ACC: The Atlantic Coast Conference, a collegiate athletic conference that was founded in 1953.

ADA: The Americans with Disabilities Act, which required stadiums to provide accessibility for those with disabilities.

ADI: Area of Dominant Influence. Used by the media industry to refer to different types of geographic sports markets.

AFL: The Arena Football League, a lower-league organization that emphasizes the fast-paced aspects of football with high-scoring offenses.

Aftermarket: Any market in which customers for one product or service are likely customers for a related complementary good.

AIAW: The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, founded in 1971.

Antitrust: Action by government authorities that promotes or maintains market competition by reducing or eliminating a particular firm's ability to dominate the market. Major League Baseball was ruled to be immune from antitrust laws in 1922.

Arbitration: A process in Major League Baseball for young players who are seeking a pay raise from the league minimum of a few hundred thousand dollars. The team the athlete is playing for and the athlete himself each submit a figure to an independent arbitrator, who then determines how much the player should be paid.

Athlete endorsements: The contractual obligation of an athlete (professional or amateur) to market himself or herself in accordance with a particular product or good. One early example is the signing of a contract by baseball player Honus Wagner with the Louisville Slugger company. Risks abound with athlete endorsements, such as when Tiger Woods was exposed in a media onslaught as an adulterer.

AYSO: The American Youth Soccer Organization, founded in 1964 to nurture the next generation of American soccer stars.

BCS: The Bowl Championship Series, the official ranking system of college football.

Brand association: The subconscious connection of a particular team's marketing techniques (e.g., logos and merchandise) to the team itself.

Brand insistence: The act of a consumer pledging loyalty to one particular sports franchise.

Brand rejection: The act of a consumer ceasing their consumption of a particular sports player or franchise as a result of positive, preconceived notions being changed.

Broadcast rights: The paid privilege of a broadcasting company to televise a sports league's games. Some cases, such as NBC's rights to Notre Dame Football games, have one company receiving the rights to broadcast a sports team's games.

Bye: A practice which, in major American sports, is limited to the NFL. It allows two division winners with the best regular season records from each of the two conferences to bypass the first round of the playoffs. The impact of the number of teams in a league on the structure of the playoffs is little-discussed in sports. In the NBA, which allows more than half of the league into the playoffs, it leads to a postseason which is, as a ratio of playoff games to regular season games, more than twice as long as baseball's post-season. In football, which plays games less frequently and whose players face the possibility of serious injury, this would be untenable.

Bye week: A term extending a bye in football, a bye week is any week in which a team in the NFL or CFL does not need to play. In addition to the playoff byes, every NFL team has a week in which they do not play a game scheduled sometime between week four and week 10 of the regular season, in order to extend the regular-season schedule by one week.

Carnegie reports: A series of documents released in 1929 that exposed recruiting violations and academic abuses in college sports.

Category exclusivity: The right of a company or firm to promote itself as the sole sponsor of a team or sport in a particular category (e.g., Ford being official automobile of the New York Yankees).

Cause marketing: A public relations venture by a firm or company that includes the sponsorship of a non-profit organization.

CBA: Collective Bargaining Agreement, an agreement between an employer (such as a sports league) and a group of employees (such as a players union).

CFL: The Canadian Football League, consisting of eight teams. Founded in 1958, it is the highest level of competition in Canadian football.

CIAW: The Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, founded in 1966.

Clutter sponsorship: Too much sponsorship in a particular medium, usually forcing a firm to develop a unique brand message.

Collusion: The act of players or firms undertaking financial negotiations or strategies in tandem in the hopes of reaching greater gains than what they would normally receive if they bargained or implemented strategies by themselves. An example is the 1966 collusion between pitchers Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, who negotiated their contracts as a pair and received an intense amount of scrutiny for doing so.

Competitive balance: The concept of fans paying higher premiums for competitive games than they would for lopsided victories. Avid fans generally appreciate lopsided victories, while casual fans prefer a more competitive outcome.

Concessions: Edibles sold at sports stadiums that may include hot dogs and beer.

Copyright: Legally protected information derived from sporting contests. The city of Las Vegas, which hosted Super Bowl parties with 7,000-plus people featuring a giant screen broadcasting the game, was found in violation of the NFL's copyright policy.

Crowd control: The efforts of stadium officials to maintain security in the face of dangerous behavior perpetrated by fans of a team. Some stadiums have implemented policies, such as alcohol-free zones, in an attempt to subdue the rising tides of emotion some fans display.

Davis Cup: A tennis competition that began in 1900 and features international teams competing against one another.

Demand inelasticity: An economic theory stating that as changes in the price of a good or service occur, the demand for that good or service is changed as well. In the sporting world, however, ticket prices and concessions can have their prices affected without significantly changing the demand by consumers of those products.

Demographics: Characteristics of people that determine the level of interest in a particular sport. These can include such factors as age, gender, socioeconomic status, and political allegiance. For example, members of the Republican Party are more likely to follow professional football than members of the Democratic Party.

Determinants of demand: Factors that dictate the amount sports consumers demand in terms of attendance at games and watching broadcasts of their teams. These factors include price and price elasticity, distance traveled, quality of contest, stadium capacity, game-day promotions and giveaways, uncertainty of outcome, competitive balance, presence of star players, and team strength.

DGWS: The Division of Girls' and Women's Sports, organized in 1958.

DirecTV: Satellite cable company that revolutionized the concept of “local” sports teams by offering NFL Sunday Ticket, allowing a consumer who does not live in a particular team's media market to view their games. For example, a consumer living in New York can watch all of the games played by the San Francisco 49ers, despite the fact that the consumer and the team's media market are on opposite coasts of the United States.

Doping: The use of banned substances to enhance or create a competitive edge. Anabolic steroids, created by Adolf Butenandt in the 1930s, are sometimes used by athletes. Famous examples of doping involve Mark McGwire and Alex Rodriguez in baseball and Floyd Landis in cycling.

Draft: A process used to distribute eligible players among sports teams. In the draft process, teams take turns selecting from the pool of players and have exclusive rights to negotiate a contract with the players they select. (This does not compel the player to play for that team, but he or she cannot play for another one.) Most drafts are entry drafts, in which the pool of players have not yet played in the league, and are a method for ensuring parity among the teams. Drafts are included as part of the collective bargaining agreements between player unions and leagues, so they're exempt from antitrust violations. The importance of the draft varies from sport to sport: in the NFL and NBA, the draft is key to team management strategy while in MLB they receive considerably less attention, since baseball players nearly always play in the minor leagues for several years after being drafted and many of them will never play a major league game.

Dynamic pricing: Strategy employed by executives of sports teams to update prices constantly in accordance with changing demand.

E-commerce: Revenue generated from online Internet transactions. Popular in the selling of sports memorabilia.

Eduselling: A sponsoring corporation educating the public about a new product or service.

Emergency planning: Efforts undertaken by stadium executives to ensure spectator safety. The need for emergency planning became increasingly evident following the September 11th attacks, as fears of a possible terrorist attack on a major sports stadium grew.

ESPN: The Entertainment Sports Programming Network. Launched in 1979, the network has steadily increased its popularity.

ESPN2: The second incarnation of ESPN, the channel debuted in 1993 and was originally conceived as a younger, “hipper” version of ESPN.

ESPNews: Launched in 1996, the channel is designed as a 24-hour sports news network.

Face: A “good guy” sports figure, typically in professional wrestling.

Fan avidity: The degree to which fans are attracted to a particular team. This can range from Basking In Reflected Glory (BIRG) to Cutting Off Reflected Failure (CORF), which both depend on the particular team's most recent performances. Interestingly, when referring to a win, most fans will use the pronouns “us” or “we” to describe the team; while in the event of a loss, most fans will use the pronouns “they” or “them.”

Fantasy sport: A game in which players take the role of team owners, assembling a team and competing against other fantasy owners based on the actual statistics of the real players. The statistical performance of players in real games is converted into points that are awarded to the owners who possess those players in the fantasy game. Fantasy sports are strongly associated with informal gambling and used to require a “league commissioner” to laboriously calculate the impact of each real-world game on the fantasy game. Today, software can generate the results automatically and model actual games played by the fantasy teams based on real-world statistics. Modern sports video games often have more in common with fantasy sports than they do with the first-generation sports video games of the 1970s and 1980s, which had minimal simulation.

Farm team: A lower-level team that is usually affiliated with a major league team. The modern-day farm system is credited with achieving a greater balance of competition, as it prevented richer clubs from stockpiling future stars.

FIFA: The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which is responsible for organizing the World Cup, among other international soccer activities.

Final Four: The final four teams in a playoff tournament in the NCAA (which has trademarked the term). While it can refer to any sport, when capitalized, it refers to the NCAA Men's Division I and Women's Division I basketball championships, held in the spring.

Flutie Effect: Named after Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie, whose fame in winning the Heisman Trophy led to a significant increase in the college's number of applicants.

Franchise: A team in a professional sports league organization (a term generally limited to North America).

Free agency: The ability of a player to leave his current team to seek fame and fortune elsewhere.

General obligation bonds: The type of loan that is most commonly used to build a stadium.

Geodemographic segmentation: Marketing tool that is used by sports teams' representatives to determine which types of fans will consume sports media.

Golf Channel: Cable network providing 24-hour coverage of the PGA Tour along with other professional golf activities. Founded in 1995 and would grow to be available in over 110 million homes internationally.

Governing body: The legally sanctioned organization that is responsible for passing and enforcing the rules of the game.

Grassroots sponsorship: A return to the basics of marketing in an age dominated by high-tech promotions. An example is Coca-Cola sponsoring low-level soccer teams.

Green marketing: A concept involving the consideration of the environment in relation to sports marketing. Recent initiatives include the NHL's campaign to promote environmentalism.

Gross rating points: Refers to the average number of times a consumer is exposed to a marketing message.

Group sales: Marketing strategies designed to target multiple people instead of just one consumer. It is particularly applicable to people attending sporting contests in arenas or stadiums, as research has [Page 1685]concluded that only two percent of sports fans attend games by themselves.

Groupthink: Coined by Irving L. Janis, the term refers to the inability of a group or organization to critically solve problems due to an overwhelming desire to reach a consensus among the group. Such thinking can be dangerous for sports organizations, as the strategy of building and managing a ballclub might be hindered by a consensus-driven approach.

Hall of Fame: A museum-like attraction which enshrines particular players and other participants who were important to a sport or a team. While individual teams may operate their own halls of fame, sportwide halls of fame are generally operated independently of the league. This was an important point in the controversy over Pete Rose's being barred from the Baseball Hall of Fame concurrent with his banishment from professional baseball, but since the hall is not operated by Major League Baseball, it could have elected to maintain his eligibility for being voted into the Hall on the strength of his achievements prior to his gambling scandal. Similarly, it remains unclear what the Baseball Hall will do about admitted or suspected steroid users. Many halls of fame induct a small number of managers and journalists, key to the history of the game, in addition to their most important players.

Heel: A villain sports figure, typically in professional wrestling.

Hooliganism: The phenomenon of sports spectators engaging in overly rowdy behavior. One of the more alarming examples of hooliganism and the dangers it causes occurred in May 1985 in Brussells, Belgium, during a match between the soccer clubs Juventus and Liverpool that led to the deaths of 39 people.

Horizontal satisfaction: The level of satisfaction among fans over a particular game.

IOC: The International Olympic Committee, founded in 1894.

ITF: The International Tennis Federation, founded in 1913.

Joint venture: A business agreement between two parties who agree to contribute equity and resources to a new, shared enterprise. For instance, ESPN Star Sports is a joint venture between U.S.-based ESPN and Asia's Star TV, joining their brands for a series of 17 sports television networks operating throughout Asia.

Knight Commission: A consortium brought together in 1991 to study the problem of college athletes illegally receiving sums of money.

Lanham Act: Legislation passed in 1946 that protected the logos and brand names of sports teams and other organizations.

LCV: Lifetime customer value, used by sports teams to determine the amount of income they can expect from a fan over their entire lifetime.

Lockout: A work stoppage in which employers prevent employees from working, rather than employees going on strike. In the United States, employers can only hire temporary players during a lockout (a limitation they do not face during strikes) and many states guarantee an employee's right to unemployment benefits during a lockout; as a result, lockouts remain fairly uncommon.

Madden: Shorthand term for EA Sports' Madden NFL video game franchise. The video game has an exclusive NFL license, meaning it is the only football video game to include real players and teams.

March Madness: The championship tournaments of the NCAA's Men's Division I and Women's Division I basketball, which take place primarily in March and involve 68 and 64 teams, respectively. Constructing brackets for the tournament—predicting the winner of each game in each round—has become a serious and demanding hobby and the object of informal betting for many college basketball fans. Surprising underdog wins are called “bracket busters” because of the number of fans' brackets proven wrong by the win.

Mascot: A symbol, often an animal or object, that is used to bolster fan support.

MLB: Major League Baseball. A fixture of American cultural life, MLB has been in existence for more than a century, and fans of the league have seen it evolve from a mere pastoral pastime to a multi-billion dollar empire.

MLS: Major League Soccer. The United States' premier professional soccer league, the MLS was founded in 1993 to coincide with the U.S. hosting the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Originally, the league was comprised of 10 teams, but its rising popularity has led to a current pool of 16 teams.

MSG: Refers both to Madison Square Garden and the cable channel of the same name.

NASCAR: The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, founded in 1947. The largest sanctioning body for stock car racing in the United States, NASCAR races are second only to football in broadcast viewership.

NASPAA: The National Association of Sports Address Public Announcers, founded in 2003.

NBA: The National Basketball Association, the major professional basketball league, founded in 1946. Consists of 30 teams in the United States and Canada. Many features of the modern league resulted from the merger between the NBA and the American Basketball Association. Under commissioner David Stern, who has held office since 1984, the sport has expanded to the global market.

NCAA: The National Collegiate Athletic Association, founded in 1906. The most important body in college sports, the NCAA oversees the conferences and athletic programs for many American and Canadian colleges and universities. The three-division setup dates to 1973, and under it, Division I and Division II schools are permitted to offer athletic scholarships, allowing them to be more competitive in recruiting potential players. The NCAA is key in establishing the proper conduct for running collegiate athletics programs.

NFL: The National Football League, the major professional American football league, was founded in 1920. It consists of 32 teams in the United States and Canada. The most attended and most-watched professional sport, the NFL is also marked by its commitment to parity.

NFL Network: Founded in 2003, this network hosts eight regular-season NFL games per season.

NHL: The National Hockey League, the major professional hockey league, was founded in 1917. It consists of 30 teams in the United States and Canada.

NSGA: The National Sporting Goods Association, a not-for-profit trade association that was founded in 1929. Can also refer to the National Senior Games Association, a non-profit organization that hosts the Senior Olympics.

Overexposure: The possibility of a consumer becoming irritated or annoyed by constant inundation of a marketer's message.

Paralympics: A sports competition featuring athletes with debilitating physical disabilities.

Parity: The concept of a league operating in a competitively balanced atmosphere. Parity often leads to an increase in teams that would not normally benefit from a competitively unbalanced league.

PCT Scale: The Psychological Commitment to Team Scale has been used by teams' representatives to categorize different types of fans in terms of loyalty to their franchise.

PEDs: Performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids or human growth hormone.

Pong: Considered to be the world's first sports video game. A simplified version of tennis, Pong was released in 1972 by Atari.

POS: Point of sale, the place where the transaction for a good or service occurs—such as a checkout terminal or the software equivalent.

PPV: Pay per view, a televised cable program (whether live or delivered on demand) that carries [Page 1687]a charge separate from the viewer's cable subscriptions, which will show up on the cable bill. Pay per view services are nearly always commercial-free, though may include sponsors, product placement, or trailers for other programs. Common pay per view sporting events include boxing, wrestling, and mixed martial-arts matches. Pay per view is as old as cable television, and first became popular when the Portland Trailblazers made some of their 1978 season games available on pay per view, following their 1977 championship. Since the 1980s, pay per view has been especially popular for boxing matches, and wrestling and mixed martial-arts followed boxing's example. As digital cable has become popular and more channels have been made available, ESPN has begun offering college football and basketball games via pay per view.

Risk manager: Someone associated with a sporting event who is appointed to determine and provide solutions for all liability issues.

Rooney Rule: A set of guidelines in the National Football League that requires any team in the process of interviewing people for their head coaching position must interview at least one minority candidate.

Ryder Cup: A golf competition that is notable for its prestige and worldwide participation.

SBA: The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Enacted by Congress, it allows an antitrust exemption for sports broadcasting rights.

Site stickiness: Web term referring to the concept of Internet users returning time and again to Websites. In the sports world, the biggest example of site stickiness is users returning to sports message boards.

SPARTA: The Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act. Enacted by Congress in 2004 in an effort to regulate the activities of sports agents.

Speedvision: A cable channel founded in 1996 that dedicates itself to providing motorsports content and races.

Sponsorship: The act of a company promoting its products and/or services with the paid participation of a famous athlete or figure in the sports world.

Student athlete: A collegiate athlete who is also a full-time student.

Super Bowl: Considered by many to be the biggest media event of the year in the United States, the Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League. Advertisers are usually required to pay an average of $3 million for each 30-second advertisement during commercial breaks.

Tailgating: A pre-game celebration in which spectators at a sporting event will consume food and beverages and interact with each other—usually in the stadium's parking lot—in anticipation of the game beginning.

Three-peat: A basketball term referring to a team winning three straight championships. Legendary basketball coach Pat Riley coined the term and receives a sum of money every time it is mentioned in the media.

Title IX: Federal legislation enacted in 1972 that requires that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” While not specifically mentioning collegiate or high school sports, the legislation would come to be heavily associated with them.

Trading cards: Miniature pieces of paper featuring player photos and statistics. The most expensive trading card today is one of Honus Wagner, and netted $3 million at an auction in 2007.

Trash-talking: Method of self-promotion by which an athlete will speak in insulting terms about a particular player or organization.

Twitter: A social networking site with over 50 million worldwide users that has been instrumental in athletes' self-promotion.

UEFA: The Union of European Football Associations, the supreme governing body of all European soccer.

Up-selling: The process by which a seller of a good will suggest other purchases in addition to the agreed-upon item or service. An example of this in the sports world is a popcorn seller suggesting that the consumer purchase a soda because the popcorn will make him or her thirsty.

USA Triathlon: The governing body that sanctions and monitors all official triathlon events in the United States.

USHL: The United States Hockey League is the top junior ice hockey league in the United States and was founded in 1947.

USTA: The United States Tennis Association, the governing body of tennis in the United States, founded in 1881.

Variable ticket price: Strategy implemented by the ownership of sports teams to take advantage of fans' interest in a particular game or series by increasing prices.

Vertical satisfaction: Fans' level of satisfaction over an entire organization.

WADA: The World Anti-Doping Agency, established in 1999 in Switzerland.

WBC: The World Baseball Classic. Organized in 2005 to promote the game of baseball around the world, the WBC has seen only one champion—Japan—in its two tournaments in 2006 and 2009.

Word-of-mouth: Term referring to the concept of consumers indirectly promoting a team or player to other consumers.

World Cup: Held once every four years, the World Cup is an international soccer competition featuring representatives from a handful of nations.

XFL: A short-lived football league created by wrestling mogul Vince McMahon that tried to combine professional wrestling with professional football.

Zone of affection: Term referring to customers of a firm who exhibit maximum loyalty to that company. In sports, those inhabiting the zone of affection would include diehard fans of a team.