Sport Startups: New Advances in Entrepreneurship

Sport startups are a specific form of new business venture that enters the market in a fast manner. There has been more emphasis on sport startups due to the need to capitalize on innovations particularly digital types in the global business environment. The increased competitiveness of the sport industry has meant a need for startups to fill gaps in the marketplace. As a result, more entrepreneurs have become interested in startups due to the way they offer quick market entry, which is particularly important in dynamic environments. This chapter highlights the role of sport startups in the global economy by focusing on their advantages in terms of usefulness thereby offering a new theoretical and practical approach.

There has been increasing interest in sport entrepreneurship as a field of study due to the way it bridges theory and practice. This is certainly relevant in the startup context that emphasizes an entrepreneurial approach for developing a business model. This chapter focuses on the importance of sport to society by focusing on entrepreneurship, thereby connecting the sport entrepreneurship literature to the new field of startups. This enables a better understanding about the value of entrepreneurship to the sport industry and in particularly the startup culture.

Entrepreneurial opportunities can be created through the process of coopetition in which entities in an ecosystem collaborate and compete. Increasingly more emphasis is being placed on how to capitalize on the role sport plays in society through an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective. This chapter focuses on how entrepreneurship in society has developed and the role sport plays based on complex adaptive systems. An explanation of the ecosystems metaphor emphasizes how the sport industry is similar to a biological system in which planned and unplanned occurrences contribute to entrepreneurship. This enables a theoretical and practical underpinning of sport startups to emerge.

Accelerators provide a way for entrepreneurs to capitalize on new knowledge and technology regarding sport. The advantage of accelerators is that they can utilize the wisdom of crowds in order to facilitate a quick introduction into the marketplace of new ideas. This is crucial in the competitive sport industry, which relies on utilizing knowledge intensive products and services for competitive reasons. Knowledge in a sport context can be hard to describe as it can refer to processes that enable better production processes. For this reason, it is useful to understand how knowledge is a source of power in the sport market and how it can be used strategically. This chapter focuses on issues such as knowledge management and knowledge hoarding as a way to gain a competitive advantage in the sport industry, thereby linking the research on accelerators to a knowledge perspective in the sport context.

In order for sport startups to progress there needs to be innovation communities that promote the use of innovation. To do this can be a complex process so it is important to understand the role sport innovation plays in society. This chapter focuses on how to utilize sport innovation for sport startups by focusing on branding and communities. This includes an understanding about the role of corporate social responsibility and sustainability in facilitating sport startups.

Football is the world’s most popular sport and produces its own innovation ecosystem due to its linkage with economic, community and social endeavors. This chapter focuses on the way football clubs are innovative in terms of new product, service, system and technology development. Increasingly due to the digitalization of the global economy, more football clubs are focusing on innovation especially that related to technology. Thus, it is important to understand the role open innovation plays in fostering collaboration among ecosystem members. In addition, due to many football clubs having a social responsibility to their community at local, regional and international levels, it is important to understand the role leaders play in facilitating innovation. Therefore, this chapter also focuses on the role of social innovation in football ecosystems.

There has been a digital transformation of the sport industry that has resulted in an increase in the number of startups. Technological innovations derived from big data and social media have altered the way entrepreneurship is embedded in a sport context. This has influenced more technologically enabled sport startups that are driving change in the global economy. This chapter discusses the role of digitalization in changing existing business models and fostering a more entrepreneurial ecosystem. This includes focusing on technological innovations such as the impact of cloud computing and other data changes.

Sport startups are a new type of startups that are rapidly emerging in the global marketplace as a way to include digital technology innovations in new business ideas. The idea behind a startup is that an entrepreneurial idea can quickly become reality and lead to more sustainable business ventures. The sport industry is a recipient of many innovations and needs to rapidly introduce these innovations in order to be competitive. This chapter focuses on how startups have emerged and the reasons why they are useful to the sport industry. The role of technological innovations in spearheading change is discussed together with some suggestions for future research ideas.