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Casual Observers, Connoisseurs and Experimentalists: A Conceptual Exploration of Niche Festival Visitors

Abstract Although “amateur spectators” as a growing segment is mentioned in a number of special interest event studies, our understanding of their behaviour is still limited to case‐specific descriptions, and convenience explanations. This paper attempts to conceptualize and explore further the segment of “casual observers” by integrating several non‐adjacent theoretical areas. This endeavour intersects festival and event motivation studies, sport marketing literature and sporting subcultures from leisure sociology. Following a mixed method methodology, the paper presents both qualitative and quantitative data to illuminate attendee characteristics of a special event, namely, the world’s largest extreme sports festival. Results indicate that beyond two previously documented motivational inclinations directed at the sport or the event respectively, there exists a third type of visitor (experimentalists) who are mostly motivated by attaining intrinsical goals, such as identity construction by consuming “fetish” items at a niche festival. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the marketing potential of this group and discusses the implications for event sport event segmentation.