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- All Subjects: sports
- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Resource Type: Text
- Status: Published
Description
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is one of the Big Four Sporting Leagues of US Professional Sports. In recent years, the NBA has enjoyed milestone seasons in both attendance and television ratings, resulting in steady increases to both, over the previous decade. (Morgan, 2017) This surge can be attributed in part to the integration of "cultural recognition" initiatives and the overall message of inclusivity on the part of NBA franchises, with their respective promotions and advertisements such as television, social media, radio, etc. Heritage Nights, such as "Noche Latina," among other variants in the NBA, typically feature culturally influenced changes to team logos, giveaways, and other consumer offerings. In markets where Hispanics make up a significant percentage of the fan-base, such as Phoenix, NBA franchises such as the Phoenix Suns must ascertain the financial or perceptual impacts, associated with risks of stereotyping, offending or otherwise unintentionally alienating different categories of fans. To this end, data was collected from the local NBA franchises' fanbase, specifically Phoenix Suns season-ticket holders, and was statistically checked for significant relationships between both categories of fans and several different variables. This analysis found that only $192K in revenue is being missed through the investment of Heritage Nights, and that fan perceptions of stereotypical or offensive giveaways and practices have no significant effect on game or event attendance, despite the stereotypes toward giveaways and practices still being present. Implications of this study provide possible next steps for the Suns and continue to widen the scope of demographical sports marketing both in professional basketball and beyond.
ContributorsGibbens, Patrick Alexander (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / McIntosh, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / School of Music (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Buck converters are a class of switched-mode power converters often used to step down DC input voltages to a lower DC output voltage. These converters naturally produce a current and voltage ripple at their output due to their switching action. Traditional methods of reducing this ripple have involved adding large discrete inductors and capacitors to filter the ripple, but large discrete components cannot be integrated onto chips. As an alternative to using passive filtering components, this project investigates the use of active ripple cancellation to reduce the peak output ripple. Hysteretic controlled buck converters were chosen for their simplicity of design and fast transient response. The proposed cancellation circuits sense the output ripple of the buck converter and inject an equal ripple exactly out of phase with the sensed ripple. Both current-mode and voltage-mode feedback loops are simulated, and the effectiveness of each cancellation circuit is examined. Results show that integrated active ripple cancellation circuits offer a promising substitute for large discrete filters.
ContributorsWang, Ziyan (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis director) / Kitchen, Jennifer (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The ability to draft and develop productive Major League players is vital to the success of any MLB organization. A core of cost-controlled, productive players is as important as ever with free agent salaries continuing to rise dramatically. In a sport where mere percentage points separate winners from losers at the end of a long season, any slight advantage in identifying talent is valuable. This study examines the 2004-2008 MLB Amateur Drafts in order to analyze whether certain types of prospects are more valuable selections than others. If organizations can better identify which draft prospects will more likely contribute at the Major League level in the future, they can more optimally spend their allotted signing bonus pool in order to acquire as much potential production as possible through the draft. Based on the data examined, during these five drafts high school prospects provided higher value than college prospects. While college players reached the Majors at a higher rate, high school players produced greater value in their first six seasons of service time. In the all-important first round of the draft, where signing bonuses are at their largest, college players proved the more valuable selection. When players were separated by position, position players held greater expected value than pitchers, with corner infielders leading the way as the position group with the highest expected value. College players were found to provide better value than high school players at defensively demanding positions such as catcher and middle infield, while high school players were more valuable among outfielders and pitchers.
ContributorsGildea, Adam Joseph (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / McIntosh, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This project was centered around designing a processor model (using the C programming language) based on the Coldfire computer architecture that will run on third party software known as Open Virtual Platforms. The end goal is to have a fully functional processor that can run Coldfire instructions and utilize peripheral devices in the same way as the hardware used in the embedded systems lab at ASU. This project would cut down the substantial amount of time students spend commuting to the lab. Having the processor directly at their disposal would also encourage them to spend more time outside of class learning the hardware and familiarizing themselves with development on an embedded micro-controller. The model will be accurate, fast and reliable. These aspects will be achieved through rigorous unit testing and use of the OVP platform which provides instruction accurate simulations at hundreds of MIPS (million instructions per second) for the specified model. The end product was able to accurately simulate a subset of the Coldfire instructions at very high rates.
ContributorsDunning, David Connor (Author) / Burger, Kevin (Thesis director) / Meuth, Ryan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
The Roller Derby Club at Arizona State University became a student organization in the fall of 2013. They became a practicing team known as the Derby Devils in the spring of 2014. This project documents the creation and development a collegiate roller derby team as they go from a student organization to an athletic team. Collegiate roller derby is still in its infant stages and therefore the purpose of this project is to provide a guide for future collegiate roller derby teams as well as other athletic teams.
ContributorsLee, Alisa Yulim (Author) / Looser, Devoney (Thesis director) / Hultsman, Wendy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
The U.S. sports market is and has been dominated by professional football, basketball, and baseball leagues. U.S. interest in soccer has exploded as the sport looks to establish its position in this saturated sports market. As a general consensus, Major League Soccer (MLS), the recognized professional soccer league in both the U.S. and Canada, is expecting increased growth following the 2014 FIFA World Cup. My goal is to track that growth from June 2014 and to monitor the league's responses to that growth. How do league executives manage growth? I am curious about the background finances- especially when heated negotiations are expected heading into a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The compelling question I am looking to answer is: How will the MLS market respond to growth in a highly saturated U.S. sports market, particularly after the 2014 FIFA World Cup?
ContributorsKagen, Samuel Aaron (Author) / Drake, Philip (Thesis director) / Cassidy, Nancy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
We were driven by the question: what is happening to the popularity of Major League Baseball? In order to answer this question we compared the league structure of Major League Baseball with that of the National Football League. We were able to speak with five former or current members of the respective leagues in order to gain some insight into how the two leagues operate. The main focus of our research was around the payroll structures of the two leagues as well as their revenue sharing policies. In the end, we discovered that Major League Baseball is becoming highly regionalized. The sport is still growing in popularity in terms of revenue and fan involvement, but it is becoming less popular on a national stage. The league is benefitting greatly from factors like the increasing importance of "TiVo proof programming" and a lack of competition. Each league is very different in its own right. While the NFL promotes a perception of competitive balance, Major League Baseball can be plagued by the negative perception it creates surrounding some of its smaller market teams.
ContributorsHeath, Cameron (Co-author) / Linamen, John (Co-author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / Mokwa, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Sports teams are an integral part of a city. They attract revenue to the area around the stadium and they also give a city a sense of pride. The aim of this study was to determine what makes a team successful in the area of attendance using four factors (Bernthal & Graham; Jensen; Kim, Trail & Magnusen; Edensor & Millington; Clowes & Tapp; Greenhalgh & Greenwell; Denaux & Yalcin; Paul & Weinbach & Robbins; Levin & McDonald; Lee & Kang; Drayer; L'Etang; McDonald & Rascher; Armstrong; Ross): the history of the team, the location and population of the city where the team plays, the social media following of the team and the promotional giveaways the team uses to attract fans. Using these four factors, a comparison was made among the Arizona teams and the top performing team in attendance in the respective leagues during the 2013 season. The Arizona Diamondbacks are compared with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Diamondbacks were not as equipped as the Dodgers in any of the categories. There is a more storied history for the Dodgers, the Dodgers play in Los Angeles - a significantly larger city that Phoenix, where the Arizona Diamondbacks play, they use social media more frequently and more effectively, and they offer more promotional giveaways than the Diamondbacks. The Phoenix Suns are compared to the Chicago Bulls. The Suns history competes with the Bulls, but they lack in the other three categories. The Bulls have a better location in Chicago, their stadium is located in the downtown area; they have a massive social media following and their promotional giveaways are more substantial. The Phoenix Coyotes are compared to the Chicago Blackhawks. The Blackhawks exceeded in all of the categories, while the Coyotes were poor performers in each of the four factors. The Blackhawks have a storied history, they share a stadium with the Bulls, they have a great social media following and they give promotional items away 30 of the 41 home games. The overall recommendations for the teams are to win, in order to help build their locations and make it fun to be near the downtown area, to use social media effectively and engage with their audience, and finally to provide more promotional giveaways to attract people to the games.
ContributorsDugan, Abby Leigh (Author) / Wu, Xu (Thesis director) / Matera, Fran (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
When I was unsure of what my thesis project would be, the professor of my thesis prep class, Jill Johnson, recommended that I choose a topic that I am passionate about. Immediately, my mind went to basketball and the NBA, the business and operations side of things to be specific. Initially, this research paper was going to look into market size and how those teams in a smaller market made their money and ran their teams. It was to focus on some of the more successful franchises that come from smaller markets, as well as those franchises that have been historically unsuccessful. However, the kind of data that I was looking for on market sizes was not very available. So I ended up focusing almost exclusively on the operations side of things. I wanted to see if there was one strategy for building a team that had proven to be more successful than others. I was not sure what sort of answers I would find, but I knew that there had to be some useful data that had yet to be discovered. I settled on researching the success of teams that build primarily using players they drafted versus teams that were built primarily through trades and free agent signings. I also wanted to illuminate the difficulties that front offices, particularly those in smaller markets, face when building a franchise. I chose to focus on things such as the luxury tax and betting on the wrong players. This paper went a lot of different directions before it became what it did. I want to thank all of those who helped me, particularly my director Tim McGuire, my second reader Peter Bhatia and Jill Johnson for helping me get started on the most intimidating, yet rewarding, project that I have ever been a part of.
ContributorsJohnson, Connor David (Author) / McGuire, Tim (Thesis director) / Bhatia, Peter (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The world of a hearing impaired person is much different than that of somebody capable of discerning different frequencies and magnitudes of sound waves via their ears. This is especially true when hearing impaired people play video games. In most video games, surround sound is fed through some sort of digital output to headphones or speakers. Based on this information, the gamer can discern where a particular stimulus is coming from and whether or not that is a threat to their wellbeing within the virtual world. People with reliable hearing have a distinct advantage over hearing impaired people in the fact that they can gather information not just from what is in front of them, but from every angle relative to the way they're facing. The purpose of this project was to find a way to even the playing field, so that a person hard of hearing could also receive the sensory feedback that any other person would get while playing video games To do this, visual surround sound was created. This is a system that takes a surround sound input, and illuminates LEDs around the periphery of glasses based on the direction, frequency and amplitude of the audio wave. This provides the user with crucial information on the whereabouts of different elements within the game. In this paper, the research and development of Visual Surround Sound is discussed along with its viability in regards to a deaf person's ability to learn the technology, and decipher the visual cues.
ContributorsKadi, Danyal (Co-author) / Burrell, Nathaneal (Co-author) / Butler, Kristi (Co-author) / Wright, Gavin (Co-author) / Kosut, Oliver (Thesis director) / Bliss, Daniel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05