Dimensions of Football Stadium and Museum Tour Experiences: The Case of Europe’s Most Valuable Brands

: In the context of football’s globalisation, some of the most important football clubs (FCs) can currently be classified as ‘entertainment multinationals’. Sport hospitality provides opportunities to maximise club stadiums’ use so that they can increase clubs’ annual turnover and function as branding platforms. This study sought to identify the main narratives shared online about—and the dimensions of—visitors’ experiences with top football brands in stadium tours. The data collected for this research comprised 400 text reviews for 10 European FCs’ stadiums (i.e., 4000 reviews) written by visitors in the post ‐ experience phase. Content analysis of these Web reviews was conducted using Leximancer software. The results confirm the existence of 15 themes: fan, tour, stadium, team, museum, room, staff, game, (best) place, ticket, seating, recommend(ation), food, shop and attraction. Most researchers have examined stadium tours from a supply ‐ side perspective. The present study’s aim was, therefore, to contribute to the existing literature by analysing stadium tours’ dimensions from the visitors’ point of view. Stadium tours and museum visits are important sources of revenue that contribute to FCs’ economic sustainability. Offering outstanding customer experiences is thus of utmost importance to maximise club stadiums’ usage and strengthen fans’ engagement.


Introduction
Football-also known as soccer-is one of the world's most popular and engaging sports [1,2]. The football team core product has been defined as a 'series of league games with an uncertain outcome' [3] (p. 404), but, according to Pritchard et al. [4], the cited definition does not cover all of football stadiums' current uses. These facilities offer more products and services than just sport [5]. Football fans and tourists can visit stadiums not only to attend live sport events but also to consume football brands on non-match days [5].
The sport hospitality business has become an opportunity to maximise club stadiums' usage [5] so that they increase yearly turnovers [6] and function as branding platforms [1]. Stadiums offer diverse complementary services, such as stadium tours [5] combined with other facilities including club museums, merchandising shops and restaurants and/or cafés that create retail experiences [7]. These tours are an important component of stadiums' business [8].
Stadiums have gained social significance, which fosters a 'topophilic relationship' between football fans and their teams [9]. Stadiums can be viewed as beloved places as they represent the teams' home and possess sentimental and historical significance [9]. Because these facilities are recognised as football teams' abode, they become part of heritage and tourism landscapes that offer powerful tourism experiences [7]. Club stadiums are also seen as important city tourism attractions that provide visitors with novel, memorable experiences [5]. Football clubs (FCs) have consolidated these venues so that they can contribute to these clubs' economic sustainability by offering fresh experiences that increase fans' engagement, consumption and co-creation [10]. Stadium tours, in particular, can generate a greater familiarity with stadiums than match days do as visitors are able to visit both frontstage and backstage areas.
In the context of football's globalisation [2], some of the most important FCs can currently be classified as 'entertainment multinationals' [5]. Club stadiums and museums have international appeal [2]. Despite these facilities' importance as heritage and tourism attractions [7], only a few studies have analysed stadium experiences on non-match days. Most researchers have examined stadium tours from a supply-side perspective (e.g., [5,7,8]). The present study's aim was, therefore, to contribute to the existing literature by analysing stadium tours' dimensions from visitors' point of view.
Visitors evaluate their experiences online for everyone to see [11]. Peer-to-peer content posted on Web-based platforms has various merits, such as spontaneity, trustworthiness and ready availability, making Web reviews a rich vein of data in terms of examining sport tourists' experiences [12]. The current research thus analysed narratives shared online by stadium tour consumers. The central question addressed was as follows: What are the main narratives shared online about-and the dimensions ofvisitors' experiences with top football brands in stadium tours?
This paper is divided into five sections. After the introduction, the literature review discusses the main papers published dealing with football stadium tours and FC museums. In addition, section two provides an analysis of previous research seeking to identify the main service quality dimensions regarding daily tours and museum visits. The methodology section identifies this study's research context, namely, 10 European football brands with high value listed in Brand Finance's [13] report, as well as the methods applied. The fourth section presents the results, and the final section comprises the discussion, implications and limitations.

Football Stadium Tours
Football stadiums are not only functional utilitarian buildings for practicing sport but also iconic symbols of local and international heritage [8]. Contemporary stadiums are used for more than sport events, often serving as entertainment venues [14]. Tours are also an important component of stadiums' business. Guided visits 'have become the central way in which the stadium has become a commodity' [15] (p. 18), and tours reinforce these venues' authenticity by offering visitors access to different areas of stadiums.
Previous studies have analysed stadium tours mainly from a supply-side perspective [5,7,8,15]. For example, Ginesta [5] examined the business models of seven Spanish football venues classified as Category 4 Union of European Football Associations stadiums. The cited author analysed the content of corporate websites and corporate catalogues and conducted semi-structured interviews with each club's marketing managers. Ginesta [5] concluded that these clubs maximise their stadium's use by developing hospitality and event packages to increase revenues.
The football hospitality business was defined by the above author based on three parameters. First, on match days, stadiums attempt to maximise revenues by enhancing different stakeholders' experiences. Second, these facilities are viewed as symbolic places because of not only football brands but also sponsor brands. Last, stadiums have two dimensions, that is, their architecture and their symbolic representation of the teams' home to fans, and thus stadiums are city branding assets. The third dimension is developed through hospitality packages targeting visitors. Gammon and Fear [8] studied the case of Millennium Stadium tours in Cardiff in the United Kingdom (UK) and concluded that stadium tours' success relies on the opportunity given to visitors to experience the authentic backstage area. The cited researchers stated, 'stadium tours offer visitors the opportunity to enter and/or view areas otherwise reserved for the very few' [8] (p. 244). Tour settings include frontstage and backstage areas, giving visitors insights into not only the stadiums' public sections but also hidden and/or restricted areas. According to Gammon and Fear [8], tours include opportunities to see what the stadium looks like on non-match days and to gain access to areas occupied by 'very important people' (VIPs) on match days (e.g., executive boxes). Other components are restricted zones often shown in media coverage (e.g., press rooms) and areas used by team players (e.g., changing rooms).
Stadium tours in sports other than football have also been analysed. Ramshaw and Gammon [7], concentrated on Twickenham Stadium tours of rugby facilities, using a combination of document analysis, interviews with tour guides and observations of tour guides' narratives. These guides shared both historical and technical (e.g., pitch maintenance) details about the stadium with visitors. Ramshaw and Gammon [7] concluded that this stadium is linked with the concept of home from both a heritage and tourism perspective. The above study revealed that the stadium was represented during tours in three different ways: the England national rugby team's home, rugby's spiritual home and London as a home base.
Ramshaw et al.'s [15] study analysed the heritage construction achieved through tours of the Bank of America Stadium, which is the home of the Carolina Panthers of the United States (US) National Football League. The cited authors applied three types of methods: analysis of tours' promotional documents, examination of the virtual tour on the stadium's website and observations of tour guides during tours. Ramshaw et al. [15] identified three different types of heritage construction: the stadium and/or team owner's identity, the stadium experience (i.e., what attending a live game feels like) and imagined and future performances.

Football Museums
Museums are generally identified as facilities housing collections or exhibitions of heritage items, with the intent to contribute to education, research and enjoyment [1]. The number of football museums has increased [2], and they can be visited as part of guided tours [1]. These museums have distinctive characteristics compared with other museums as football exhibitions combine rational, intellectual and physical material associated with football that is connected with emotions, the body and performances [2]. These museums are located in or near football stadiums, thereby creating a 'being here' feeling. Football museums offer unique presentations of the game's public history (i.e., instead of a purely historical angle). In addition, 'historically significant' objects such as trophies become exhibits. Overall, museums seek to re-create a stadium-like atmosphere.
Contemporary club museums present 11 types of stories: creation myth, founding fathers, the stadium, the shirt, the fans, overseas connections, international players, the finest hour, the academy, legends and/or heroes and trophies [1]. As tourists can visit museums or halls of fame at all times, football museums are considered sport heritagebased tourism attractions [16]. According to Ramshaw, Gammon and Tobar [17], sport museums face challenges due to the need to address cultural and economic aims simultaneously.
Previous studies of football museums have covered different geographical areas such as Australia [16], South Africa [18], the UK [1], both the UK and China [2] and Portugal [19]. For instance, Frost [16] studied the Australian Football League Hall of Fame's financial sustainability using secondary data. The study concluded that this museum's failure was the result of simultaneous difficulties generated by high prices, overconfidence in the core concept and a location in a new shopping centre in the central business district instead of being close to FC sport facilities.
In Cape Town, Rassool and Slade [18] examined the District Six Museum and the ways that the methods used to present new exhibitions help visitors understand how football ties into South Africa's society, including issues such as race and identity formation, politics and resistance to apartheid. Appel's [1] research further focused on FC museums in the UK and investigated whether football museums match the International Council of Museums' definition of museums as non-profit, permanent and open. The above author collected data on the Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanders museums. Appel's [1] analysis revealed that the role football museums currently play differs from sport museums in general as FC museums act as branding platforms and seek to make a profit.
Magalhães et al. [19] examined the case of the FC Porto museum, which is located inside the Dragão Stadium, using secondary data sources. The cited study concluded that the museum is part of tourism and cultural itineraries within the city of Oporto, Portugal. Magalhães et al.'s [19] study highlighted a wide range of events and activities throughout the year that target different audiences, such as workshops, summer camps and corporate events. Yang [2] investigated the UK's National Football Museum in Manchester and China's Linzi Football Museum in Zibo based on exhibition approaches, activity programmes and cultural settings. According to the above author, football museums not only represent the sport's history but also strengthen collective identities for football enthusiasts.

Tours and Museums' Service Quality and Overall Experience
Although previous studies of football stadium tours have mainly taken a supply-side approach, the literature includes measurement instruments for daily tours [20] and art and specialist museums (e.g., [11,21,22]) that may be relevant to the present research. Most prior studies have adopted a quantitative approach using surveys and scale development techniques. One exception is Su and Teng's [11] work on identifying the main service quality dimensions based on negative reviews of museums shared online on Tripadvisor. The above researchers' content analysis of unfavourable Web reviews of art and specialty museums found 12 dimensions: convenience, contemplation, assurance, responsiveness, reliability, tangibles, empathy, communication, servicescape, consumables, purposiveness and first-hand experience.
Measuring service quality in services is a complex task as service processes include four primary characteristics: heterogeneity, intangibility, simultaneous production and consumption and perishability [23]. Caber and Albayrak [20] developed a specific scale to measure service quality in daily tours-DAILYSERV. This instrument includes the following dimensions: transportation, tour guide, food and beverage facility, shopping facility, stopover facility and museums and sites. Cheng and Wan [21], in turn, used the HISTOQUAL scale to assess service quality in museums in Macau. This scale is a modified version of the SERVQUAL scale developed by Frochot and Hughes [24] for heritage contexts such as museums, which encompasses the dimensions of responsiveness, tangibles, communication, consumables and empathy.
In addition, Cheng et al. [22] adapted the SERVQUAL model to measure service quality in museums, as well as developing the Museum Interpretation Quality Questionnaire. The latter includes the dimensions of tangibles, reliability, empathy, assurance and communication. Cheng et al.'s [22] study was conducted in museums in China and Taiwan. Conti, Vesci, Castellani and Rossato [25] identified six dimensions of museumscapes in Italy that have a positive impact on visitors' word of mouth, namely, ambient conditions, facilities and convenience, signs and signage, staff behaviour, art gallery quality and exhibition space aesthetics.
The literature on museums includes discussions of a shift from a focus on collections to audiences and from product-oriented to service-oriented processes, as these institutions have identified visitors' experience as museums' core offer [26]. Visitors' service encounters in museums are diverse and encompass subjective mental states felt by guests [27] such as escaping from everyday life, joining learning activities, sharing valued time with peers and experiencing emotional states of fun and enjoyment [28]. Museum experiences can further be classified into four categories: objective, cognitive, introspective and social [29].

Research Context
The present study focused on 10 of the strongest and most valued football brands according to Brand Finance [13] (Table 1). These FCs belong to the top 5 European Leagues: Premier League (UK), La Liga (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany), Serie A (Italy) and Ligue 1 (France).

Data Collection
The data collected for this research comprised 400 text reviews written about each of the 10 European FCs' stadiums by visitors in the post-experience phase, for a total of 4000 reviews with 276,719 words. The sample was defined using non-random quota sampling [30] so that the collected reviews of each stadium were proportional in terms of traveller types and overall satisfaction ratings for each FC facility. The data were collected in 2020, and, following the example of previous studies [12,31], the sample included only reviews written in English.
All the Web reviews were gathered from Tripadvisor, the largest travel and tourism review platform [11], and compiled on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet-one review per row-which was then converted into a .txt file. The dataset included the club's name, review title, review text, visitor's country of origin, overall satisfaction rating (i.e., measured on a 5-point scale) and traveller type based on Tripadvisor's categories (i.e., solo, business, couple, family and friends).
The visitors who wrote these reviews were extremely satisfied with their stadium visits as 90% rated their overall satisfaction as very good (4) or excellent (5). The reviewers came from 202 different countries-a wide diversity of nationalities that reflects football's globalisation. These guests were further grouped into regions. Most reviewers were from European countries (77%), 10% from North and Latin America, 9% from Asia and 2% from Africa and from Oceania. The visitors were also classified by how they travelled. Families made up 31% of the sample and 25% travelled with friends, while 24% were couples and 8% travelled solo. Only 2% were business visitors ( Table 2).

Data Analysis
Content analysis of the 4000 Web reviews was conducted using Leximancer software. Leximancer has been utilised in different travel research contexts to identify the main narratives of visitors' experiences shared on social media platforms (e.g., [12,31,32]). The main advantage of carrying out content analysis with Leximancer is its automatic identification of the main themes within collections of natural language texts, with minimum intervention from the researcher [32]. Leximancer's tools suggest concepts based on word occurrence and word co-occurrence, using Bayesian statistical theory, nonlinear dynamics and machine learning algorithms.
Since Leximancer conducts both conceptual and relational analyses, it measures not only the presence of defined concepts in the texts analysed but also these concepts' interrelationships. This software organises and groups the concepts into themes, including how often they appear together in narratives. Leximancer's main output is concept maps made up of coloured circles containing concepts organised into themes. The concepts that appear most frequently together are placed nearer to one another on the concept map. The most prominent themes are given the warmest colours. As in previous studies, the present concept map's results were complemented by narrative analysis that identified segments of text focused on specific themes [33].

Overall Analysis
The analyses revealed the existence of 15 themes: fan, tour, stadium, team, museum, room, staff, game, (best) place, ticket, seating, recommend(ation), food, shop and attraction ( Figure 1 and Table 3). The following subsections discuss each theme in terms of its importance and main associations.

Fan
The fan theme includes the concepts of fan (1454, 40%), visit (1422, 40%), football (1231, 34%) and experience (909, 25%). This theme covers different market segments' experiences of visiting football stadiums, which reflect the visitors' level of involvement in football or the teams (e.g., team fans, football fans and even those who are not fans).
A reviewer shared: [
One visitor said: Guests also shared that they were willing to come back and recommended either taking another stadium tour or coming on a non-match day. A review read, 'I would highly recommend the stadium and museum tour.
One guest wrote, '[t]he gift shop is very expensive but it is a once in a lifetime [opportunity] (at least for me) so it [is] worth it' (Manchester United, UK, 5, family). Another visitor reported, 'the shop is a retail experience in itself!!' (Barcelona FC, UK, 5, friends). A visitor observed, 'the club shop is the best I have ever seen [ Other guests talked about photographs and certificates. A visitor observed that, '[a]t the end of the tour[,] you exit through the gift shop, where you can purchase your photos and print out a certificate to say that you've visited the stadium (i.e., free certificate)' (Manchester United, Spain, 5, family). One reviewer noted, '[t]he [f]an shop has a great collection and we took some nice pictures where they photo shopped us with the players' (FC Bayern Munich, Germany, 4, couple).

Attraction
The attraction theme combines the concepts of attraction (198, 10%) and magical (experience) (196, 10%). The narratives that included this theme describe stadium visits as a tourist attraction and an opportunity to enjoy a magical place. A guest shared, '[w]ith a soccer player in the family, this was a must-see attraction and gave our family a break from the downtown London scene' (Chelsea FC, UK, 5, family). Another visitor wrote, 'I would definitely recommend this tour to all football fans, especially City fans, but I would recommend it to others who are looking for [a] different type of attractions to visit, in addition to the usual cathedrals and museums' (Manchester City, Canada, 5, couple).

Analysis by Ratings
Visitors who evaluate their overall satisfaction with stadium tour experiences as excellent (i.e., 5 out of 5 points) or as terrible or poor (i.e., 1 or 2 out of 5 points) share different content in Web reviews. The rating analysis' results show that visitors who give stadium and museum tours a 5 more frequently share narratives with concepts related to emotions (likelihood = 89%; theme = game), loved (experience) (78%, tour), feel(ing) (73%, museum) and enjoy(able time) (70%, staff). This group of more satisfied visitors is more likely to use the concepts of amazing (experience) (88%), memories (88%), fantastic (place) (87%), magical (experience) (82%) and excellent (experience) (78%). As expected, this group is more inclined to recommend (79%) tours and visits and exhibits intentions to return (76%). The group that assigns lower overall satisfaction ratings (4% of the total sample) is more likely to write about negative value-for-money assessments and use the concepts of money (11%, recommend[ation]), people (10%, seating), souvenir (9%, shop) and food (9%, food).

Discussion
This study sought to answer one research question: What are the main narratives shared online about-and the dimensions of-visitors' experiences of top football brands in stadium tours? The research was based on a content analysis of Web reviews posted by 4000 guests of 10 top European football stadiums.
The analysis identified 15 major themes: tour, stadium, team, museum, fan, rooms, staff, game, (best) place, tickets, seating, recommend(ation), food, shop and attraction. The tours are the core service, which visitors associate with the concepts of excellence and love. The associated narratives mention different types of tours: self-guided audio, virtual reality and guided tours. The tour guides are of utmost importance, and many visitors include their names in reviews. The weight given by visitors to professional guides has been confirmed by previous studies of daily tours (e.g., [20]). Tour guides share the stadiums' history and heritage [7], manage the tours, have contact with participants and make the entire experience special. The present results also reveal that guests see virtual reality elements as complementing their experiences, but these components do not relegate personal contact with tour guides to a second place. Instead, virtual reality is perceived as an add-on to the holistic experience visitors can get when they visit football stadiums.
The stadium theme comprises not only stadiums' main tangible characteristics (e.g., dimensions, frontage and general architectural design) but also an intangible dimension as the perceived 'home of the team'. The tangible components can be viewed as branding assets [5], providing evidence that the stadiums' construction is of utmost importance to sport enthusiasts [7] because it is linked with fans' identity [34]. In addition, the stadiums are considered more than just a building or facility. They have a 'religious significance' [9] involving a strong sentimental meaning because stadiums are regarded as the teams' home [5,7].
The team theme is linked with famous football stars who play or have played in each stadium. Legends, heroes and international players are identified as three of the main stories in contemporary FC museums-a conclusion that is in line with Appel's [1] research. Thus, museums pay special attention to teams' stars, displaying their achievements as players and, quite often, as citizens.
Museums are visited during stadium tours so that visitors can explore different dimensions of the FC in question. Museums are also a dimension of the DAILYSERV scale [20]. In the current study's findings, the museum theme is associated with physical components, memorabilia (e.g., trophies and shirts worn in important games) and heritage exhibitions. Guests also report that technological devices in these institutions, such as interactive screens, enhance already enjoyable experiences. The narratives conveying this theme are further linked with education [1] since museums are perceived as a major opportunity to learn about the clubs' history.
The fan theme is reflected in narratives addressing two main ideas. The first is that stadiums and their museums must be visited by everyone, that is, not only club fans but also other football enthusiasts and even tourists in general. This narrative is in accordance with Gammon and Fear's [8] conclusion that stadium tours can attract both football fans and non-fans. According to Yang [2] (p. 1880), football museums 'construct a collective identity for football enthusiasts irrespective of age, ability, gender or nationality'. The second narrative connected to this theme is that fans themselves can be viewed as 'live exhibits' based on fan memorabilia. This perspective was clearly expressed by Yang [2] (p. 1875), who stated: Fans become 'live' exhibits and provide information about their own football teams, their football heroes, and the culture of football supporting [groups]. Supporters are an essential element of the football history of the football being showcased[. T]here are also visitors who live and breathe the history of football.
The rooms theme covers the experience of visiting the stadiums' authentic backstage areas such as press and dressing rooms. This theme is also quite significant because it highlights the opportunities offered to visitors to experience the stadiums from their heroes' point of view [8]. In other words, guests become themselves the 'stars' at least for a few moments.
The staff theme is associated with narratives about front office staff other than the tour guides. The associated narratives concur with the dimension of responsiveness included in the HISTOQUAL scale [21].
The game theme comprises narratives related to the recreation of emotions generated by games and the stadiums' atmosphere as these places are where unique, unforgettable moments of the clubs' history have taken place. Along these lines, stadium tours tend to offer different types of game experiences (i.e., frequently based on virtual reality technology) giving the impression of what a live game is like [15].
The place theme includes narratives that classify the stadiums as the best place in the relevant country or even on the planet. This theme is in accordance with Bale's [9] classification of stadiums as beloved places with significant social meaning. Stadiums are seen as facilities that create powerful feelings of adoration [8]. Most of these issues are clearly related to the stadium theme mentioned previously.
The tickets theme is mainly linked with access to the stadiums and entrance ticket purchases. This topic has to do with not only experiences' quality but also the clubs' financial return. First, the act of buying a tour ticket is often the first point of contact, which means that it can affect guests' perceptions of the entire experience from the beginning. Second, the different types of tours-ranging from the cheapest to premium tickets -are selected for in the ticket office. Regarding access, the narratives with this theme provide support for the idea that football museums' value proposition is 'football for all' [2], which includes coping with visitors with disabilities. Convenience is also a service quality dimension of Cheng and Wan's [21] HISTOQUAL scale and Su and Teng's [11] study.
The seating theme can be understood as a tangible component of stadium tours [11]. Guests might have an opportunity to see what the stadiums look like on non-match days [1]. This theme involves seating in different parts of the stadiums and in the presidential box and the supreme experience of sitting in the same chair used by the head coach.
The recommend(ation) theme reflects positive post-purchase behaviour. The visitors who write online reviews expressing their satisfaction with stadium visits not only recommend the tours to others but also share their intention to return to the stadiums.
The food theme describes different visitor segments' food and beverages experiences at the stadium's restaurant and coffee shops (e.g., VIP tickets and packages with meals and snacks during tours). Previous studies have also highlighted the role of food in daily tours [20] since food is considered a part of the consumables dimension of museums' service quality [11].
The shop theme is associated with narratives about experiences in stadiums' merchandise stores during tours. Shopping facilities is also a dimension of the DAILYSERV scale [20]. These facilities also fall within the consumables dimension of museums' service quality [11]. However, FC souvenirs can become part of the guests' personal life [2] because shops offer unique retail experiences and visitors view them as part of the stadiums' tourism infrastructure [7]. In other words, walking around in and buying items from FC museum shops are experiences that cannot be separated from the rest of the tour.
Finally, the attraction theme is mainly linked with narratives that describe the stadiums as a tourist attraction. This theme is in accordance with previous studies that have classified football stadiums as part of local heritage [8], tourism landscapes [7], city tourism attractions [5] and entertainment venues [14] that become part of cities' cultural itineraries [19]. The use of the term 'tourists' reveals that football stadium museums benefit from football's international appeal as a global industry [2].
Most of the research conducted so far has analysed stadium tours from a supply-side perspective (cf. [5,7,8]). The present study's main contribution to the literature is an indepth understanding of stadium experiences on non-match days from the visitors' perspective. This research offers significant and novel conceptual contributions that can be divided into two main categories.
First, the current results are a significant contribution to the literature on service quality in daily tours [20] and museums (e.g., [11,21,22]) given the new research context under study: football stadium museum and facility tours. Compared with the DAILYSERV's museum and sites dimensions, the present research revealed more complex experiences involving the museum theme and other themes related to the stadiums' frontstage (i.e., general architecture and seating) and backstage (i.e., rooms) areas. In contrast to the scales developed to evaluate museums' service quality (cf. [11,21,22]), the current study's results suggest that the consumables dimension of stadium tours need to be replaced by two different retail experiences related to the food and shop themes.
Second, the comprehensive and holistic character of visits to football stadiums and museums means these tours include not only diversified physical places but also different experiences at distinct moments in time. People visiting stadiums link their tours to past experiences related to the clubs' historic moments and even to future experiences linked to these guests' expectations of the teams' continued performance. Stadium and museum tours allow FCs to maximise venues' use, thereby contributing to these clubs' economic sustainability while offering memorable experiences that become the basis for fans' engagement and co-creation.
The emotional nature of visits to football stadiums and museums provides evidence of the central place occupied by fans in this context. To a limited extent, these tours can be labelled a 'virtual emotional reality' as opposed to a 'virtual (technological) reality'. While tours are partially based on simulated experiences created or augmented by technology, the former reality is generated by immersing visitors in deep emotional experiences that cause them to experience a kind of dream filled with strong sentimental feelings. This component is particularly evident in prominent themes such as stadium, rooms, seating, place and team.
This study's findings have two major managerial implications for sport stadium managers. These are briefly discussed in the subsections below.
Football stadiums and museums' visitors look for unique, memorable moments that complement their experiences as football fans-even if they are not fans of the FC stadium they are touring. According to the content analysis's results, the main themes in the narratives shared online are linked with the core service (tour and museum themes), the backstage (rooms) and frontstage (stadium and seating) areas, history (game, places and team), convenience (tickets), retail experiences (food and shop), people (staff and fan), city (attraction) and post-purchase behaviour (recommendation). Managers must, therefore, develop a variety of tours that encompass these different elements in order to integrate past experiences and future expectations so that guests have strong emotional experiences.
Managers should also use Web reviews to identify guests' overall level of satisfaction and areas needing improvement based on the narratives shared online. This study was based on thousands of Web reviews posted by visitors to FC stadiums' tour and museum. These reviews are a major source of data that can contribute relevant information about the service quality provided and facilitate extremely significant benchmark analysis of what the competition is doing.
This research's main limitation is linked to the data collection method. As data from Web reviews were used, only visitors who shared their experiences online were included in the analysis. Online reviews may also underrepresent some types of travellers (e.g., moderately satisfied visitors). Future studies could avoid this problem by developing a new scale to measure service quality perceptions of sport stadium and museum tours based on primary data collection methods (e.g., surveys). Another area that merits further research is stadium tour experiences in a post-COVID-19 scenario to test whether the themes remain the same.