Empirically testing for niche sports

Abstract

Although niching has been well explored across the marketing, strategy, and consumer behaviour literature, its application in the sport context to date has been atheoretical, resulting in pervasive inconsistencies within the sport marketing literature. Such inconsistency has derived from sport scholarship’s adoption of anecdotal and subjective descriptions of “niche sports.” This shortcoming is addressed first through an analysis of extant niche literature, to articulate a conceptual framework to realign and guide future niche marketing sport research. This framework is underpinned by marketing’s empirical generalisations and Dirichlet modelling, offering a parsimonious methodology to identify niche brands. An analysis of Australian sport participation is then performed, to empirically test for the presence of niche sports utilising the advocated framework. Data was obtained from Australia’s large-scale national population tracking survey AusPlay, with a final sample of 70,858 respondents and included 124 discrete sport and recreational activities. The empirical analysis reveals several sports and recreation activities to exhibit characteristics of niche positioning: Crossfit, Mixed Martial Arts, Equestrian, and Walking. These activities feature a base of participants who exhibit an exceedingly high participation frequency, elevated rates of sole loyalty to the respective activity and a disposition for the chosen activity to fulfil a disproportionate share of their overall product category requirements. In practice, such niche sport brands require divergent marketing strategies focused upon product quality, maintaining customer relationships and reinforcing internal dynamic capabilities. The study concludes with a discussion of niche sport’s potential idiosyncratic features, to provide a roadmap for future research.

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