Sep 14 2010
Research Proposal- Sports Media Interactivity
Taylor Williams
Research Proposal
Interactive website utilization and the sports industry
The growing world of new media and technology has expanded to all the facets of media outlets. It seems the expansion of interactivity in the media is allowing many industries to try new ideas and designs for websites and television programs to engage their audience. These days the target audience is most important which means finding new ways to engage this fast-paced world. Sports media interactivity is growing phenomenally which is why this study will be conducted solely on the growth of website utilization in engaging audiences to watch sporting events and how the accessibility enables the sports market to grow through the Internet and television.
As an individual with a broadcast journalism degree and a minor in sports studies, I see how the sports industry is rapidly growing in interest for many people. Although today’s society and economy is constantly unstable, many people believe the sports market is a scapegoat for everyday problems, which in time leads to its growth. I believe the sports industry is growing due to the accessibility of interactive websites that allow many people to watch sporting events from traditionally inconvenient locations. For example, this year the World Cup in South Africa was televised on television but most of the games were aired in the middle of the day so many Americans were unable to watch the matches. However, ESPN.com created an interactive play by play graphic on their website that allowed users to actively engage in watching the games they could not watch at home. The world cup broke record highs in the viewer market on a national and international level for the increased interest in a tournament that does not have a lot of cultural meaning for Americans.
In an effort to show the correlation between interactive website utilization and the growing sports market, I will conduct a case study with four test subjects. This test will last for three weeks and each test subject will have to play or use an interactive sports website twice a week for a short period of time. The test subjects come from different backgrounds and range from a lot of sports interest to no interest in the sports market at all. The test subjects with little sports interest have jobs and the test subjects with a high to medium sports interest have heavy amounts of university obligations. I have created a sheet for each subject to log their usage and how they felt after using the sites each week.
I also plan on conducting a survey by asking if they are soccer fans, during the world cup did they visit ESPN.com to see the games and after viewing the website, did they watch the games on TV or continue using the interactive graphics. I will combine the information gathered from the surveys and compare them to the results of the case study. I will also conduct research on the amount of websites that have interactive sports graphics and field research to observe how people interact to major sporting events.
At the end of this study I hope to better understand the relationship between interactive website utilization and the growth of the sports industry because I believe they are interrelated and correlate with each other. The sports industry is a growing monopoly and will keep growing with the help of new technology by engaging large audiences