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The purpose of this longitudinal study is to examine the dual career and entrepreneurial experiences of professional football players and their influence on the career transition process to entrepreneurship or employment.

The study examined a Portuguese employer–employee data set from 1991 to 2017 using the logit model, a binary choice regression model that allows predicting the probabilities of two possible qualitative and binary outcomes.

Entrepreneurial experience is the key driver for retired football players to pursue entrepreneurship. Having a dual career and working during the athletic career leads to higher chances of continuing in the labor market as an employee. Higher education levels did not significantly influence the decision to pursue a second career but having secondary education increases the chances of continuing as an entrepreneur.

First, the study aims to shed light on success factors in career transition of professional football players who engage in a dual career. Second, the authors introduce sport entrepreneurship as a possible activity alongside an athletic career.

Athletes can benefit from the experience they gain during a dual career in the process of career transition. Working in the final year of an athletic career represents a promising strategy to gain work experience alongside sport without jeopardizing sporting success.

This study adds evidence to the contemporary discourse on dual career theory and career transitions and reconciles the theory of sport entrepreneurship and dual careers.

Athletes are increasingly perceived as important drivers of entrepreneurship and social change. As a result, increasing research and activity has attempted to engage athletes in both entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Against this backdrop, the authors aim to provide insights on how high-level athletes in Germany understand entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship and their perceptions of (social) entrepreneurship as a potential career pathway.

A survey was designed for athletes to assess their social entrepreneurship-related skills and attitudes. This survey is based on Capella Peris et al. (2020) who developed and validated a social entrepreneurship questionnaire for use in the physical education sector. To deepen the authors’ understanding of the initial survey results, a structured focus group was conducted with an additional set of five high-level German athletes.

Both the survey results and the focus group indicate that athletes have reservations about starting businesses or social enterprises, and that formal support on the topic is limited.

This paper suggests numerous possible avenues for future research, both related to athletes and sport social entrepreneurship more generally. The authors also suggest that athlete career programmes need to provide more support for athletes who wish to venture in entrepreneurial activities.

This study answers numerous calls within sport entrepreneurship literature to further integrate athletes into research in the area.

This paper aims to investigate capitalization support, an alternative perspective for theorizing social support in-service settings. In the service setting of the student-athlete experience, the relationships between capitalization support service dimensions (i.e. the academic, athletic, self-development and place dimensions), well-being and sports performance are examined through a transformative sport service research (TSSR) lens, a newly introduced form of transformative service research (TSR).

Data from an online survey of Australian student-athletes (n = 867) is examined using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results support the theorized service dimensions of capitalization support, indicating their validity and relevance to the student-athlete experience. Further, the results demonstrate that all capitalization support dimensions except athletic support (i.e. academic support, place support and self-development support), have a direct effect on well-being and an indirect effect on sports performance.

This research is unique for several reasons. First, it introduces a new perspective, capitalization support, to theorizing about social support in services. Second, it is one of the first studies in both TSR and TSSR to empirically test and demonstrate a relationship between support services, well-being and performance in a single study. Insight into how to design services to optimize well-being in relation to other service objectives like performance thus emerges.

The first Australia and New Zealand semi-professional women's rugby league premiership (NRLW) was launched in 2018. This chapter charts the players' journey through the first two seasons of the competition. A questionnaire was distributed at the end of both seasons to all contracted players in each of the four clubs to capture feedback on their experiences, perceptions, challenges and suggestions for improvements. Players were asked about contracts, sacrifices, support, club culture and their views on coaching and training. The findings indicated despite significant stressors and challenges, players were highly appreciative of the chance to play in a semi-professional league, to be part of a landmark competition, and to inspire future generations of girls to play rugby league. Positive satisfaction across most dimensions of league and club practices and operations were evident in season one. By the end of season two, attitudes were changing, with data showing that players expected to obtain increases in remuneration, number of clubs, season length, media coverage and improvements in coaching, training and support services. Sports such as rugby league need to be particularly mindful of addressing issues arising, as options for women in professional team sports is growing rapidly and competition for talent will only accelerate into the future. This case study of women in rugby league demonstrates that women's experiences and perceptions are shifting from an initiation phase of gratefulness and acceptance of personal/family sacrifice for the opportunity to play semi-professionally, to having increased expectations of reasonable employment conditions and legitimacy as professional athletes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of success of elite athletes by applying the concept of career success to a sporting context. The concept of career success includes extrinsic (i.e. tangible) career accomplishments like medals as well as intrinsic factors referring to subjective judgements about career attainments. Thereby, a holistic perspective is taken which has not been studied extensively before.

Based on previous literature, a theoretical model was derived outlining how human capital, motivation, organisational characteristics and socio-demographics affect both intrinsic and extrinsic career success. To measure the impact of these factors, primary (n=1,249) and secondary data of elite athletes were collected. Regression analyses indicated that all factors included in the theoretical model were associated with extrinsic and intrinsic success.

Institutional support was an important driver for intrinsic career success while financial support affected extrinsic career success. There was no significant influence of extrinsic career success on intrinsic career success.

These findings imply that policy makers should offer enhanced dual career options, such as mentoring programmes, aspects like sport-psychological support and nutrition counselling, and long-term, stable financial support for athletes to maximise career success.

This paper applies the construct of career success to sports. A focus on the athletes’ intrinsic career success is placed as this area has been neglected in past research.

Turnover of employees is a key challenge for companies. The same is true for sports clubs that must set appropriate incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention. As salary caps and team budgets restrict monetary incentives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of organizational support on turnover intention of professional team sports athletes.

The paper applies a combined approach of qualitative and quantitative research and considers the specific requirements of European professional team sports. First, a qualitative study investigates organizational support in team sports and identifies relevant non-monetary incentives. Second, a quantitative study tests the effects of the identified organizational support incentives on turnover intention using a unique data set of professional team sports athletes. Third, a moderation analysis measures possible effects of age.

Through the qualitative study, three relevant non-monetary incentives could be identified in the context of professional team sports: integration of family (IOF), second career support, and private problem support. The subsequent quantitative study of football, ice hockey and handball athletes assesses the effectiveness of the identified incentives. All three incentives negatively influence athletes’ turnover intention, while IOF has a substantially stronger negative effect on turnover intention for younger athletes.

The findings indicate the importance of organizational support to decrease athletes’ turnover intention. Although money is relevant, sports clubs also need to address non-monetary incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the levels of athletic identity influenced the relationships among college experiences, career self-efficacy, and the career barriers faced by semi-professional student-athletes in Taiwan.

Survey data of athletic identity, college experiences (involvement in social, academic, career orientation activities, etc.), career self-efficacy, and career barriers (inherent difficulties in career exploration in a dual student-professional role) were collected from 345 varsity student-athletes in Taiwan sport universities. The conditional process analysis was conducted to test whether the mediating role of career self-efficacy in the association between college experiences and career barriers was dependent on athletic identity levels.

The results indicated that enriching college experiences contributed to fewer barriers regarding career exploration post graduation through high levels of career self-efficacy. Particularly for assorted and social experiences, the indirect effect reduced as the levels of athletic identity increased.

These findings may be applied to athletes who pursue early specialization and students who engage heavily in a specific sport or other co-curricular activities while neglecting the importance of scholastic learning and career exploration. Career counseling practitioners and sport psychologists are advised to take account of athletic identity and contextual specificity while providing career interventions to student-athletes.

This study extends the understanding of the impacts of athletic identity on college student-athletes’ career explorations within a specific sport context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors informing spousal global mobility decisions within the context of sporting expatriation. Findings contribute to the non-corporate global mobility literature as well as providing an empirical enhancement to the family relatedness of work decisions framework.

In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews gave voice to 21 spouses of professional sailors who have experienced both trailing their spouse and staying behind.

Access to empathetic social support, the potential impact on children, and the spouse’s career were all found to influence the spouse’s dynamic global mobility decision making.

The study is limited by the cross-sectional nature of the research. Future longitudinal research into the impact of spousal preferences would identify the on-going effect of their decision(s) to relocate or to stay behind.

Providing organisations with an understanding of the familial issues their global talent may factor into their work mobility decisions will allow them to implement appropriate family-focussed support, irrespective of the choice to engage, or not engage, in global mobility.

By grounding the study in the under-researched sporting arena, the author contributes to the emerging non-corporate expatriate conversation. Furthermore, the family relatedness of work-related decisions framework was found to provide a useful conceptual foundation for understanding decision making in an international context.