ABSTRACT
Research question: The business of sport has been radically challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, impelling a rapid reassessment of practices to survive the disruption. One stakeholder comprehensively impacted has been the media, whose investments in augmenting sport's commercial appeal have been immense. The media will need to rethink their strategies to adequately leverage their connections to sport products. Similarly, sport properties and content providers will need to reconsider their mediated offerings and how fan relationships can be sustained. In response, this article outlines a pathway to superior fan activation and engagement, noting the accelerated transformation of sport arising in consequence of the pandemic. Methods: An original, multi-dimensional typology is posited into the progression of mediasport and its key components in the context of amplified disruption during COVID-19, and the predicted, lasting consequences in its aftermath. Findings: A new typological framework for conceptualizing the media-sport-consumer triumvirate is presented, which illuminates the acceleration and nature of change brought about by the pandemic. It maps out and describes interrelated and escalating media and sport compositions, explains their pertinence and related exemplars in a COVID-19 context, foreshadows their deployment in a resurgence of sport, and theorizes about their technological, consumption and commercial properties. Implications: The typology-driven analysis culminates with the proposition that sport's relationship with its consumers has been irrevocably transformed by COVID-19 and that this shift will demand a media-sport-consumer dynamic characterized by a radically compressed engagement between the triumvirate that effectively constitutes a new, sui generis form. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Online gambling has significantly altered the situational and structural characteristics of gambling products, to the extent that online gamblers might be substantially different from traditional offline gamblers. A growing body of literature has identified the evolving features of online gambling and the individuals who engage in it. However, beyond understanding the individual characteristics of this subgroup, relatively less effort has been made to examine whether existing cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) approaches are still entirely relevant for online problem gamblers, or whether changes are needed to adapt according to gambling mode of access. To understand what kind of challenges online gambling poses to mental health professionals dealing with disordered gamblers, four focus groups comprising 28 Spanish participants were carried out. All the treatment providers had ongoing experience with online gamblers undergoing treatment, and included clinical psychologists, mental health social workers, and a medical doctor. The data were examined using thematic analysis. The analysis identified five main themes that characterised online gamblers: (1) being of younger age, (2) lack of conflicts at home and at work/educational centre, rarely presenting violent or aggressive behaviour, (3) gambling disorder only being identified by overdue debt, (4) co-occurring conditions with technology-related abuse rather than other substance-related addictions, and (5) skill-based gambling. The study highlights mental health workers' perceived insecurities about how to best treat online gamblers, and discusses the specific characteristics that CBT for gambling disorder might need to incorporate to adjust for this particular group of gamblers.