How Much Are Fans Willing to Pay to Help “Their” Soccer Clubs to Overcome a Crisis? An Analysis of Central European Fans during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have conducted a very interesting study and have done a good job. I would like to make the following recommendations.

1. To present the core concepts of this study more visually, I suggest adding a model diagram.

2. Many existing studies have shown that gender factors significantly impact willingness to pay. Since only a small number of respondents in this study were female and the authors did not appear to control for gender, I believe the authors should consider excluding the possible influence of gender or cite the necessary literature for additional explanation.

Author Response

We are very glad to hear that you found our study interesting and thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have now revised our manuscript based on them. Below, we address your comments as they appear in your review report. We also highlighted all revisions in the manuscript in yellow color.

1. To present the core concepts of this study more visually, I suggest adding a model diagram.

Particularly because of adding also two control variables into our regression model (see the next comment), we also find a model diagram useful and think that it, indeed, increases intelligibility of our paper. We have added a visualization of our model into the manuscript (see line 326).

2. Many existing studies have shown that gender factors significantly impact willingness to pay. Since only a small number of respondents in this study were female and the authors did not appear to control for gender, I believe the authors should consider excluding the possible influence of gender or cite the necessary literature for additional explanation.

We fully agree and thank you for bringing up this excellent point. In fact, we originally controlled the impact of gender and age on the outcome, which we left out from our report because we did not find any impact. We have now added this finding into the manuscript (see lines 301-303 and 315-316). Control variables are also now included in our model diagram (see line 326).

Please note that we have also completed an extensive proof-reading with a professional proof-reading service.

We hope our revisions have improved the coherency of our paper. However, if you notice a need for any further improvements, we look forward to your suggestions.

Reviewer 2 Report

Although this is not a topic of broad general interest, the authors address and analyze it methodologically in a correct and appropriate manner, from the problem statement, information analysis, data analysis methodology, results and conclusions, which It gives you better acceptance and consultation than you might initially think, given the characteristics of the topic. It is a good job, done in a good way and with an adequate analysis.

Author Response

We would like to sincerely thank you for taking time to review our paper. Of course, we are also very glad to hear that you found our methodological approach appropriate and our analysis comprehensive.

Based on other reviewer recommendations, we have slightly revised our manuscript, and highlighted all the changes in yellow color. Please note that we have also completed an extensive proof-reading with a professional proof-reading service.

If you notice a need for any further improvements, we look forward to your suggestions.

Reviewer 3 Report

The abstract is adequate and striking. In the text it must be justified why such a small sample- Will a European fan be the same as a Latin American fan?

The title does not raise covid but the introduction and literature review focus there.

In the results, so many characterization graphs are not necessary, it is ideal to point out and transcend the univariate analysis

In the discussion, practical implications (utility of results), replicability of the study, added value of the research and contrast with authors should be further explored.

Verify compliance with the format in the references

Author Response

Thanks a lot for your helpful feedback. We have now revised our manuscript based on them. Below, we address your comments as they appear in your review report. We have also highlighted all revisions in the manuscript in yellow color.

In the text it must be justified why such a small sample- Will a European fan be the same as a Latin American fan?

We noticed that during the Covid-19 lockdowns, empirical data collection from sports fans was challenging. We agree that the sample size could have been larger, although we were able to achieve statistically significant results with our current dataset. Hence, we have now addressed the sample size more clearly as a limitation and explicated its impacts also based on your comment (see lines 417-427).

The title does not raise covid but the introduction and literature review focus there.

This is an excellent point. We strongly believe that the results of our study provide usable risk and crisis management implications beyond COVID-19 pandemic, but agree that COVID-19 should be mentioned in the title. We have changed the title to “How much are fans willing to pay their football clubs to over-come a crisis? An analysis of Central European Fans during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In the results, so many characterization graphs are not necessary, it is ideal to point out and transcend the univariate analysis.

Because the willingness to pay amounts as such and differences between small and large club fans (tested by Kruskall-Wallis H test) were also a focal question in our study - and not only the regression analysis on determinants of WTP - we would be glad to keep also the distribution graphs in our paper. In our opinion, they provide interesting information on WTP differences between small and large club fans. As you can see, we have also clarified our methodological approach by adding a graphical illustration of our research model (see line 326). In an attempt to improve the robustness of our model, we have also controlled the impact of two external variables (age and gender) on WTP (see lines 301-303 and 315-316).

We hope this improves our approach in a sufficient manner.

In the discussion, practical implications (utility of results), replicability of the study, added value of the research and contrast with authors should be further explored.

We agree, and have broadly improved the discussion section by adding managerial implications, reflections to other studies as well as some limitations regarding generalizability (see lines 367-377, 397-401, 410-415, and 425-427).

Verify compliance with the format in the references.

Thank you for notifying us about this shortcoming. We have now checked the references and modified them to match the journal requirements.

Please note that we have also completed an extensive proof-reading with a professional proof-reading service.

We hope our revisions have improved the coherency and clarity of the manuscript. However, if you notice a need for any further improvements, we look forward to your suggestions.

Reviewer 4 Report

Based on the current serious COVID-19 epidemic, many sports clubs have been seriously affected, this paper investigated the willingness of fans to contribute financially to help their favorite teams to overcome financial difficulties caused by this unforeseen operational risk under the consideration of the significance of the level of team identification. The results provide a useful solution for sports clubs to solve financial risks under the influence of the epidemic. This is interesting research; however, I still have the following comments to the authors:

1. The author should strengthen practical examples about the role of fans in solving the financial crisis of sports teams. In addition, the contributions of the paper can be stated clearly in the Introduction part.

2. The literature review section should be enhanced. In the beginning of Literature review section, the author should summarize the related literatures of this paper in different streams. The authors should update the latest data and literatures in the introduction and literature review sections, such as doi: 10.1111/itor.13186 and doi: 10.1016/j.cie.2020.106951. In addition, literature review should not a simple stack of papers, but a comprehensive analysis. I suggest that the author should organize and summarize relevant literatures.

3. Whether the data of only 178 questionnaires are sufficient and these data are representative in the Sample and Procedure part? I think it is necessary to increase the number of samples to ensure the validity of the data.

4. In the analysis of influencing factors in the Results part, the author gives the results of “willingness to pay for fictitious game and special merchandise” and “determinants of WTP”, but does not explain how they affect the results. Can the author describe the mechanism of the factors with a model?

5. It is suggested that the author can give more specific and practical methods in the Implications part. And I think that the limitations and conclusions should be put in one part.

6. There are some format mistakes of References: for example, whether the references need to be capitalized, the names of authors in the third reference are not all listed, please check it throughout the paper.

Author Response

We are very glad to hear that you found our study interesting and thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have now revised our manuscript based on them. Below, we address your comments as they appear in your review report. We also highlighted all revisions in the manuscript in yellow color.

1. The author should strengthen practical examples about the role of fans in solving the financial crisis of sports teams. In addition, the contributions of the paper can be stated clearly in the Introduction part.

After reviewing the discussion section based on your comment, we fully agree that the discussion section needed significant improvement. We have now strengthened the discussion section by adding managerial implications, reflections to other studies as well as some limitations regarding generalizability (see lines 367-377, 397-401, 410-415, and 425-427).

We have also attempted to clarify the statement of the contributions in the introduction section (see lines 59-60 and 64-67).

2. The literature review section should be enhanced. In the beginning of Literature review section, the author should summarize the related literatures of this paper in different streams. The authors should update the latest data and literatures in the introduction and literature review sections, such as doi: 10.1111/itor.13186 and doi: 10.1016/j.cie.2020.106951. In addition, literature review should not a simple stack of papers, but a comprehensive analysis. I suggest that the author should organize and summarize relevant literatures.

Although COVID-19 outbreak caused an influx of studies also in the area of professional team sports management, we are quite positive that we have rather well covered the literature most closely related to our research. Instead of just listing the papers, we have also tried to point out the research gaps from risk and crisis management perspective on one hand (see lines 140-148) and base the derived research question on (social identity) theory on the other hand (see lines 181-191).

We would also like to sincerely thank you for suggesting additional literature. However, although being very interesting and clearly high quality papers, we think that they topically diverge from our research so substantially that it is difficult for us to integrate them into our paper.

Yet, in case you notice any literature we might have missed, we are certainly prepared to re-revise.

3. Whether the data of only 178 questionnaires are sufficient and these data are representative in the Sample and Procedure part? I think it is necessary to increase the number of samples to ensure the validity of the data.

That is a very good point. We noticed that during the COVID-19 lockdowns, empirical data collection from sports fans was challenging. We agree that the sample size could have been larger, although we were able to achieve statistically significant results with our current dataset. Because the situation has substantially changed since our data collection period (first COVID-19 lockdowns in Europe during spring 2020), we cannot replicate the survey in comparable circumstances. Hence, we have now attempted to address the sample size more clearly as a limitation and also explicated its impacts (see lines 417-427).

4. In the analysis of influencing factors in the Results part, the author gives the results of “willingness to pay for fictitious game and special merchandise” and “determinants of WTP”, but does not explain how they affect the results. Can the author describe the mechanism of the factors with a model?

Particularly because of adding also two control variables into our regression model (age and gender; see lines 301-303 and 315-316), we also find a model diagram useful and think that it, indeed, increases intelligibility of our paper. We have added a visualization of our model into the manuscript (see line 326). We hope that this improves the description of our methodological approach in a sufficient manner.

5. It is suggested that the author can give more specific and practical methods in the Implications part. And I think that the limitations and conclusions should be put in one part. There are some format mistakes of References: for example, whether the references need to be capitalized, the names of authors in the third reference are not all listed, please check it throughout the paper.

We fully agree, and as stated in the point 1, we have broadly improved the discussion section by adding managerial implications, reflections to other studies and some limitations (lines 367-377, 397-401, 410-415, and 425-427).

Regarding the format of the manuscript, we have now – based on your suggestion - combined the discussion and limitation parts. Many thanks for notifying us also about the shortcomings in reference format: we have checked them and edited according to journal requirements.

Please note that we have also completed an extensive English proof-reading with a professional proof-reading service.

Thank you for taking time to review our paper and for your kind suggestions. We are hopeful that our revisions have sufficiently improved the quality and coherency of the manuscript. However, if you notice a need for further improvements, we are certainly prepared to revise the manuscript accordingly.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have complied with all the suggestions

Reviewer 4 Report

This manuscript has been revised as required, and it is recommended to accept.