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Abstract

The Savannah Hockey Classic has become a very successful annual university club hockey team tournament. The 21st edition of the tournament was held in January 2020 in Savannah, Ga. featuring the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Florida, Florida State University, and University of Georgia club hockey teams—the same teams that have comprised the tournament for many years. This study utilized Personal Investment Theory (Braskamp, 1986) and the SPEED scale (Funk, Filo, Beaton, & Pritchard, 2009) for attendance motivation assessment. Social interaction motivations were significantly higher for county residents, spectators attending with friends, spectators attending with family, and past Savannah Hockey Classic attendees. Motivations related to athlete performance were significantly higher for those who had attended the event in the past. Excitement based motivations were greater for those who had attended the event in the past as well as for those who identified as a fan of one of the teams. There were significant differences related to the esteem and diversion constructs for those who had a team rooting interest. The article fills a gap in the literature by providing the first study of club hockey attendance motivations.

Keywords

hockey, club sport, attendance motivation, sport tourism, Savannah, event management

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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