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The purpose of this paper is to set out research that aimed to understand how the internal capabilities of Olympic sport organisations can be addressed.

The research was carried out by a mixed‐method, multi phase approach, using senior sport administrators in the Pacific region.

The research developed a tool for analysing the “readiness” of sport organisations to deliver programmes and services.

This research has developed a framework for the internal diagnosis of organisations.

Managers can use the tool to inform their strategic planning.

The paper presents a new and unique tool for assessing organisational capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Olympic audiences utilized Twitter to follow American National Governing Bodies (NGBs) during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Guided by economic demand theory, the researchers sought to explore whether factors such as the content of social media messages, athlete’s performance, event presentation, scheduling, and TV broadcasting contribute to enhancing fans’ interests in following NGBs on Twitter during the Olympic Games. In total, 33 American NGB Twitter accounts formed the data set for this study. Each of NGBs’ Twitter data was collected every night at midnight from August 7 to 23, 2016. Data collected from each NGB account included number of followers, number of accounts followed, number of tweets, and number of “likes.”

Results of this study revealed that team’s performance and the number of tweets had direct and positive relationships with increasing the number of NGB’s Twitter followers on each competition day. The number of “likes,” however, had a significant negative relationship with fans’ interests in following NGBs’ Twitter.

The results of the study are expected to help Governing Bodies in the Olympic sports have a better understanding of fans’ social media usage.

This study aims to provide an understanding of the multi-layered managerial and organizational challenges of mega sporting events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, identify key competencies that address the complexities and uncertainties when planning and organizing the Olympic and Paralympic Games and provide a framework to classify sporting events according to their complexity and uncertainty.

This study uses in-depth semi-structured interview with key organizing actor of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016.

Planning and organizing complex and long-term mega sporting events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games require a set of key competencies, including a range of soft skills (collaboration, negotiation, communication), goal-setting, persistence and resilience, paradox thinking and timing.

Presenting the findings in an unedited and raw interview format provides practitioners and scholars alike with unfiltered and rich data that allows to choose, apply and adapt key competencies and heuristics from Rio 2016 to their own mega sporting projects or research agendas; allows to differentiate between sporting events according to their complexity and uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the existing mechanisms for legitimising member based sport organisations can lead to poor governance and how accepted democratic processes can be manipulated to suit the personal agenda of individuals over the vision of the organisation.

Three cases are provided to illustrate how, it is relatively easy for individuals to manipulate the established rules in order to obtain and retain power.

The self-regulatory nature of sport assumes that elected representatives put the organisation’s interests before their own and that they always act in the best interests of the members. The evidence, provided in this paper, suggests that this assumption may be inappropriate.

The case studies provided occurred within the boundaries of one continental grouping of countries and may be considered biased due to the specific demographic characteristics of this part of the world and the relative lack of development of sport systems that exist there.

The paper raises important questions about the appropriateness of the legitimising mechanisms that affect sport and the challenges that face modern sport organisations.

The paper may provide a basis for arguing that the concepts of democracy and autonomy in sport organisations need to be reviewed if their autonomy is to be maintained.

This paper provides a basis for challenging the basis of how sport is structured and how member based sport organisations are legitimised to operate as they do.

Sport is an international activity due to its cultural, economic and social significance in the global economy. This chapter focuses on the international aspect of sport in terms of international sports organizations and the internationalization of sports firms. To do this, this chapter highlights the role of branding, social media and marketing in international sports activities. This includes a discussion of how the Olympics and World Cup have influenced internationalization and the impact of athletes increasingly becoming global celebrities. The impact of new technological innovations is also stressed that shows the increased international relevance of sport.

Since the 1990s, the International Olympic Committee has offered nations more medal-winning opportunities at every Winter Games. Meanwhile, many countries are constrained by their limited financial resources to target sports strategically. The purpose of this paper is to examine the targeting approaches to Olympic Winter Sports of National Sports Agencies (NSAs), and to identify the factors they assess in the decision-making process.

The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 11 decision makers of medal-winning NSAs at the 2014 Sochi Games. The data were then analysed with reference to strategic management in an approach which combines a resource-based view (RBV) with a market-based view (MBV) to build a competitive advantage.

The results show that NSAs, like firms, combine an internal analysis that reflects the RBV on resources and capabilities (e.g. athletes’ performance per sport and sport-specific elite sport system), with an external analysis of the competitive environment that reflects an MBV (e.g. sport’s medal market size and intensity of competition at Games) to target sports. Using this information, two phases were distinguished: first, the target sports are identified and finance is prioritised accordingly; second, the allocation of the nation’s resources is constantly reviewed in order to optimise it.

Even though social desirability bias in the responses could not be fully excluded, the findings can help policy-makers to distinguish between the internal and external factors identified in this study, and to make more strategic decisions by combining RBV and MBV approaches to build-up their nation’s competitive advantage.

This paper models the targeting strategies of NSAs during an Olympic cycle by introducing the competitive positioning of firms to sports management.

This paper recounts how the Mexican National Sports Commission approached the creation and development of an Olympic sponsorship programme (CIMA). The lessons garnered are organised following Cornwell's (1995) model of sponsorship development. This paper provides a linkage between theory and practice and is written from the perspective of the sponsored entity; it thus provides both theoretical support for sponsorships as well as a case study that is contrasted to sponsorship theory.

National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in small states operate in a unique market (e.g. small population, confined market and limited private sector) that brings challenges in securing sponsors and funding athletes. Whereas more than a quarter of International Olympic Committee (IOC)-recognized NOCs represent small states, not much is known about the sponsorship landscape in the market. This study explores the importance and challenges of NOC sponsorship in small states, with a focus on the Caribbean region.

Interviews were conducted with representatives from NOCs in Caribbean small states. Textual analyses were conducted with Leximancer to identify key themes on the importance and challenges of NOC sponsorship.

Athletes, funding and community were identified as key themes for the importance of NOC sponsorship. Olympic Movement, time, priority, resources and overcome were themes for sponsorship challenges. Compared to existing sponsorship knowledge driven from developed economies, known determinants for the sponsor's decision-making (e.g. interest in sport, competitor) were found to affect NOC sponsorship in Caribbean small states, but in distinctive ways. Particularly, the lacking appreciation of Olympic values and sport within society, resource constraints (e.g. volunteer-based and operating “within reality”) and competition against member federations and government were highlighted as unique situations/challenges faced in the market.

This study is one of the first to explore NOC sponsorship in the important, yet overlooked, market of Caribbean small states. Theoretical insights on how existing sponsorship knowledge applies to and practical implications for securing NOC sponsorship in the marginalized market are provided.

This research aims to focus on the strategic management by National Olympic Committees (NOCs) during the COVID-19 crisis. The authors investigate “How are strategies being developed within European NOCs to tackle the impact of the corona crisis?” and “which measures have proven to be particularly helpful?”

The research uses a sequential exploratory mixed-methods approach. Five high-level representatives of European NOCs were interviewed using expert interviews to gain insights into their strategy development process. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, and a questionnaire was developed based on the results. Nineteen other European NOCs were surveyed using this questionnaire to verify the strategy development process steps on a larger sample.

The research resulted in a six-step NOC strategy development process framework, with helpful measures for each step. It can help the organizations to better cope with current or upcoming crises.

This framework can serve as a guide for NOCs to find the right steps and measures to better perform in crisis situations.