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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 paper is to analyze efficiency and its evolution in teams that played in the UEFA Champions League during nine seasons. The aim is to present a research procedure for determining the most accurate data envelopment analysis to estimate and compare the efficiency.

First, the authors analyzed the existence of a temporal trend using the S-statistic. The authors calculated the Kruskal–Wallis statistic to verify if there is stability in relative ranks. The results of the aforementioned tests have indicated that window analysis is an accurate methodology to apply to the sample. The authors analyzed 94 clubs with a sample of 288 observations, obtaining 768 efficiency ratios. They have been calculated using super-efficiency which enables to discriminate efficient units.

Results indicate that there is a low efficiency level in the nine seasons observed. There is a strong correlation between sports results and the efficiency of semifinalists. The authors conclude that improvement in a club’s efficiency could enhance its sports results. Finally, as practical implications, the authors highlight benchmark teams and alternative sports tactics to help clubs become more efficient and achieve better sports results.

This paper contributes to sports efficiency literature by presenting a research procedure to identify the most accurate methodology to be applied to panel data. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first empirical study on international football competitions applying WindowDEA to incomplete panel data.

The purpose of this paper is to add a needed sport foundation for the brand community conversation evolution within the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship (Popp et al., 2016; Richelieu, 2008; Trail et al., 2016) from the spark of Gladden and Funk’s (2001) brand association and loyalty in sport.

This paper traces the evolution of brand community research from its beginnings in the general business literature to the current brand community research in sport marketing today. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) define brand communities as a specialized and non-geographically bound community based around a set of structured social relationships amongst admirers of a brand and are often recognized as the most integral relationship component of consumers to brands (Muge and Ozge, 2013).

Media transcends geography and brand communities will continue to transcend geography to the boundaries of mass media.

With this growing importance on attachment to brand community (ABC) through mass media, or attachment team in the sport context, further exploration on attachment variables is critical for the success of the next evolutionary stage of brand communities.

An ABC framework in the sport setting is proposed through multidisciplinary variables gathered in a review of brand community literature to address the unique attachment perspectives of sport consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new classification of rules-driven sports and technology-driven sports that suggests different models of how sports develop. This paper outlines some key aspects of an evolutionary view of sports economics research and, separately, an institutional view of sports economic research.

This paper is a conceptual/theoretical piece rather than an empirical analysis of a research question. The authors scaffold a proposed analytic framework that is a combination of evolutionary economics and new institutional economics.

A new dynamic approach to the study of sports industries is called for. The authors observe that sports and sports industries exhibit dynamic qualities but in the study of sports there is no analogue of “industrial dynamics” as in economics. What is missing is the field of “evolutionary sports dynamics.” To build this, the authors frame a new evolutionary approach to the study of the sports economy and sports industries – by examining the evolution of sports, their industries, and the complex industrial ecosystems they operate in, through the lens of institutional and evolutionary economics.

The paper establishes a theoretical basis for a “New Economics of Sports” – as a shift in the types of questions that sports economics seeks to answer. These are away from “sports statics” – as a branch of applied economics of industrial organization and optimal allocation of sports resources (ala Rottenberg, 1956; Neale, 1964) – and toward concern with the economics of “sports dynamics.” The prime questions are less with the optimal organization of existing sports, and more toward understanding the origin of new sports and the evolutionary life cycles of sports.

The history of Hungarian sociology of sport can be divided to two periods, which are different in terms of conditions but show similarities in many other ways. In the period between the mid-1960s and 1989, the intensive development of the discipline was hindered by the repression of sociology and the lack of interest in sport on the part of social scientists. However, the unique social functions of (elite) sport still created a demand for scientific inquiry. In the second period, from 1989 to the present day, the conditions of research freedom were established; yet, sport as an area for research failed to attract the attention of social scientists. In this respect, today’s scholars of sociology of sport face similar problems as the founders of the discipline, although the changing economic conditions in terms of research funding and institutionalization provide a more favorable environment for the scientific investigation of sport-related social issues. As a result, the number of sport sociological publications has steadily increased in the past decade and Hungarian scholars have the opportunity to participate in international conferences and research projects. This chapter reviews sociology of sport in Hungary, with a focus on historical heritage, institutionalization, the current situation, and barriers to development.

Retail has evolved over the past century alongside megatrends such as urbanization, consumerism and digitalization. To contribute to existing knowledge on patterns of retail form evolution, the purpose of this paper is to investigate when and how novel retail forms have evolved in the Swedish sporting goods market.

An evolutionary approach that encompasses population thinking is used to interpret the history of sporting goods retailing in Sweden from the interwar era onwards. Drawing on archival data and interviews, the focus in the historical analysis is on the evolution of retail form variation in terms of size, strategy, product range and retail channel (online/offline).

The paper suggests that evolutionary mechanisms cumulatively have changed the sports retail population from a rather homogenous set of smaller generalist stores toward a larger variety and specialization in mainly two directions: one trajectory toward small and service-focused niche specialists and the other toward high-volume sales outlets.

The paper provides a detailed empirical account of sports retail history in Sweden and an application of theoretical concepts contributing to an integrated investigation of empirical issues and theoretical positions. It concludes that being able to attain “closures” – finding ways to close off a section of the market and avoid direct competition – has historically been a crucial capability for individual retailers to thrive.

The sports field is in constant change and adaptation, which leads to a need to explore new strategies to achieve success. This is why interest in technology has increased in recent years. However, despite its undeniable importance, there is no quantitative data that provides a macroscopic view of the existing literature. Therefore, the objective of this study is to carry out a bibliometric analysis that provides structured information on the origin and academic evolution of technology in the sports field. To this end, a total of 170 articles published between 1977 and 2019 in the Web of Science (Core Collection) related to technology in sport have been analyzed. The 170 publications cover 396 authors, 134 journals, 37 countries and 261 institutions. In order to carry out the analyses, authors, journal, institution and country have been taken into account, as well as the co-authoring, co-citation and co-words networks. This information can provide an overview of the three thematic areas found: (i) technology in sport from an educational perspective, (ii) technology in sport from a medical-performance perspective, and (iii) technology in sport from a management perspective.

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.

The chapter begins by examining the origins of sociology of sport in Spain, which dates back to the transition to democracy, during which period sport became transformed progressively from an object of social concern into an object of sociological study. It then goes on to analyse the main factors of activation in particular processes of university teaching staff accreditation which acted as catalysts for the set of processes that fostered the emergence of sociology of sport in Spain. Lastly, the principal study fields are analysed by grouping them into three areas: sport and society, social attitudes to sport and sport facilities and organisations. In the conclusion, an assessment is made of contributions made to the speciality as well as of sociology of sport’s progressive internationalisation, a rare phenomenon prior to 2005 which is now regarded as a major indicator of the maturity of the discipline.