MASTER’S THESIS

Master thesis: sport spectator preferences
Figure 8: The Experience Realms
(Pine & Gilmore, 1999, p. 30)
The escapists are much more involved in the event, enhancing the inherent entertainment
value, for example visiting VIP rooms or enjoying the thrill of movement.
This means, they try to flee to some specific place and activity worthy of
their time. “Shifiting up economic vaule to stage experiences simply means adding
entertainment to existing offerings” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999, p. 30). In their
model, they try to explain the different levels of spectator participation. On the
horizontal axis, there is the passive participation, were consumers do not directly
influence the performance. They are just leaning-back participants. On the other
side of the horizontal axis, there is the opposite active participation. These customers
lean forward to personally take part in the experience, by creating their
own activity, like doing judo or they take part by multiple senses affection on sport
events (Pine & Gilmore, 1999, Trentmann, 2004). The vertical axis describes the
environmental experiences. The participant is cognitively affected by the event,
when he is on the absorption axis. On the immersion axis he gets physically involved
into the spectacle. The four perspectives in the model can describe the
way of event consumption. The Educational perspective is an active consumption.
“To truly inform a person and increase his knowledge and/or skills, educational
events must actively engage the mind (for intellectual education) and/or the
Theoretical foundation of sport spectators and event experience page 30