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- Creators: Eaton, John
- Creators: Becker, Alexander Daniel
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
In the early years of the National Football League, scouting and roster development resembled the wild west. Drafts were held in hotel ballrooms the day after the last game of regular season college football was played. There was no combine, limited scouting, and no salary cap. Over time, these aspects have changed dramatically, in part due to key figures from Pete Rozelle to Gil Brandt to Bill Belichick. The development and learning from this time period have laid the foundational infrastructure that modern roster construction is based upon. In this modern day, managing a team and putting together a roster involves numerous people, intense scouting, layers of technology, and, critically, the management of the salary cap. Since it was first put into place in 1994, managing the cap has become an essential element of building and sustaining a successful team. The New England Patriots’ mastery of the cap is a large part of what enabled their dynastic run over the past twenty years. While their model has undoubtedly proven to be successful, an opposing model has become increasingly popular and yielded results of its own. Both models center around different distributions of the salary cap, starting with the portion paid to the starting quarterback. The Patriots dynasty was, in part, made possible due to their use of both models over the course of their dominance. Drafting, organizational culture, and coaching are all among the numerous critical factors in determining a team’s success and it becomes difficult to pinpoint the true source of success for any given team. Ultimately, however, effective management of the cap proves to be a force multiplier; it does not guarantee that a team will be successful, but it helps teams that handle the other variables well sustain their success.
The purpose of this research is three-fold: to understand how people consume sports broadcasts, what levels of basketball they watch most frequently, and what elements of a sports broadcast they prefer or wish to implement. Aside from understanding consumption behaviors, this research further explores specifically how the G League can increase viewership, whether it’s experimenting with rule changes, implementing new broadcast elements, or creating off-court content that develops interest and affinity for players in the league. What the data and statistical tests concluded was that people who were classified as ‘G League Fans’ are generally fans of all levels of basketball, but that people who were classified as ‘College Basketball Fans’ or ‘NBA Fans’ were not necessarily fans of the G League. Based on this finding, the thesis provides recommendations for how the G League can increase viewership amongst basketball fans, as this will be its most receptive and impressionable group. For those unfamiliar with what the G League is, the thesis also provides a brief history and who the players are that make up the league.
Based on research conducted on social media usage and fan identification, an online survey was created and distributed. Respondents who identified as NBA fans answered questions regarding social media usage, live sports TV viewership, and more questions regarding presumptive factors leading to NBA game TV viewership. Analysis of the responses found that loyalty to team was a bigger factor than loyalty to player in getting NBA fans to watch games on TV. Results also indicated that loyalty to team increased based on an increase in live sports TV viewership per week, loyalty to player increased based on an increase in national TV NBA game viewership, and die-hard fans are more likely to watch NBA games for their favorite team and players than casual fans. Based on these results, it is recommended that the NBA markets their games towards casual fans, with player-focused marketing for their national TV games.