Check out the profile pages on our faculty and staff directory as well as our Ph.D. students to see more of the great research being done by the Department of Sport and Entertainment Management.
Faculty Spotlights
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Stephen Shapiro, Ph.D.
Professor Stephen Shapiro is the director of graduate programs for sport and entertainment management. Shapiro's research interests are focused in the areas of ticket pricing and consumer behavior as it relates to both purchase and charitable contribution decisions.
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Tarlan Chahardovali, Ph.D.
Assistant professor Tarlan Chahardovali's research interests are grounded in improving diversity, identifying structural inequities, policy making and gender equity in sport.
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Khalid Ballouli, Ph.D.
Associate professor Khalid Ballouli serves as director of the sport and entertainment management Ph.D. program. Ballouli’s research interests lie in the areas of consumer behavior and sport and entertainment marketing
Research Highlight
Chahardovali, T., Watanabe, N. M., & Dastrup, R. W. (2023). Does location matter? An econometric analysis of stadium location and attendance at national women’s soccer league matches. Sociology of Sport Journal. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2022-0217
This study examines the impact of stadium locations on attendance in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). We develop a match-level attendance model incorporating control variables such as market factors and consumer preferences to assess attendance for NWSL games. Our results indicate that attendance drops the further an NWSL stadium is from the city center.

2022 Department of Sport and Entertainment Published Work Highlights
Bold = USC faculty
* = Current or former student
JVEM is Now SER
The Journal of Venue and Event Management transitioned to a new publication titled Sport and Entertainment Review (SER). The new journal has a slightly different focus.
Over its five years with the College of HRSM, the contributions made by many to JVEM continue to be a great source of research in the venue and event industry.