The Sports Industry Review is a qualitative research company focused on servicing sports organizations with interviews, focus groups, open-ended surveys, observation studies, and opinion polling. The company is best positioned to serve the Indianapolis-area and Midwest organizations being located in Indianapolis. Travis Smith founded The Sports Industry Review and is the sole employee of the company and leads the interviews, focus groups, observation studies and designs the open-ended surveys.
Interviews
The SIR specializes in individual or two-participant interviews for its clients. The client can choose as many interview sessions as they see fit. These interviews allow a comfortable setting to share honest feedback with the moderator. The questions are designed to provide open-ended insights and the moderator comes prepared with scripted follow-up questions to get better information if answers are limited. And the moderator asks follow-up questions in the moment if answers lead to an opportunity to further probe a topic.
Interviews are especially helpful to guide more conversation in focus groups and open-ended surveys. Clients receive moderator notes, the audio files (with identifiable information removed) and a written summary report of each interview session.
Focus Groups
The SIR can provide its clients incredible insights through in-person or online focus groups. These focus groups are best with 10-15 participants and can be replicated with as many sessions as you’d like.
Focus groups allow individuals to share their opinions and experiences with one another and the focus group moderator guides the discussion and further probes for more useful information. Clients receive moderator notes, the full audio file of the session(s) (with identifiable information removed) and a written summary report.
Surveys
The SIR utilizes mostly open-ended surveys to gather widespread feedback for its clients. Interviews and focus groups help design the survey to verify and gather more insights from those earlier sessions.
Surveys include up to 30 questions or as few as you’d like. They can be one-time interviews before/after an event to one or more groups of people, or send smaller ongoing sets of questions as a way to poll your ideal consumers. Surveys are mobile-friendly and created through Qualtrics, the leader in survey building.
Observations
The SIR offers a unique study to its clients with observation studies. Founder Travis Smith visits the client’s event (or an event not within the client’s control) and uses the ethnography research method to observe the event as an embedded consumer/fan. Travis uses his phone to take notes without sticking out and records thoughts on his own experience as an embedded consumer as well as the apparent experience of others throughout the event.
Observation studies are a great way to improve an event and better understand the experience from traffic/parking in to traffic out, and everything in between. The client chooses where Travis sits and what to specifically study. Clients receive observation notes and a full summarized report of the experience and recommendations.
Polling
Opinion polling is a great way to gather consumer and community insights. We’re used to seeing public polls around political events but they can also be incredibly helpful for gathering quick feedback.
The SIR utilizes phones, emails and in-person communication with the general public throughout the city and neighboring counties. Opinion polling can be a continuous commitment, in-season or off-season only, or a one-time project for your organization. Opinion polling allows you to reach more people in and around Indy to gather feedback on existing or potential initiatives and processes. Use it to identify what would need to happen to convert a non-consumer into a fan or how to nudge that single-game fan into a season-ticket holder.
The Sports Industry Review 