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This paper aims to advance a critical analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within sport. First, the author locates CSR within the wider field of sport-related social activities. Second, the author identifies key issues that confront CSR in sport. Third, while referring to papers elsewhere in this issue of the journal, the author sets out future possibilities for the pursuit of CSR within sport with regards to its technical, dialogical and critical dimensions.

The approach taken here is a critical one, advocating CSR work and research which identifies strengths and limitations in, and explores future arrangements for, the CSR sector.

The paper finds that the CSR sector in sport should pursue a dialogical and critical practice within and through its work.

The originality and value of the paper lie in how the paper advances critical understanding of CSR in sport.

This paper aims to highlight how critical theory and political CSR might be applied to deepen our examination of the complexities associated with ‘sport CSR’. The debate on the use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the sports industry is starting to move beyond “mapping the territory”, which characterized the initial examination of this new direction in CSR. This viewpoint suggests that it is time for “sport CSR” to turn to a range of CSR perspectives found in mainstream management debates as they are under-applied at the moment.

This paper examines the current state of research in sport CSR and offers a discussion on the possible ways to apply two under-utilised mainstream perspectives – political CSR and critical CSR – to sport CSR.

A review of literature highlights how sport CSR has tended to pay insufficient attention to the maladies, dilemmas and broader structural concerns and political ramifications associated with sport CSR. This means that other viewpoints noted and applied in this journal, such as “critical CSR” and political CSR are largely neglected.

The value of this article lies in highlighting how critical theory and political CSR might be applied to deepen our examination of the complexities associated with “sport CSR”.

The study aims to identify critical factors that influence football fans’ support of their favorite team by examining the impact of social responsibility, brand credibility and team brand equity on patronage intentions of professional football teams.

An online survey collected data from 331 football fans of the Persian Gulf Premier League (PGPL) in Iran. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is able to influence brand equity, brand credibility and patronage intentions. Also, brand equity and brand credibility were found to be positively related to patronage intentions. In addition to that, the findings show that brand equity and team credibility partially mediate the relationship between CSR and patronage intentions.

The findings provide valuable insights to sports teams/club managers aiming to attract new fans and retain current ones by investing in CSR and enhancing brand credibility and equity. Strategies to integrate CSR into relationship marketing and brand management are outlined.

This study empirically highlights the critical role of adhering to CSR and the effects of brand credibility and equity in enhancing patronage intentions among football team fans.

The authors intend to contribute to the lack of information about corporate social responsibility (CSR) in sports verified in the literature. The main purpose is to understand what the supporters' perceptions of CSR practices in sports clubs are and how these initiatives influence some of their attitudes towards the clubs they support.

Using a total sample of 142 supporters, the study hypotheses were tested with PLS-SEM structural equation modeling.

The authors conclude that CSR initiatives have a positive influence in the supporters' perception of the club and contribute to the positive word-of-mouth communication about the club. The results also show that these initiatives do not have a significant influence on the supporters' intention to become or remain paid members of sports clubs.

It should be noted that research on CSR in the national sports context is scarce, which increases the importance of its contribution to the literature in this area.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly significant in the sport industry, and athletes, leagues, teams and sport organizations are actively engaging in socially responsible activities. The popularity of CSR has attracted the attention of scholars in the field of sport management. However, little research has investigated the overview and evolution of the extant literature on CSR research in sport management. Therefore, this study aims to explore the knowledge structure of CSR in sport management and provide implications for future research.

This work investigated and examined bibliographic data of scientific documents (N = 234) indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2008 to 2021. The Bibliometrix R package and VOSviewer software were used to analyze and visualize the knowledge map of CSR research in sport management.

The bibliometric analysis found that CSR has become a critical topic in the field of sport management. Most studies focus on the implementation of CSR activities by sport organizations and their impact on consumers' reactions and behaviors.

The findings of the current paper provide an efficient overview of the evolution of CSR in sport management and offer avenues for future scientific endeavors.

Previous corporate social responsibility (CSR) research has mainly revolved around the “usual target” (that is, fans and consumers) that invest money, time and energy in supporting their teams in isolation while largely ignoring individual members of the public. Building on social exchange theory and social media analytics, the authors examine the social outcomes of CSR aggregated from individual members of society's perceived benefits (intangible and psychological).

Raw data were drawn from the CSR-focused Twitter accounts of six professional leagues (i.e. @nbacares, @nflplay60, @InspireChange, @thewnbpa, @Pr_nhl, @Mlsworks and @Mlbsocial). The authors collected historical data from each CSR-focused Twitter account (N = 136,076) from March 2010 to September 2022.

After conducting sentiment analysis of public perceptions, the majority of tweets (53%) were neutral, 39% were positive and 8% were negative. All CSR-related accounts received more positive tweets about their initiatives than negative ones did. The most prevalent positive topics are supporting the community, education, youth wellness and health and inspiring the young generation. The most prevalent negative topics were related to fake, hypocrite, hate and social justice.

The study contributes to the CSR-sport literature by incorporating members of the general public into the stakeholder ecosystem and empirically examining their perceptions of sport organizations' CSR activities. Also, by drawing on the social exchange theory and the unique nature of social media, the authors highlight when and how the public expresses positive, neutral and negative perceptions over time. Finally, it joins a small but growing body of research that adopts the application of big data to sport management, and it measures the sentiment, frequency, distribution and topics of tweets, thereby determining positive and negative public perceptions.

With the growing popularity of sports in Taiwan, the Sports Administration under the Ministry of Education introduced the Taiwan iSports Corporate Award campaign. This emphasised sports for employees and assisted in developing and supporting corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in the sports industry through collaboration with firms, thereby enhancing their corporate image, facilitating the recruitment of high-quality employees and highlighting healthy human resources and brand value. Can sports-based CSR performance reflect firms' market values and reduce their market risks? This study regards Taiwan iSports Corporate Award announcements as important sports-based CSR disclosures and incorporates financial econometrics to examine the relationship between the announcement of sports-based CSR performance and firms' market values and risks.

An event study is conducted to clarify the reactions of the Taiwan iSports Corporate Award announcement event on the abnormal returns of award-winning firms during the 2016–2021 period, and a regression discontinuity design (RDD) model is employed to verify the robustness of the empirical results using the event study method.

Taiwan iSports Corporate Award announcements are not significantly reflected in the positive abnormal returns of award-winning firms. No causal relationship is found between the two. However, there are signs of relatively less systematic risks when investing in award-winning firms than in the market.

This study provides empirical evidence and managerial implications for Taiwan iSports Corporate Award-winning firms. It effectively enables business operators, sponsors or investors to understand the reactions of announcing sports-based CSR performance on the financial market and provides references for corporate organizations' CSR and sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether consumers’ attitude toward sporting goods retailers depends on who engages in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and where CSR takes place. The study aims to replicate previous findings on football teams (Kulczycki and Koenigstorfer, 2016) for for-profit sporting goods retailers by looking at how organization size and proximity of the supported cause to the retailers’ headquarters interact with consumers’ motive attributions for CSR (philanthropic vs profit).

In total, 200 participants took part in the experimental study. The study applied a between-participant design manipulating both the proximity of the supported social cause (local vs distant CSR) and the size of the organization (small- vs large-sized organization) and measured perceived motives for CSR as independent variables. Attitude toward retailers was the dependent variable.

The results of regression analyses showed that perceived philanthropic motives increased attitude toward retailers. This relationship became stronger for large-sized sporting goods retailers, in particular when they engaged in CSR activities at distant locations. For small-sized retailers, the proximity of CSR did not impact on the relationship between motive attribution and attitude toward the retailer.

Large-sized retailers are encouraged to take particular care that consumers perceive CSR activities as philanthropy-driven, especially when supporting social causes at distant locations.

The study replicates previous findings and shows that not only for sports teams, but also for sporting good retailers, CSR can increase consumer attitudes even when the consumer population at the organization headquarters’ location does not directly benefit from CSR.

The purpose of this paper is to clearly outline the practicalities of designing and implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) through sport programmes via stakeholder involvement theory by an international governing body operating across Europe’s multicultural setting. The concept of CSR and the use of sport to achieve the objectives of CSR have become common buzzwords. Within CSR, most of the academic literature, or research, has focused on defining or framing CSR through sport particularly discussing the implementation or staging of CSR activities by both sporting and non-sporting organisations. However, not much has been done regarding the practicalities of designing CSR programmes by employing stakeholder involvement theory and conducting of a thorough needs analysis before programme deployment.

This explorative study is based on participatory action research informed by international sport-for-development experiences. A qualitative approach was adopted in assessing the application of stakeholder involvement theory (Morsing and Schultz, 2006) in programme design and assessment of the target group’s needs.

The old CSR approach was fragmented and lacked integration into local area needs. The new CSR approach ensures that community needs are reflected in CSR activities. The delivery of CSR by Euroleague Basketball professional clubs secures a licence to operate through joined-up approaches with mainstream partner agencies. These social partnerships instil a sense of community ownership of One Team Basketball projects.

This paper draws on lessons learnt from international sport-for-development sector where stakeholder involvement is vital for deploying development-through-sport initiatives. The paper addresses aspects which constitute sustainable developmental approaches in communities using sport CSR as a vehicle for change.

This study aims to investigate how organizations can utilize sport sponsorship to build their corporate social responsibility (CSR) image effectively, by examining the attributes of a sports property that are most conducive to a sponsor gaining CSR image benefits.

A between-subjects experimental design was used, which simulated different sponsorship scenarios by varying community proximity (operationalized by property scope) and property engagement in community initiatives. Hypotheses were tested with a non-parametric bootstrapping-based procedure, using a panel sample of 400.

The results show that a sporting property’s proactive community engagement is conducive to an enhanced CSR image for its sponsor, especially when the property operates on the national rather than grassroots level. Further analysis also demonstrates the critical contribution of altruistic motive attributions in the process.

This study advances knowledge on how organizations may build their CSR image while leveraging on the strong audience involvement and the mass appeal of sport sponsorship. It is the first to offer insights into the extent to which a sports property’s proactive engagement in the community, rather than that of the sponsoring firm itself, enhances the CSR image of the sponsor, particularly if the property’s community proximity is low. Furthermore, our results provide an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms determining the benefits that sponsors can reap from a property’s activities.