps WWE to build primary markets;
while in the primary market, it allows WWE to build a secondary market
and finally tertiary markets (such as Chile, Ecuador, and Panama City
– all places that WWE has never been). WWE has plans of going to
Australia in late 2005, New Zealand in early 2006, and the Philippines
sometime in the near future.

Italy is currently the hottest market, surpassing success
seen even over in the United States. According to company research, the
licensing business is the deepest in Italy, and the WWE phenomenon is
at peak. For Italian fans, pro wrestling is “polarizing” –
you either love it, or you hate it. As Sulley (2005) said in an interview,
“the Italian market is like no other.”

Revenues on the international front have more than doubled
in the last three years, and steadily increased every fiscal year since
2002 – $38.5M (2002), $51.8M (2003), $63.2M (2004), $87.5M (2005). Figure
2 illuminates revenues, both for international expansion, but all in comparision
to domestic revenues, which have steadily declined each year over the
same period.

Figure 2: Comparison of Revenues (in $ millions

Figure 2

Television:

One strategy for the further expansion of the WWE brand
internationally is to duplicate its successful domestic business model
overseas (Figure 1) by building on its already established television
presence in over 100 international markets. One way to continue this market
penetration is through the expansion of its live event touring. The following
figures are representative of its growth in the international marketplace.

FISCAL YEAR # OF TOURS NUMBER OF EVENTS REVENUE
FY 2002 3 tours 5 events $4.3M
FY 2003 6 tours 19 events $13.1M
FY 2004 9 tours 32 events $20.3M
FY 2005 9 tours 49 events $33.0M

Looking toward FY2006, business is expected to move into
emerging markets such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, and China. This
fits the WWE strategy to broaden its international footprint in the following
manner:

Conduct 55-60 international events as compared to 49 in FY 2005
Attract over 1.6 million attendees worldwide
Sell television rights in over 100 international markets
Continue to develop and further pay-per-view distribution internationally
Expand WWE licensing agreements

Television Live Events:

For fiscal 2005, events were held in:

Berlin, Germany Frankfort, Germany
Birmingham, England London, England
Manchester, England Aberdeen, Scotland
Glasgow, Scotland Brisbane, Australia
Melbourne, Australia Sydney, Australia
Perth, Australia Helsinki, Finland
Dublin, Ireland Belfast, Ireland
Seoul, South Korea Nagoya, Japan
Tokyo, Japan Monterrey, Mexico
Florence, Italy Milan, Italy

Additional cities under consideration for future events
include:

Rome, Italy
Bolzano, Italy
Ancona, Italy
Livorno, Italy
Montreal, Quebec Canada
Toronto, Ontario Canada

The WWE Show Stops in Israel

As early as October 1994 the WWF, as it was called before
becoming the WWE, began presenting its live shows in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
The WWF become one of the biggest fads in Israel. The fad is being fueled
by an expensive but effective promotional campaign which included WWF
photo albums being distributed to all six Israeli high schools at lunch
hour, free of charge. The WWF was broadcast on Israeli cable television
once a week, on Friday afternoon when the streets are devoid of teenagers.
Wrestling is enormous, but not all wrestling programs are. Only the WWF
is. As an example, in 1995 the WWF returned for shows in Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv. The prior November saw ticket agencies scrambling for blocks
of tickets to sell and within weeks half the 16,500 seats had been sold.
he best seats, selling for $50.00, were sold within days.

1994 saw many of Israel’s major corporations joining
the WWF bandwagon. The country’s largest confectioner, Osem, sold
WWF snacks, and Israel’s largest sport shoe manufacturer, Gali,
signed a deal to emboss WWF stars on a line of sport shoes. Israel’s
second largest ice-cream manufacturer, Whitman, negotiated for the rights
to put WWF stars on its boxes for the summer season.

The popularity of WWE merchandise can be seen in the Israeli
example. Distributor of WWE merchandise in Israel, Boaz Dekel has stated
that, “This is the fad of all time, way bigger than even the Ninja
Turtles, The Simpsons, or Dinosaurs.” (Chamish, 1994). The items
he distributes include WWE notebooks, shirts, lunch boxes, and dolls.
Most popular are stickers and cards traded by teenagers. Monthly sales
are reported to be in the area of millions of dollars.

WWE Asia

Wrestling’s reach is not exclusive to Europe. The
Hong Kong free-to-air satellite platform, TVB, acquired 119 hours of wrestling
programming from the WWE. Indonesian free broadcaster RCTI has bought
98 hours of WWE Smackdown, its weekly program that airs on Friday evenings
on USA as well as eight specials to be aired in the next year and a half.
South Korea’s SBS has committed to 208 hours of programming including
the WWE programs Heat, Smackdown! and Raw is War.

From FY 2002 through FY 2005 international revenues increased at a compound
annual growth rate of 23%. The forty-nine international events in FY 2005
attracted audiences in excess of 450,000 attendees.

“WWE provides us with a global identity that is distinct
and unencumbered, which is critical to our U.S. and international growth
plans” said Linda McMahan, CEO of WWE. “As WWE, we launch
our further expanded U.S. and international touring, our international
expansion of branded merchandise and licensed products, and our further
integration into the film, publishing, and music businesses” (Wagner,
2002).

The WWE is now in the midst of a major paradigm shift from
controlling everything to giving up partial control to enter new markets,
such as, in this case, China, where it will partner with local business
ventures to establish a foothold and learn the workings of the Chinese
market.

In addition to live events, further expansion of WWE pay-per-views
in new and additional territories along with increased marketing and associated
sales of WWE licensed branded merchandise is expected.

Always seemingly ahead of other countries in terms of creation,
adoption, and use of technology, Japan and WWE reached an agreement in
2005 for a “subscription video on demand service” via Plala
Networks, Inc. of Tokyo. In essence, WWE will offer its content as usual;
however, the medium will be broadband internet instead of TV, and the
format will be a broadcast titled WWE 24/7. The impact of such a deal
has yet to be assessed, yet it appears to be an incredibly low-risk venture,
given that the Japanese company is actually a subsidiary of one of the
major telecommunications companies in Japan. In addition to driving subscription
sales for Plala, it also positions WWE on the technological cutting edge
in an extremely large international market.

“WWE is a global franchise, and WWE 24/7 was conceived
as salable concept that would scale worldwide for partners and fans,”
said Tom Barreca, Executive Vice President, WWE Enterprises. “Signing
with a leader like Plala is a significant breakthrough for WWE 24/7 internationally,
and we see a great future in contracting with other telephony and telecommunications
providers around the globe” (WWE 24/7).

Wrestling Hits South America

In late 2005, WWE struck a television deal with Latin America’s
FOX station – FX Latin America – to broadcast bilingual (Spanish
and Portugese) programming for the next two years. The station reaches
approximately half of all television homes in the Pan market. Emiliano
Saccone, VP of Marketing for FX-LA, was pleased that professional wrestling
will now be a significant driver of viewership for their network. “We
are thrilled to have World Wrestling Entertainment on FX featuring WWE
Velocity and WWE Experience. FX is committed to offer to its viewers the
best quality in programming. WWE, having been involved in the sports entertainment
business for more than 20 years, is one of the most popular forms of global
entertainment today on FX screen, and will contribute to establish stronger
brand loyalty with subscribers, affiliates and advertisers in all Latin
America” (WWE Signs, 2005).

International Television

It is expected that international television will pay an
important role in WWE’s expansion into international markets. Presently,
7,500 hours of WWE programming are syndicated each year in the 100 markets
WWE serves. WWE programming is currently distributed throughout Europe
and Asia in the following manner:

  • Sky Sports – England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland
  • J Sports channel – Japan
  • TAJ TV LTD – India
  • PREMIERE – Germany
  • CJ Media – Korea

Pay-Per-View

Pay-per-view also plays an important role in the internationalization
of WWE events:

  • Canadian Partners
    • Viewers choice
    • Shaw Communications
    • Bell Express
  • International Partners
    • BskyB – England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland
    • J SPORTS – Japan
    • Premiere – Germany
    • CJ Media – Korea
    • Sky Italia –
    • Main event – Australia

Branded Merchandise

Branded merchandise leverages WWE talent with their television
products. Within the WWE brand, WWE branded merchandise includes:

  • Licensing of books, home video, video games, toys and, apparel
  • Apparel, novelties, and memorabilia sold through events, catalogs, and online
  • Home video of pay-per-view events and feature performer titles sold through retailers and available on VHS and DVD
  • Magazines such as WWE and RAW sold at the newsstand and through subscriptions
  • Digital Media such as WWE’s interactive website: www.wwe.com

All of these are available internationally. Watching his
son Shane play with his GI Joes, McMahan decided that wrestlers would
make great action figures too. In 1984, his wife Linda called Hasbro to
learn the licensing business.

Role of the Internet in International Expansion

It is a strongly held belief within the WWE that Globalization
holds the key to its continued growth. It is believed that the Internet
levels the playing field, since anyone can watch from anywhere with a
computer. For instance, in Japan WWE events are broadcast as early as
three weeks after the event has aired in the United States. The Internet,
as a medium, is involving. WWE research has shown that half of the Internet
users who get WWE information are international.

Expansion Efforts by U.S. Major Professional Sports Leagues

NBA

In terms of an international presence, the NBA has had a
history of playing teams from around the world both at home and abroad
dating back to October 23 – 25, 1987 when in the McDonald’s Open
played at the Mecca in Milwaukee; the Milwaukee Bucks played Tracer Milan
and the Soviet National team. This trend of exhibition games continued
throughout the 80s, 90s, and into modern day when several NBA teams played
in such varied locations as Madrid, Rome, Barcelona, Tokyo, Paris, the
Bahamas, Mexico City, Japan, London, Tel Aviv, the Dominican Republic,
and Puerto Rico.

As is the case with the WWE, expansion into international
markets began in Europe. Since 1988, NBA teams such as the Boston Celtics,
the New York Knicks, Miami Heat, the Houston Rockets, and the Seattle
Super Sonics have played exhibition and regular season games in the following
countries: Spain (1988, 1990, 1994, 1996, 2003); Italy (1989, 1994, 1999);
France (1991, 1994, 1997, 2003); Germany (1993, 1996); England (1993-two
games-1995); Russia (1988, 2004).

In addition to Europe the NBA also played exhibition games
in the Middle East (Tel Aviv, Israel on October 11, 1999); Latin America,
where the NBA has staged twenty-two games preseason games (sixteen in
Mexico, five in Puerto Rico, and one in the Dominican Republic); and Asia
(six regular season games in Japan since 1990 and a 2004 game in Beijing,
China).

The NBA, under David Stern’s leadership, has made
a concentrated effort to specifically promote the international players
who have come into the NBA. Stern is credited as being a marketing mastermind
in the international arena, and the effort of the NBA commissioner has
helped the NBA to advance its growth in international markets through
fan identification with players from countries throughout the world. It
has also indirectly altered the face of scouting, drafting, and developing
talent (Stone, 2002).

MLB

Major League Baseball has two prominent internationally
focused baseball initiatives. The most recognizable and recent was the
World Baseball Classic (WBC) which was held in March 2006. Organized by
MLB, the WBC was a tournament styled after the Soccer World Cup, and involved
sixteen nations from across the world. Players were allowed to play for
their “home” countries. Overall, the tournament – won
by Japan over Cuba in the final – was considered a success from a media
standpoint. There are plans to hold future WBCs every four years, starting
in 2009. From this standpoint, MLB is well-positioned to maintain and
grow their presence in other countries, even though the U.S. team did
not finish in the top four in this most recent WBC.

Nearly one-fourth of all professional baseball players have
Latin American roots. Consequently, Major League Baseball has exerted
great effort in scouting and developing the future talent of their league.
Puerto Rico is a hotbed for baseball, and a location that MLB has already
tapped as host to some of the leagues’ games in the last few years.
Almost five years ago, in 2001, the first-ever regular season Major League
Baseball (MLB) game on Puerto Rican soil was played between Texas and
Toronto. Two years later, in 2003, the (Montreal) Expos played approximately
half of all of their “home” games in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
And in April 2005, MLB celebrated its annual “Opening Day”
of games by announcing that 25 percent of all players on MLB rosters (204
players) had been born in Latin American countries. This is a significant
increase over the 170 total Latin major leaguers reported by MLB during
the 2000 season, of which, thirty-four were from somewhere in Puerto Rico
(Sanchez, 2005). These figures are astounding and continue an upward trend
of talent migration (Bale and Maguire, 1994) predicated by advanced scouting
techniques, greater global communication, and increased talent development
in these countries.

Once an off-season haven for American big leaguers –
where a winter baseball league was immensely popular – Puerto Rico
gained considerable steam in the world of professional baseball. After
serving in 2003 as the part-time home of the Montreal Expos (a franchise
now known as the Washington Nationals and located in Washington, D.C.),
San Juan, Puerto Rico should have become a bustling year-round sport attraction.
In the winter it hosts a very competitive and popular “Winter League”,
where developing talent showcases for the ever-growing contingent of scouts
and media. However, that has not been the case. Lou Melendez, Major League
Baseball’s vice president of international operations, states that MLB
is now considering assisting the Puerto Rican league financially, and
he admits that an eight year decline in interest and attendance is a concern
(Ortiz, 2006).

MLB is grappling with larger issues surrounding this, as
well, namely: a) The issue of “stacking”. In other words,
as noted by González (1996), despite a healthy on-field Latino
representation, there are still virtually no Latino managers, and there
are an incredibly small number of Latinos in MLB’s team management
offices. b) How can Major League Baseball assess and improve on their
expansion and outreach efforts? Arbena (1992) stated that Governments
have long tried to use sports to promote national unity and political
stability, but often without success. Klein (1997) studied how baseball
contributes to nationalism on different levels outside of US borders.

NFL

In 1991, the World League of American Football was formed,
and eventually became ‘NFL Europe.’ Known essentially as an
NFL-backed and funded developmental league, NFL Europe currently boasts
six teams (Amsterdam Admirals, Berlin Thunder, Cologne Centurions, Frankfurt
Galaxy, Hamburg Sea Devils, and Rhein Fire). The league has thus far been
unstable and unpredictable at best, due mostly to lack of star power and
media coverage. However, other attempts to further expand the NFL’s
brand internationally have been made, most significantly, plans for U.S.
teams to play on international soil. Proposed sites are Mexico, Canada,
the United Kingdom, and Germany. This addresses both of the stumbling
blocks encountered by NFL Europe, infusing existing U.S.-based stars (and
teams) with the proper amount of television, internet, and radio coverage.
“It now gives us a platform to grow the game internationally with
a concept of clarity,” says Mark Waller, head of NFL international
development (Haniman, 2006).

While none of the major professional sports leagues would
appear to be natural competitors for the unique “sport/entertainment”
offering by WWE, the recent move of Monday Night Football to ESPN surely
will impact cable-television ratings, something previously dominated by
professional wrestling (Jones, 2006).

Assessment

Most successful businesses conduct extensive market research
to assess the effectiveness of their efforts. This is of paramount importance
when attempting world domination as the WWE is currently doing in its
expansion throughout various countries of the world. WWE depends upon
four major research streams to keep in tune with its fan-base: 1) Online
research surveys. They use a 900 base method with their fans, hoping to
pinpoint consumer attitudes. Specifically, “What do you think of
this property?” (attributes), 2) Live events. WWE conducts exit
polling at events, with an average of about 10,000 people per event. Goal
is to assess attitudes regarding items such as ticket prices and merchandise,
3) TV Companies themselves. WWE is able to garner information from networks,
which helps to shape their other research efforts. Ex: “how many
people view their wrestling shows?” 4) Licensees/consumers. Some
corporate partners are willing to share some of their information with
WWE.

Conclusion

World Wrestling Entertainment is indeed a unique business
entity that has, thus far, been incredibly successfully as it has expanded
its fan-base into international waters. In fact, the data shows that while
domestic earnings have continued to diminish, they have steadily climbed
each of the last five years internationally. More success is yet to come
as even more countries become partners with the wrestling corporation,
and as new revenue streams continue to develop. Many sport corporations
(NIKE, Adidas, etc.) have expanded into other markets, and have done so
successfully. But Jonathan Sully, WWE’s VP for International Marketing,
pointed out that while the company traditionally likes to totally control
its own Intellectual Property, the key to its success is embracing a fundamental
shift towards more corporate partnering.

Manchester United is a recent case that paralleled some
of what WWE experienced when they first plunged into new markets: increased
bootlegging issues and difficulty tracking revenues in foreign countries,
branded television channels, and tours that bring talent to the consumer
(Grimshaw, 2005). However, as WWE’s domestic marketing head Schneider
pointed out, this brand of professional wrestling is still seen as a “uniquely
American export”, a form of entertainment that essentially has no
direct competition and is so dissimilar from its indirect competition
that it operate on its own cloud. The WWE simply must stick to its plan,
adhering to its business model, and achieve continued growth by continuing
to bring its brand of entertainment to new markets around the world.

NOTES
1SOURCE: http://corporate.wwe.com/documents/WWEPrimerAugust2005.pdf

References

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  3. Arbena, J. (1999). History of Latin American Sports: The End Before the Beginning? Sporting Traditions, 16:1 (November), 23-31.
  4. Arbena, J. (1992). Sport and the Promotion of Nationalism in Latin America: A Preliminary Interpretation, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 11: 143-155.
  5. Assael, S. (2002). Sex, Lies and Headlocks. The Real Story of Vince McMahan and the World Wrestling Federation. New York, Crown Publishers.
  6. Bale, J. & Maguire, J., eds. (1994). The Global Sports Arena: Athletic Talent Migration in an Interdependent World. London: Frank Cass.
  7. Barry, C. (2002, January). WWF Riding Wave of Popularity in Israel. Amusement Business. New York: 106 (3); 12.
  8. Blassie, F. (2003). Listen, You Pencil Neck Geeks. New York, Simon and Schuster.
  9. Caprio, R. (2005). Are We There Yet?: Tales from the Never-Ending Travels of WWE Superstars. New York: Simon and Schuster (Pocket Books).
  10. Flair, R. (2004). To Be the Man. New York, World Wrestling Federation.
  11. González, G. (1996). “The Stacking of Latinos in Major League Baseball: A Forgotten Minority?” Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 22 (May), 134-160.
  12. Greenberg, K. (2000). Pro Wrestling: From Carnivals to Cable TV. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner.
  13. Grimshaw, C. (2005). Football clubs net global winner. Marketing. London: Aug 3, 2005. pg. 15.
  14. Hardiman, E. (2006). The NFL Goes WBC. Retrieved from http://community.foxsports.com/blogs/edhardiman/2006/05/27/The_NFL_Goes_WBC on September 12, 2006.
  15. Jones, K. (2006) MNF vs. WWE: The Showdown. Retrieved from http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jones/060911 on September 11, 2006.
  16. Keithe, S. (2004). Wrestling’s One Ring Circus: The Death of the Word Wrestling Federation. New York: Kensington (Citadel).
  17. Klein, A. (1997). Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
  18. Lamb, C., McDaniel, C., Hair, J. (2005). Marketing. London: Thomson/South-Western.
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  21. Mogel, L. (2004). This Business of Broadcasting. New York: Billboard Books.
  22. Ortiz, J. (2006). Puerto Rican baseball seeks return to glory. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2006-01-24-puerto-rico-winter-league-slump_x.htm on January 24, 2006.
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  24. Sanchez, (2005). “Latino Legends team announced.” Retrieved from http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20051026&content_id=1260107&vkey=ps2005news&fext=.jsp on November 1, 2005.
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2020-06-02T11:24:17-05:00September 6th, 2006|Contemporary Sports Issues, Sports Management|Comments Off on World Wrestling Entertainment: Achieving Continued Growth and Market Penetration through International Expansion

The Physical and Physiological Properties of Football Players from a Turkish Professional First-Division Football League

Abstract

This research aims to determine the effects of a six weeks pre-season
preparation training period on the physical and physiological characteristics
of a football team in the Turkish Professional First Division League.
Twenty football players participated in this study. Their ages were 22.2
± 3.41 years old, and they had 12.4 ± 4.2 years of training.
Their height was 178.9 ± 5.13 cm. (Table 1). The body weight, body
fat percentage, flexibility, systolic/diastolic blood pressure, aerobic
capacity, anaerobic power, vertical jump, and speed of these players were
tested twice; once at the beginning of the six-week pre-season preparation
training period and again at the end of the training period (Table 2).
Research data was evaluated statistically with pair-t test at a significance
level of (p‹ 0.05). There were some significant changes in weight,
body fat percent, systolic/diastolic blood pressure, aerobic capacity,
anaerobic power, and vertical jump. There were no any statistically significant
changes in elasticity and speed.

Introduction

Recently, there have been significant changes related to the physiological
and medical aspects of football. Studies on the ideal physical and physiological
properties of a successful football player show that due to the improvements
in the speed and skills of the football players, football has become more
dynamic (Mangine, et al., 1990).

The increase in productivity of sportsmen results directly from the quality
and quantity of the hard work achieved within training. From the beginning
level higher levels, tasks during training should be increased gradually
depending on the psychological and physical skills of each sportsman (Bompa,
1998). Players of higher level function and structural power may overcome
the challenging conditions of a professional football season with intensive
pre-season training. If gradual increases are applied consciously and
regularly within training sessions, higher levels of adjustments may continue
(Renklikurt, 1991).

A pre-season preparation period covers the period from the beginning
of team-training till the first official match. The length of these training
periods may differ from one country to another. During this training period,
physical conditioning should be composed mainly of games and exercises
with a ball. The number of training sessions from the beginning of football
season should be increased gradually (Bangsbo, 1994).

The most important thing that the technical committee should consider
before the season begins is the physical condition of football players
after the holiday season. Because of this, some teams include physical
and physiological tests in their programs to see how the players are doing
and to evaluate their preparation plans. These tests give information
on the properties of endurance, speed, muscular endurance, strength, coordination,
technical, and tactical elements during the preparation period.

Body composition is an important physical component for football. Excess
body fat makes the body move constantly against gravity and it is an unnecessary
load for footballers (Reilly, 1996). Although there have been several
studies that examined the seasonal changes in the body composition of
elite sportsmen’s (Siders, et al. 1994 & Morris and Payne, 1996);
there are not enough studies on the effects of a pre-season preparation
training period on the physical and physiological properties of high level
professional footballers’ performance, particularly in regards to
body composition. This study aims to determine and examine the physical
and physiological changes that occur during a six week pre-season preparation
training period to a football team of the Turkish Professional First Level
Division League.

Methodology

In this study, the professional football team is in Ankara. Pre-testing
was performed on the team after the holiday season and the follow up post-testing
was done after a pre-season preparation training period. The pre-season
preparation training period lasted six weeks with sixty training sessions
and six preparation games played. The properties of the footballers who
participated in this study are clearly tested pre and post the six-week
pre-season participation training period (Table 2).

Body fat percent (BFP) was calculated utilizing a skin fold method and
identified as percent mass (Adams, 1990). Systolic and diastolic blood
pressure was recorded as mmHg utilizing a stethoscope and sphygomanometer
in a stable sitted position. In order to determine the aerobic capacity,
a twenty meter shuttle run test was done on a grass field. The shuttle
run test was utilized to measure maximum oxygen consumption VO 2max and
defined in ml/kg/min (Tamer, 1995). Anaerobic strength measurements were
done utilizing the Bosco test protocol (Bosco Contact Mat; New Test 1000)
and the results indicated as watts. The vertical jump test was measured
utilizing jump meter equipment and the sit and reach equipment was utilized
to measure flexibility. The ten-meter and thirty-meter speed values were
calculated on the grass field starting 1m behind the starting point with
the help of sensory photocell. Research data was evaluated by t-test utilizing
a SPSS 10.0 statistical package program with significance level of (p
‹ 0.05).

Findings

Several physical and physiological properties of footballers’
were measured in a pre and post testing protocol and the measurements
were recorded and evaluated. (Table 2).

Values prior to the six-week pre-season preparation training period were
as followings: body weight 74.65 ± 5.90 kgs, body fat percent 6.43
± 1.67 %, vertical jump 58.70 ± 6. 94 cms, anaerobic power
27.59 ± 4.01 watts/ kg, ten meter speed 1.64 ± 0.41 seconds,
thirty meter speed 4.06 ± 0.91 seconds, flexibility 31.57 ±
5.78, VO2max 56.95 ± 4.07 ml/kg/min, systolic blood pressure 114.5
± 6.04 mmHg, and diastolic blood pressure 74.0 ± 6.40 mmHg.

Values after the six-week pre-season preparation training period were
as followings: body weight 73.85 ± 5.34 kgs, body fat percent 5.84
± 1.36 %, vertical jump 60.80 ± 7. 01 cms, anaerobic power
30.29 ± 7.76 watts/kg, ten meter speed 1.62 ± 0.32 seconds,
thirty meter speed 4.02 ± 0.13 seconds, elasticity 33.32 ±
4.32 cms, VO2max 59.48 ± 3.28 ml/ kg/ min, systolic blood pressure
71.0 ± 5.52 mmHg, and diastolic blood pressure 110.7 ± 6.93
mmHg.

These findings show that after the six-week pre-season preparation training
period there were some statistically significant differences between the
pre and post measurements in the values concerning body weight, body fat
percent, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, anaerobic power, aerobic
power, and vertical jump at a level of (p‹ 0.05). The values of
ten-meter speed, thirty-meter speed, and elasticity improved, but they
were not statistically significant at a level of (p‹ 0.05).

Discussion

In this study, the results of the tests done to determine the physical
and physiological properties of a football team in the Turkish Professional
First Division League pre and post a six-week pre-season preparation training
period were evaluated. The average age of the twenty players was 22.2
± 3.41; they had 12.4 ± 5.34 years of training; they had
a height of 178.9 ± 5.13cms. There was a significant increase in
body weight with a post-measurement of 73.85 ± 5.34 kgs.

In a previous study on a first division league team in England, having
a twenty-eight pre-season preparation training sessions lasting thirty-five
days, showed an increase in the body weight of the players, with a pre-training
period body weight measurement from 74.05 ± 9.2 kgs. to a post-training
period body weight measurement of 77.6 ± 8.7 (Mercer et al.,1992).
The body weight values of another study on a football team in Turkish
first division league also had six-week pre-season preparation training
period and their pre-training period body weight of 74.05 ± 6.60
went to a post-training period body weight of 73.68 ± 6.04 (Acikada
et al., 1996).

In the pre-training period the body fat percent measurement was 7.43
± 1.67 percent and in the post-training period body fat percent
measurement decreased to 6.84 ± 1.36. This decrease was also statistically
significant at a level of (p ‹ 0.05). In terms of past research
on body fat percent, only the beginning of race season and the changes
afterwards were ever studied (Burke, et al. 1986). Ostojic and Zivanic
(2001) found that body fat percent of Serbian professional football players
decreased significantly during the race season and increased out of season.
Burke et al., (1986) and Reilly (1996) pointed out that fat in the body
of football players may accumulate out of season and players may lose
more weight during pre-season training than other periods.

On the other hand, Ostojic and Zivanic (2001) stated that the effects
of training sessions and matches on body weight may have a decreasing
effect at different periods. Some footballers may lose more weight during
race season than in a pre-season preparation training period; they may
also reach the minimum level of body mass index at the end of the season.
Hoshikawa, et al. (2003) studied that body mass may increase and muscle
mass may decrease even without any training after the season ends for
a short period such as four weeks. On the other hand, with a well organized
pre-season program, body mass can be decreased and lost muscle mass can
be regained. In this present study, the decreases occurring in the body
mass index as well as in the body weight after the six-week pre-season
preparation training period are significant and are compatible with the
above mentioned literature except the study by Acikada, and et al. (1996).

The pre-training vertical jump measurement was 58.70 ± 6.54cms
and increased to 60.80 ± 7.01cms after the training period. This
increase was also statistically significant at a level of (p‹ 0.05).
This increase in the vertical jump was also observed after a preparation
training period of third league professional team players (Kocyigid, et
al., 1996). Mercer, et al. (1992), Gunay (1994) and Acikada, et al. (1996)
found similar results.

The pre-training period anaerobic power measurement was 27.59 ±
4.01 and increased to 30.29 ± 7.76 watts/kg after the pre-season
preparation training period. In this study, the increase in the anaerobic
power can be interpreted as the interaction of intensive continuity exercises
and type II muscle fiber (Bosco, et al., 1998). Kartal, Gunay, and Acikada,
et al. (1996) found similar results.

Aerobic capacity is one of the basic targets in developing a pre-season
preparation training program. In football, there is a complex order based
on an aerobic structure. The pre-training period measurement for aerobic
capacity (VO 2max value) was 56.95 ± 4.07 ml/ kg/ min and increased
to a VO 2max value of 59.48 ± 3.28 ml/kg/min. This can be interpreted
as the effect of the aerobic exercises and conditioning experienced in
the pre-season preparation training period. German national team players
have a high aerobic capacity of 62 ml/kg/min (Islegen, 1987). Pre-season
training programs have been evaluated and all past research findings have
shown positive effects on aerobic capacity.

When comparing flexibility measurements to other teams on all levels,
the Turkish league is quiet low. For example, in a study done on an English
first division league team utilizing the same testing procedures, the
post-flexibility measurements were quite better at 43.1 ± 4. 5
(Mercer, et al., 1992). The cause of this problem may be identified as
a lack of a sufficient stretching program at all levels.

The reason for the lowered blood pressure and lowered heart rate experienced
by the sportsmen is due to sport specific adaptation the occurs after
a long periods of regular training (Kandeydi, et al., 1984).

Speed is a motor characteristic that directly affects the success in
football. The pre-training ten-meter speed measurement was 1.64 ±
0.32 seconds and the pre-training thirty-meter speed measurement was 4.06
± 0.91 seconds. After the pre-season preparation training period
the speed values were 1.62 ± 0.32 seconds for the ten-meter speed
test and 4.02 ± 0.13 seconds for the thirty-meter speed test. This
increase in speed was not statistically significant. In similar studies,
Kartal and Gunay (1994) also showed increases in speed with no statistical
significance.

Acikada, et al (1996) interpreted the decrease of the ten-meter speed
value of 1.667 ± 0.156 seconds to 1.713 ± 0.046 seconds
after a period of training was due to the increase of overall gain in
power and strength. Enisler, et al. (1996) determined some values for
the ten-meter speed test and the thirty meter-speed test of footballers
according to their league level as followings: Level I League ten-meter
speed as 1.60 ± 0.07 seconds and thirty-meter speed as 4.07 ±
0.12 seconds; Level II League ten-meter speed as 1.62 ± 0.05 seconds
and thirty-meter speed as 4.10 ± 0.11 seconds; Level III League
ten-meter speed as 1.67 ± 0.04 seconds and thirty-meter speed as
4.13 ± 0.10 seconds; Amateur Level ten-meter speed as 1.66 ±
0.06 seconds and thirty-meter speed as 4.16 ± 0.12 seconds.

The differences between the levels are not statistically significant.
The decrease in speed times may be due to the decrease in body weight
and body mass index. As Ostojic and Zivaniz (2001) stated, the decrease
in the body mass index is related to the increase in the sprint time of
football players.

Some of the significant test results that occurred after the pre-season
preparation training period can be explained as being successful in achieving
the desired physical profile needed to compete in the challenging league
marathon. This kind of testing and training can help in the building of
tactics and techniques for training footballers.

References

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Appendices

Table 1. Characteristics of footballers:

Variables N X ± SD
Age (year) 20 22.2 ± 3.41
Age of exercise (year) 20 12.4 ± 4.2
Height (cm) 20 178.9 ± 5.13

 

Table 2. Values of footballers’ physical and physiological condition
pre and post six-week pre-season preparation training periods:

Variables N Pre Post t p
Body weight 20 74.65 ± 5.93 73.85 ± 5.34 2.19 *
Body fat percent (%) 20 7.43 ± 1.67 6.84 ± 1.36 2.61 *
Vertical jump (cm) 20 58.70 ± 6.94 60.80 ± 7.01 2.60 *
Anaerobic power (W/kg) 20 27.59 ± 4.01 30.29 ± 7.76 2.12 *
10-meter (sc) 20 1.64 ± 0.41 1.62 ± 0.32 1.45
30-meter (sc) 20 4.06 ± 0.91 4.02 ± 0.13 1.65
Flexibility (cm) 20 31.57 ± 5.78 33.32 ± 4.32 1.37
VO2 max (ml/kg/min) 20 56.95 ± 4.07 59.48 ± 3.28 3.10 *
Diastolic blood pressure (mmHg) 20 74.0 ± 5.52 71.0 ± 5.52 2.85 *
Systolic blood pressure (mmHg) 20 114.5 ± 6.04 110.7 ± 6.93 2.88 *
2015-03-27T13:47:30-05:00September 5th, 2006|Sports Coaching, Sports Exercise Science, Sports Management, Sports Studies and Sports Psychology|Comments Off on The Physical and Physiological Properties of Football Players from a Turkish Professional First-Division Football League
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