Changes in Stadium Sports Spectators Customer Experiences

Abstract

Over the centuries, in most countries of the world, stadiums have changed and evolved, and with it, the behaviour and ways of experience of their visitors and spectators have certainly transformed. With improvements in-home entertainment systems and internet connectivity occurring all the time, sports fans have a greater capacity to build themselves a viewing experience that fits their preferred specifications, right in the comfort wherever they are: airplane, hotel, office, or their own room. Subsequently, sports stadiums are in the process of challenge and technological evolution, including implementation of various innovations. It attempts to create smooth, strong impressive experience and appeals to attract spectators out of their mediatory watching and to bring them into the stadium, wherever it is situated. In the current paper we investigate and review the critical areas and identify the phenomena of transformations addresses to deliver a next-generation stadium experience that is affective enough to compete with the cost, comfort, impressions benefits of “mobile” spectatorship (Thomson, Potter, 2017). A multidimensional content analysis (Tharenou, 2010) of collected data let us outline the key area of stadium technological transformation, referring to the customer-centric approach (McAlexander et al., 2002; Zaky & Neely, 2018). We define and outline the key areas of changes in SSCX in order to better predict their nature, courses and impact, projecting future perspective research directions.