Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Home advantage affects the game in almost all team sports across the world. Due to<br/>COVID and all of the precautions being taken to keep games played, more extensive research is able to be conducted about what factors truly go into creating a home advantage. Some common factors of home advantage include the crowd, facility familiarity, and travel. In the English Premier League, there are no fans allowed at any of the games; furthermore, in the NBA, a bubble was created at one neutral venue with no fans in attendance. Even with the NBA being at a neutral site, there was still a “home team” at every game. The sports betting industry struggled due to failing to shift betting lines in accordance with this decreased home advantage. With these leagues removing some of the factors that are frequently associated with home advantage, analysts are able to better see what the results would be of removing these variables. The purpose of this research is to determine if these adjustments made due to COVID had an impact on the home advantage in different leagues around the world, and if they did, to what extent. Individual game data from the past 10 seasons were used for analysis of both the NBA and the Premier League. The results show that there is a significant difference in win percentage between prior seasons and seasons behind closed doors. In addition to win percentage, many other game statistics see a significant shift as well. Overall, the significance of being the home team disappears in games following the COVID-19 break.
For years, Commissioner Rob Manfred has hinted and brought about the idea of adding two more teams to Major League Baseball (Mitchell). The growth of the game is of utmost importance, and they have made many changes to try to expand the growth of fans the past few years particularly catered to new and young fans. New rules like a pitch clock and mound visit limitations are examples of in game changes made to speed up the game, but they have also experimented with spring training and regular season games internationally or at new venues. In just the past decade, games have been played or planned (due to COVID-19 cancellations) in Monterrey, Mexico City, London, Tokyo, San Juan, Montreal, Las Vegas, Williamsport, and even Iowa. With the exception of the Williamsport Little League Classic and the Field of Dreams game in Iowa, all these locations had games to see what the atmosphere and logistics would be like with expansion in mind as a possibility in the future. With this in mind, this thesis will analyze and come to a conclusion on the following cities for the best fits for expansion: Monterrey, Mexico City, San Juan, Vancouver, Montreal, Las Vegas, Portland, Nashville, Raleigh, and San Antonio.
We developed multiple surveys that were distributed to Marketing & Business Performance (MKT 300) students at Arizona State University and AWS Mechanical Turk Workers. The goal of obtaining information from both college students and paid survey-takers was to compile a diverse set of opinions regarding how consumers react to athletes’ social media and public behavior. This led us to analyze how consumers interact with athletes on social media platforms based on the sport they play and consequences of their actions. After examining our consumer research, interviewing executives in the legal background, and talking to some of the university’s top-prospective athletes to gain different viewpoints, we created consumer and athlete categories.
We established six main consumer categories and six main athlete social media strategy personas in order to create social media strategy recommendations. With this information, athletes have the opportunity to develop well-thought out social media strategies that are more tailored to their fan base(s). Athletes must be cognizant of how the content on their social media accounts and their public actions will affect consumers’ perceptions about who they are and their personal brand.
This thesis seeks to analyze the changes in how current stadiums are being funded, the public’s reaction to and perception of those financing plans and what the future might hold. Research showed that tax dollars are increasingly unpopular and teams are moving away from using public money to fund sports venues. Gathered for this report, survey data of 815 Arizona State University students supported anecdotal evidence that people within a community are relatively unhappy with the idea of their money being used to partially subsidize wealthy sports organizations’ infrastructure. Altogether, recent evidence suggests that multi-use facilities funded in majority by private wealth are more popular and generate greater economic impact for the municipality than earlier in history, when heavily subsidized venues allowed teams to take advantage of local government and created fan mistrust.
This thesis seeks to analyze the changes in how current stadiums are being funded, the public’s reaction to and perception of those financing plans and what the future might hold. Research showed that tax dollars are increasingly unpopular and that teams are moving away from using public money to fund sports venues. Gathered for this report, survey data of 815 Arizona State University students supported anecdotal evidence that people within a community are relatively unhappy with the idea of their money being used to partially subsidize wealthy sports organizations’ infrastructure. Altogether, recent evidence suggests that multi-use facilities funded in majority by private wealth are more popular and generate greater economic impact for the municipality than earlier in history, when heavily subsidized venues allowed teams to take advantage of local government and created fan mistrust. Additionally, sporting organizations can increase value to their consumer by incorporating additional commercial properties into the venue and by collaborating with the public regarding the financing structure of the venue.