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This chapter attempts to examine what lasting change the 2010 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup brought to the practices of “sport and development” in South Africa. It also discusses whose “rights to the city” were and were not promoted as a consequence of this mega-event.

A multiple case study approach was employed to look at: (1) what new initiatives have been launched and will be sustained after the event; (2) what the experience of existing initiatives was like; and (3) what structural changes might be brought about to promote the practices of “sport and development.” Semi-structured interviews and on-site observations were conducted in November 2010, looking at six “sport and development” initiatives operating in and around Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria.

As far as the experience of NGOs is concerned, positive changes were observable in terms of generating a more enabling climate for “sport and development,” although how long it will be sustained remains to be seen. The study shows that the World Cup provided opportunities for some new initiatives to start up, and also for relatively small existing ones to expand, while the experience of more established initiatives varied in terms of the extent of involvement in this one-off event.

These “positives” notwithstanding, the benefits tend to be limited to football-based practices, and potential “reach” into other areas of social development are questionable. Finally, it appeared that there was a mismatch between the beneficiaries of the programs and the victims of urban development.

The 2019 FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) Women's World Cup in France saw unprecedented levels of success for women's football. FIFA estimates that, for the first time, total global viewership of the tournament reached 1bn. During the tournament, the eventual champions – the United States – saw their midfield veteran, Megan Rapinoe, win the golden boot (top goal scorer) and the golden ball award (most valuable player). In addition to her exploits on the pitch, Rapinoe, one of numerous ‘out’ lesbian athletes competing at the Women's World Cup, also received an unprecedented amount of media coverage. In this chapter, we analyse British print media coverage of Rapinoe during the one-month period of the Women's World Cup (7th June–7th July) and the week after the tournament concluded. Our findings indicate that although Rapinoe is a polarising character, media coverage of her throughout the tournament was generally positive. We show this through Rapinoe as a ‘personality’, Rapinoe as ‘outspoken’ and Rapinoe as a role model.

Given its social importance, Sport (especially Football), which has experienced an astounding transformation into a global industry with significant economic impact, has been a vehicle for the transmission of cultural and universal values. Its structural complexity (players, transfer agents, clubs and its owners, right holders of different contracts) creates a lot of moving parts that can easily hide illicit activity, especially because this structure incorporates the international market. The movement of large amounts of money, the difficulty in accounting for all transactions, and ironically, the clubs’ own financial needs increase this sector’s vulnerability to organized crime. For many years, this sector has had a relatively free hand in its efforts to make criminal assets legal. This is made possible by some ineffectiveness of current national and international laws and enforcement bodies, which have not kept pace with the changing situation. It is already known that sport historically has been used as a tool for enrichment of a specific group of companies, an issue deserving of public concern. This chapter argues for a sensitive situation involving the actors of the public and private sectors, notably its regulations, in order to curb corruption and money laundering through sport. The purpose is to address these matters by identifying the risks of misconduct within sport organizations, and proposing measures that could prevent, hamper, and punish any attempts to thwart these organizations’ main goal: promoting sport as a way for cultural improvement and teaching people the values of tolerance and civilized coexistence.

The Women's Empowerment League, or WE League, was officially launched in September of 2021 as Japan's ‘first professional women's league’. While the WE League was indeed new and categorically different from previous semi-professional leagues in Japan, the declaration that it was the first professional league belied the fact that women's football in Japan had witnessed various forms and degrees of professionalisation over the course of more than 30 years. While full professionalisation is a logical and important goal as women seek equity with men on football pitches and in other sports, I propose that revisiting the history of Japan's women's League provides useful material for contemplating the diverse factors that have motivated support for women's football, driven and derailed international success, and prompted increased professionalisation. Additionally, I argue here that although commercial and advertising interests in women's football have grown in recent years in Japan, the WE League's platform of social welfare and ‘women's empowerment’ is simply the newest iteration of a discourse packaging women's football as emblematic of progressive politics and ‘first-world’ gender norms, which has motivated much of the financial backing – from both the Japan Football Association (JFA) and corporate ranks – of teams and women professionals for the last three decades. Numerous stakeholders have sincere desires to improve not only the status of women's football but also of women in their country; however, the marketing and promotional messaging aimed at furthering those goals commodify critical issues such as women's empowerment and equal opportunity, and thus run the risk of depoliticising them.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges of Nigerian Professional Football League teams at the club level, with a view to aligning this with developments at the country level, and especially so in the aftermath of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil – an international event – where Nigeria participated alongside four others – Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Ivory Coast.

The meta-analysis adopts a qualitative research approach, drawing upon a review of secondary data sources and the observation technique.

Although Nigeria’s first team players ply their trade in Europe, there remains a challenge epitomised by the “disconnect” between the domestic league and the national team composition. As a consequence, brand ambassadors are proposed as one of the key conduits for re-aligning the identified disconnect.

The dual focus on club level and a single country – albeit in the light of Nigeria, former African champions, poses a limitation as the domestic league in that country may not be representative of others across the continent. However, some insight is also derived from developments in another African football giant – i.e. Ghana, runners-up of the recently concluded 2015 African Nations Cup.

In the long history of the FIFA Football World Cup, only three African teams have ever reached the quarter-finals – notably Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in 2010. Although the Super Eagles relished the label of African Champions going in the World Cup finals, they remain incapacitated, having failed to “fly” into the round of 16 since their 1994 debut. Furthermore, the alignment at the micro or club level to the meso or country level remains to be investigated at both scholarly and policy levels.

There are success stories on the management and development of football in Africa and as the case of Nigeria demonstrates, Stephen Keshi, the national coach, symbolises missed opportunities – i.e. brand ambassadors – to increase visibility and engagement with the domestic league.

This is one of the very few studies that have sought to highlight the misalignment between club and country within the research context of Africa. It is also one of the few papers that have called on the need for brand ambassadors as a means of bridging the gap in this area.

This paper reflects on recent events in the global football landscape and their implications for the Middle East, especially in their ambitious aspiration to be the future destination of the sport.

By drawing on a mixture of interviews, personal observation and a documentary analysis of scholarly papers on sports marketing in general and comparable “small-time” football leagues in England, the study takes on a qualitative approach.

Even though the tiny Gulf state of Qatar has “controversially” won the hosting rights of the greatest football event in the world (i.e. FIFA 2022), the FIFA world ranking of the State puts it just within the top 100 global footballing nations (ranked no. 95 as at November 2011). Its sibling, the UAE, fares even worse. However both countries have made the most investments in the sport of football in recent years.

This paper does not place emphasis on futures studies per se, but does, in any case, suggest how the Middle East may be shaping their future in football along the six-pillars identified in the literature, which could also become a potential area for future research enquiry.

Countries with established leagues, including Australia, England and the USA recently lost the FIFA World Cup hosting rights to Russia for 2018 and “little known” (in football terms) Qatar for 2022. All these have implications for the future of football in the Middle East, and this paper investigates the sustainability of the discourse and its implication for the global sport, not the least in the Middle East.

With recent developments in global football, it is useful to understand how West Asia in particular has responded to the challenges and/or concerns of their legitimacy. This discussion is scant in the literature and this study draws attention to this trend considering the millions of dollars that have been spent by governments to improve their world ranking. Whether these investments confer on the Middle East the title of “future football destination” is a matter open to debate. This is exactly where the pioneering effort of this paper lies.

This case is focused on the allegations of corrupt practices within the strategic leadership at the board level of an international sports organization – the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The theoretical premise is that the practices and decisions of the AFC’s leadership will have a profound impact on the AFC’s performance. However, because the AFC is the continental governing body, the impact is theorized to be far larger, across an entire industry. In writing the case, the authors were guided by upper Echelons theory (UET) (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick et al., 2015), which argues that an organization’s strategic direction is directly influenced by its leader’s values. The authors selected UET for the theoretical framework, as it considered a spectrum of factors from industry, leader characters (values), their choices and the results of their actions. Such a comprehensive theory aligned with the complexities of the AFC and its leadership. In constructing the case roadmap using UET, the authors first adopted an ethnographic methodology. This was motivated by the fact that one of the authors had been embedded for many years as part of the leadership team at the AFC. His career work notes based on direct interactions and observations of these leaders helped in two ways: to identify the complex set of personal characteristics of these leaders (i.e. background, their careers outside football and financial standing) as they originated from 47 different nationalities. UET refers to these as observable factors to better theorize the hidden intentions of their alleged corrupt behaviors. UET identifies this second set of non-observable factors as psychological factors. These two different sets of observations combined helped to theorize their drivers, intentions and strategic decisions (options). For the second methodology, the authors accessed archival, publicly available media news and reports to understand the consequences of their actions to the AFC and the Asian football industry. This completed the final parts of the UET framework (Yamak et al., 2014).

This case relied on information that was widely reported within international media, press announcements by various organizations, published decisions by tribunals and publicly available information on the AFC. All of the names and positions in this case are actual persons.

This case focuses on the role and influence of the AFC as the Asian football governing body. The AFC is a member of the world football governing body – FIFA. With a US$1bn budget, the AFC has a strong impact on the future of football among Asia’s three billion people. Unfortunately, the AFC has been unable to create the value in its sports events or properties that attracts fans and investors. Central to this problem is the issue of corruption and corruption allegations within the AFC, especially with regard to its leadership. This case, therefore, attempts to highlight the various issues, discusses the circumstances around these challenges and brings forth the complexities of leading a truly international organization across 47 countries. Such factors are then tied to the value of the organization’s products or services in the marketplace.

The case is written and designed for a graduate level (MBA) class or an upper level undergraduate class such as corporate strategy, leadership, international management, international marketing, contemporary issues in management, cross-cultural management, sports management and sports marketing. In general, the case will also be a good fit for courses that discuss leadership, organizational strategy, organizational structure, organizational ethics and organizational behavior.

This study examined the effects of event sponsorship, in the context of the two most recent FIFA World Cup (FWC) events hosted in Europe (France 1998 and Germany 2006). More than 4,000 teenagers were incorporated into the sample in order to measure recall and image values for official FWC sponsors. The comparative findings suggest that it is nearly impossible to generalise about whether sponsoring the FWC is effective or not as a communication tool. For some companies it definitely is effective; for others the effects are limited. Ambush marketing, however, seems to be an effective alternative.