Assessment of the role and performance of the media in the development of sport tourism (Case study: East Azarbaijan Province).

Regarding the evaluation of the role and performance of the mass media in developing sports tourism and to study the degree to which the mass media has been successful in fulfilling its functions in relation to sports tourism development and also the role of each one of the mass media in fulfilling the abovementioned functions are issues need to be considered. East Azarbayjan Province and Tabriz as the center of the province enjoying a wide range of tourism attractions opportunities such as sports tourism has been seen as the center of the Islamic Tourism in 2018. On the other hand, this sports tourism is supported by various local mass media. However, no comprehensive study has been carried out regarding the potentials of tourism especially sports tourism and challenges facing in developing and expanding sports tourism in East Azarbayjan province, which in turn necessitates an attempt to conduct a comprehensive study and research in this regard. The aim of the current research is applied research and we applied descriptive methodology. We applied field study to collect and analyze data including distributing questionnaires among 106 individuals who are experts in this field of study. To analyze data we applied statistic methods using SPSS software. The results have indicated that the mass media has been successful in two areas: one is comprehensive notification coverage of sports events and the second quick and honest broadcasting of sports news and media coverage of important sports events in which the mass media we studied in our research has showed an acceptable performance, in other areas the mass media function has been very weak. Our study also indicated that informing people about sport events and clarifying them about analyzing and explaining problems in issues facing sports tourism development and challenging the officials, institutions and organizations in charge, is in turn proved to be the most effective factor in developing sports tourism in East Azarbayjan Province. Finally, it has been proven that among the mass media, television has significantly performed the best while radio has performed the worst regarding development of sports tourism in East Azarbayjan Province.