| This paper addresses the condition of relationship marketing on the Internet conducted by professional sports franchises. It is hypothesized that franchises are not utilizing all of the relationship marketing tools available to them on the Internet. The literature establishes the Internet as an ideal medium to conduct relationship marketing, reviews the definition of interactivity and how it relates to relationship marketing on the Internet, outlines previous studies done analyzing web sites and establishes the criteria that will be used to evaluate the sports web sites. The procedure, a content analysis of 121 professional sports web sites (all North American pro teams from hockey, basketball, football and baseball) on criteria established through the literature, is discussed. The results show the current state of relationship marketing on the Internet by sports teams broken down by each major sports league. The results show if any of the major professional sports leagues are executing relationship marketing on the Internet better than any of the others. |
