Scholarship has established that characteristics of a firm’s upper echelon affect firm-level outcomes in a range of industries. In professional sport, firms depend on live game attendance and, increasingly, the consumption of online content to generate local revenue. The ability to drive these two revenue streams depends on a franchise’s competencies in marketing, relationship management, and brand building. In this research, we speculate those competencies start at the top, i.e., with ownership. Using upper echelons theory (UET), we hypothesize that franchises with owners who have substantial marketing expertise are better able to drive attendance and online search traffic. Using a panel dataset of 30 teams over a 10-season period, we found that ownership expertise in marketing was generative of significantly more attendance but perhaps not significantly greater online traffic. The results are discussed in the context of UET, and implications for practitioners are presented.

中文翻译：

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所有权营销专业知识对 MLB 出勤率和数字消费的影响

学术研究表明，公司高层的特征会影响一系列行业的公司层面的成果。在职业体育领域，公司依靠现场比赛的上座率以及越来越多的在线内容消费来产生本地收入。推动这两种收入来源的能力取决于特许经营商在营销、关系管理和品牌建设方面的能力。在这项研究中，我们推测这些能力从最高层开始，即所有权。使用上层梯队理论 (UET)，我们假设拥有拥有丰富营销专业知识的所有者的特许经营权能够更好地提高出勤率和在线搜索流量。使用 10 个赛季期间 30 支球队的面板数据集，我们发现，营销方面的所有权专业知识可以显着增加出勤率，但可能不会显着增加在线流量。在 UET 的背景下讨论了结果，并介绍了对从业者的影响。