Global sport industry growth underpins journal's mission and scope

Citation

(2012), "Global sport industry growth underpins journal's mission and scope", Sport, Business and Management, Vol. 2 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sbm.2012.51202caa.001

Global sport industry growth underpins journal's mission and scope

Article Type: Editorial From: Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, Volume 2, Issue 3.

It is my pleasure to again welcome Professors Harald Dolles and Sten Söderman as Guest Editors of our journal. As in the last volume, Dolles and Söderman present a selection of the best papers that appeared at the European Academy of Management's (EURAM) Annual Conference (this time from the 2011 conference in Estonia). I would like to extend my thanks to the professors for their continuing support of the journal, and for their excellent work in building the EURAM Special Interest Group “Sport as a Business”.

In tandem with sport's prominence at the EURAM conference, the journal's growing stature and profile continues to promote the growth of sport business management as a field of research. This growth is both timely and inevitable; a recent study by Price Waterhouse Coopers (2011) has estimated that the global sport economy will be worth $145 billion by 2015, reflecting an average growth of rate of 3.7 per cent per annum.

We therefore believe that Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal is both reflecting and contributing to our understanding of growth in the sport industry. Indeed, the contents of this edition are apt, and consistent with the role which the journal is playing. Three of the papers appearing here focus on football, two of them specifically on English football. Deloitte (2011) recently reported that Premier League football revenues recently exceeded £2 billion per annum. Football is big business, therefore requiring careful, well-informed management. The papers presented here address some of the most crucial issues facing the sport, namely efficiency, business practice and the role of senior managers and directors.

As we head towards the summer Olympic Games in London, much has been made of the £10 billion the British have spent on hosting the Games. There has been an ongoing debate about the extent to which the event will yield a lasting legacy for the British economy. This debate has been heightened by the balance of funding between private and public sector providers that has been put together for London. Whether a return is generated remains a moot point until the Games are finally over, although figures from Keynote (2011) show that when the summer Olympic Games was held in Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004), the direct contribution of travel and tourism to gross domestic product in Australia and Greece rose by 18.3 and 12 per cent, respectively. Given the nature of such matters, the final two papers here – on public policy sport funding and financial management – are consistent with and relevant to this public debate.

As this journal prepares to move from three to four issue per volume (from Volume 3 onwards), the compelling evidence noted above reminds us that sport is an industry in its own right, and is therefore worthy of the growing interest in it being shown by academic researchers. Long may EURAM and this journal continue to be an outlet for this growing and increasingly important body of research.