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This article discusses the information needs of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the types of information required and how the development of a world‐wide network, using the Internet, linking national societies and delegations will facilitate the dissemination of this information. The role of the Federation's Information Resource Centre in accessing relevant information and making it available is also discussed.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consolidate knowledge and benchmark the progress being made across the 32 International Federations (IFs) in the Summer Olympic Programme.

Design/methodology/approach: A website content analysis, analytical hierarchy of information, and social media research was conducted to triangulate the barriers and drivers of environmental sustainability (ES) progress. This data was then analysed to empirically substantiate the findings of previous methods by exploring potential drivers of IF ES progress and communication and refining the ranking of IF ES progress.

Results and findings: World Sailing is by far the most advanced IF in terms of ES progress, followed by World Athletics. Only 4 out of 32 have any sort of strategic ES plans. Only golf, surfing, football, sailing, and hockey have received any academic attention. There is a significant lack of understanding of environmental practices across sport, and their drivers/barriers. There is limited accountability with regards to ES progress and activities throughout the Olympic Movement. This has resulted in uneven diffusion of environmental activities.

Originality: This paper is a new contribution to sport management and ES literature. It provides a benchmark of understanding for ES in the Summer Olympic Programme for the first time using a hierarchy of information to ground results. The exploration and comparison of the perspectives of separate sports adds to the paper's originality.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the circumstances preventing the Wellington Phoenix, New Zealand's only professional football team, from participating in the Asian Champion's League.

A single case study approach has been adopted to generate rich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities of multi‐level governance, feature of international football governance.

The key conclusions of this research are that the Phoenix is attracted to the Asian football market because of the financial rewards but are prevented in doing so because of policies related to Fédération Internationale de Football Association's confederation structures.

It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate: the extent to which football's governance structures act as either a facilitating or constraining factor to the growth of football in the region; the possible convergence between Asian and Pacific sporting economies; how other Asian sporting organisations are reacting to increasing interest from non‐Asian organisations in accessing their marketplaces; and the performance of a network and its members when subjected to multiple levels of governance.

The originality of this paper lies in its proposition that conflict within an international strategic alliance is likely to be exacerbated when the alliance is characterised by multiple levels of governance. Further originality is offered through the introduction of the term covalent organisation, to describe those sport organisations that are subjected to multiple levels of governance.

To identify the organisations that provide global governance within the sports industry, to discuss their role, and to suggest that they have self‐governance problems due to both their evolution and the massive commercialisation of sport of recent decades.

An empirical‐based argument is conducted. Standing at the apex of a hierarchy of national governing bodies and playing organisations, global sports organisations (GSOs) are defined and classified in terms of their governance functions, their commonalities and differences and their interconnections described and analysed. The GSOs for soccer, the Olympics and athletics are used as illustrative cases. Deficiencies in the small sports governance literature are identified. It is argued how the GSOs have maintained their authority as governance organisations despite being private organisations. Hirschman's “Voice, exit and loyalty” model is offered as a partial theoretical interpretation of their situation.

Although one of the GSOs' original major functions of formalising international sport is now complete, they have retained not only their sport governance monopolies and authority but also the original structures designed for amateur sport. This creates problems when the governance monopoly can be used as a revenue device.

Sport is an important part of global culture and an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars where accusations of corruption are common but global governance is little examined. The GSOs, present‐day commercial roles and enormous revenues create unresolved governance problems and these are described.

Focusing primarily on Italian and European football, the research performs extended analyses at both the club and federation levels, compares between financial and sport achievements, and identifies correlations and discrepancies between the two. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper studies managerial systems and strategic directions across clubs and countries and links them to financial and sport performance. The research is primarily secondary-data and literature review based and uses multiple sources to ensure validity and reliability of the findings.

Solutions to the diachronic problems of football cannot be addressed through isolated actions, nor by isolated clubs, or even federations; but through systemic changes that affect, at club and federation levels: the organisational structure; the financial control mechanisms; and the very social essence of football.

The research is limited by its very secondary-data-based nature. Subject-specific primary data are thus necessary to empirically test the preliminary findings and propositions of this research.

The paper escapes the conventional “sports/financial performance” analyses to support a new perspective that examines the core product of football and identifies, comprehends and prescribes the various values offered by football to its various stakeholders and vice versa.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute for the special number Protest and Activism With(out) Organisation.

Elisée Reclus (1830-1905) wrote in 1851 that “anarchy is the highest expression of order”. This statement, clashing with the bourgeois commonplaces on anarchy as chaos, anticipated the theories, elaborated collectively by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Pëtr Kropotkin (1842-1921), and Léon Metchnikoff (1838-1888), on mutual aid and cooperation as the bases of a society more rationally organised than the State and capitalist one. If a (minority) part of the anarchist movement, in the following decades, assumed this sort of “natural order” to argue that there was no necessity of a political organisation, many militants stated on the contrary the necessity of a formal anarchist (or anarcho-syndicalist) organisation to prepare the revolution and to put in practice the principle of an horizontal and federalist society starting from daily life.

The author’s main argument is that the idea of a public and formalized anarchist organisation has been consistent with the claims of the anarchist geographers for the possibility of an ordered anarchist society and that it was a very geographical conception, as the spatial and territorial activity patterns of anarchist individuals, groups, and federations was a central issue among anarchist organisers.

Drawing on present literature on geography and anarchism and on the multidisciplinary transnational turn of anarchist studies, the author addresses, through primary sources, the contentions and openings of the organisational question in anarchism from Reclus, Kropotkin, and Metchnikoff to the anarchist federations of present day, and its links with the issue of constructive anarchism and with the problem of violence.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the most relevant innovation strategies used by the Latin American national tennis federations as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The methodology consists of a survey. The survey consisted of three sections apart from the consent one: a general descriptive part, one with 30 questions to assess attitudes and perceptions and a final section which included open questions. After the data were collected, the SPSS software was used to test the distribution of the sample.

Results show that executives' perception toward their need for involvement in the decision-making process varies.

The first limitation relates to the sample size of executives who completed the questionnaire. The second limitation refers to the details provided in the open section of the questionnaire. Specifically, the space allocated for the answers and the degree of detail required could have been optimized by providing further instructions on the importance of facilitating information related to the implementation of the programs.

The results demonstrate that, although traditional management, organizational and administrative behaviors are still present in the tennis ecosystem, a more innovative mentality should embed these organizations. It is then relevant that sport and tennis organizations commit to the implementation of innovative strategies for the optimization of the administration of their ecosystems.

The paper adds more understanding to the brand of sports management. Furthermore, the fact of developing the study in a COVID-19 context sheds light on the issues faced by sports in a pandemic like this one.

El propósito de este artículo es discutir algunas de las estrategias de innovación utilizadas por las federaciones nacionales latinoamericanas como respuesta a la pandemia COVID-19.

La metodología consiste en una entrevista. La entrevista se dividió en tres secciones además de la de consentimiento: una parte descriptiva, otra con 30 preguntas que evaluaban las actitudes y percepciones, y una sección final que incluía preguntas abiertas. Después de que la información fuera recogida, se utilizó el software SPSS para comprobar la distribución de la muestra.

Los resultados sugieren que las organizaciones analizadas han utilizado diversas estrategias de innovación durante este periodo sin precedentes. Estas estrategias se han aplicado en áreas como la información, la participación, la comunicación y la digitalización.

The first limitations related to the sample size of executives who completed the questionnaire. The second limitation refers to the details provided in the open section of the questionnaire. Specifically, the space allocated for the answers and the degree of detail required could have been optimized by providing further instructions on the importance of facilitating information related to the implementation of the programs.

La primera limitación está relacionada con el tamaño de la muestra de los ejecutivos que completaron el cuestionario. La segunda limitación se refiere a la información que se proporciona en la primera sección del cuestionario. Específicamente, el espacio donde se sitúan las respuestas y el grado de detalle requerido podrían haber sido optimizados a través de la provisión de instrucciones más detalladas sobre la importancia de facilitar la información relacionada con la implementación de los programas.

El estudio ayuda a la mejor comprensión de la gestión de los deportes. Además, el hecho de desarrollar el estudio en el contexto del COVID arroja luz a la problemática del deporte en el contexto de una pandemia como la actual.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes that influence the evolution of a modern sport. It focusses on the case of international skateboarding: the sport that was recently included into the Olympic Games.

An inductive research strategy was informed by the notions of evolution of modern sport, prolympism and new institutionalism. The primary data were collected through a series of interviews and supplemented by the analysis of documents, press and social media.

The paper analysed how the organisation of international skateboarding has changed to date and identified three major determinants of its evolution: values of the activity, commercial interests and the Olympic movement. The following recurring discussion themes emerged: the link between commercialism and legitimisation of sport; bureaucratisation under the Olympic movement; and tensions between prolympism and values of skateboarding.

A limitation of the case study method is that any conclusions refer to this particular sport and their applicability to other sports lies within analytical generalisation. Still sport governing bodies and policy makers can learn from the evolution of international skateboarding and analyse potential issues and consequences for other emerging sports. In terms of theoretical implications, the study highlights legitimisation as one the key characteristics of evolution of modern sport, which should be considered along with previously established criteria, such as bureaucratisation, commercialisation and professionalisation.

The study extends the existing research on evolution of modern sports by examining a very rich contemporary case of skateboarding, the internationally growing sport with unique organisational arrangements. It contributes to knowledge of the evolution towards legitimisation of emerging sports, but also towards sportification of popular culture and society.

The purpose of this editorial is to examine moves towards cross border trade union mergers.

This editorial outlines the reasons why trade unions see the need to act outside their nation state boundaries.

In the globalised economy if trade unions are to defend and advance the living standards of their members they cannot confine their activities to their national labour markets. Currently, trade unions attempt to do this via multi‐lateral link ups via Global Trade Union Federations and by developing links with their sister unions in other countries. A new mechanism is now being developed by trade unions to counter balance the economic strength of multi‐nationals, namely cross border trade union mergers.

The editorial offers insights into the reasons for, and gives examples, for the emerging trend of the movement towards cross border trade union mergers.

Sport is a global product and service that many people around the world enjoy playing, watching and participating in. Whilst there has been an abundance of global media attention on sporting events such as the Olympics and World Football Cup, there seems to be a lack of integration between the sports marketing and international business disciplines both from a practical and also academic standpoint. This paper aims to discuss international sport marketing and why it is an important attribute of business‐to‐business marketing.

The aim of the paper is to provide practical implications and research avenues for those seeking to further investigate international sport marketing as a unique area of academic research. The introduction to the paper focuses on the importance of sport to the global economy and how entrepreneurship is ingrained in many sport businesses and organizations. Next, different areas of international business management that relate to entrepreneurial sport marketing ventures are discussed in terms of future research directions and practical implications. These include how entrepreneurial sport ventures affect internationalization, branding, corporate social responsibility, tourism, regional development, marketing and action sports.

The paper concludes by finding that there are numerous research avenues for future research on international sport marketing that combine different areas of marketing together with the sport marketing and international business literature. In addition, there is enormous potential for linking the sports marketing and international business literature through focusing on entrepreneurial sport ventures that occur worldwide.

The authors demonstrate the need to take an international perspective of sports marketing and business‐to‐business relationships.

The paper discusses how and why sport firms interact in the international marketplace and how future competition will benefit from more sport‐based business‐to‐business partnerships.

The paper examines the important area of international sports marketing and how businesses that are both profit and non‐profit orientated collaborate. The paper explores the concept of international sports marketing, and discusses the practical and future research implications of this exciting new field of marketing research.