The role of sport management in designing sport tourism marketing mix

The purpose of this study was to determine whether sport management itself should design sport tourism marketing mix or should implement a pre-designed one.
The research method was descriptive and was done by a survey. The statistical sample consisted of 362 sport tourism experts and Iranian and foreign sport tourists who participated in sport events in Tehran. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire with 24 questions. The face and content validity were approved by sport management experts and construct validity was approved using Exploratory Factor Analysis method. The reliability of questionnaire was verified by Cronbach's Alpha method (α =0.775). The SPSS19 was used for descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were done by LISREL 8.7.
The results showed that Fit Indexes of the model of sport management impact on sport tourism marketing mix were better than the model of sport tourism marketing mix impact on sport management. The Effect Coefficient of sport management on sport tourism marketing mix was 1.21. Among variables affecting sport tourism marketing mix, the factor loading of physical evidences (0.84) was more than the others. Also, the load factor of good organizing sport events (0.51) was more than the other ones affecting sport management.
According to the results sport management itself should design and then implement the sport tourism marketing mix.