The Collegiate Sport Experience: Reconceptualizing Sport Venues and College Athlete Satisfaction

Abstract

Academic institutions across the country have and will continue to spend billions of dollars annually on facilities to recruit and retain their athletes. However, most facility research in sport focuses on consumer satisfaction instead of athlete satisfaction despite the fact satisfied athletes are going to (a) be more likely to initially commit to a school and (b) be retained by a school. Thus, it is important that researchers shift from mainly focusing on sport spectators to also focusing on college athletes, the primary users of sport facilities. Accordingly, a conceptual model of collegiate athlete satisfaction with competition venues was developed from a critical review and research synthesis of the general facility management and sport facility management literatures. The proposed model created from the literature review includes financial, functional, aesthetic, and atmospheric indicators, and uses norms as comparative standards as its theoretical foundation. From this model and corresponding narrative explanation, sport researchers and athletic department administrators should gain knowledge and guidance about how to better utilize sport venues to enhance the college sport experiences of their athletes.