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Many voluntary sports clubs face financial difficulties and consequently turn to external funding sources. Recent developments suggest that sports clubs have been successful in significantly increasing sponsorship income by professionalizing their sponsorship activities. However, not much is known about how voluntary sports clubs professionalize their sponsorship management (e.g. sponsorship staff). This study seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the components addressed and the practices used by voluntary sports clubs to professionalize their sponsorship.

An exploratory case study was conducted to gain in-depth insights into voluntary sports clubs’ organizational developments in the context of sponsorship management. Data were collected from six sports clubs through document analyses and problem-centered interviews with decision makers. The data were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach, which included both deductive and complementary inductive coding of the data.

The results show that the components addressed in the professionalization of sponsorship management are reflected in three dimensions: “people and positions” (e.g. sponsorship staff), “structures and processes” (e.g. differentiation of responsibilities), and “strategies and activities” (e.g. sponsorship rights orientation). It was also found that clubs, which have diverse characteristics and levels of professionalization, pursue distinct approaches.

In contrast to studies on professional sports organizations that focus primarily on the sponsor’s perspective, this study sheds light on sponsorship management in sports clubs in the non-profit sector. The findings can help voluntary sports clubs to transform their sponsorship management strategically and increase sponsorship income in the long term.

Professional football clubs, like other businesses, need to make investments in both human capital and fixed capital. We examine how investments in players, managers and stadiums drive football club performance.

Using data from the English Premier League (EPL) from 2012 to 2021, we use a lag model to relate investments in the past two years to the current financial and sporting performance of clubs.

We find that investments in new players are associated with better subsequent sporting performance. A £100 million increase in transfer expenditure is associated with 12 more points and 4 better table positions over the following two seasons. Investments in stadiums are associated with better subsequent financial performance. An increase in stadium capacity by 10,000 seats is associated with an extra £26 million in profits over the next two seasons. Manager changes are associated with better sporting performance in non-Big Six clubs, but worse sporting and financial performance in Big Six clubs.

These results have implications for optimal investment strategies at professional football clubs. For example, we find that new managers in Big Six clubs need to be complemented by additional transfer expenditure of at least £135 million to maintain the same level of sporting performance.

The study aims to identify critical factors that influence football fans’ support of their favorite team by examining the impact of social responsibility, brand credibility and team brand equity on patronage intentions of professional football teams.

An online survey collected data from 331 football fans of the Persian Gulf Premier League (PGPL) in Iran. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is able to influence brand equity, brand credibility and patronage intentions. Also, brand equity and brand credibility were found to be positively related to patronage intentions. In addition to that, the findings show that brand equity and team credibility partially mediate the relationship between CSR and patronage intentions.

The findings provide valuable insights to sports teams/club managers aiming to attract new fans and retain current ones by investing in CSR and enhancing brand credibility and equity. Strategies to integrate CSR into relationship marketing and brand management are outlined.

This study empirically highlights the critical role of adhering to CSR and the effects of brand credibility and equity in enhancing patronage intentions among football team fans.

Over the past years, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have sparked growing interest in the sport industry. NFTs are unique digital assets verified using blockchain technology. Each NFT has a distinct identifier that sets it apart from other tokens, documenting its uniqueness and ownership. NFTs promise innovative growth opportunities by generating revenue via novel products such as digital collectibles which can be owned and traded on dedicated platforms. Despite this promising outlook, it currently seems unclear how sports NFTs should be designed and which features they should offer to align with consumer values, effectively meet their needs and ultimately drive Purchase Intention. This study will therefore attempt to answer the following research question: Which consumer values and consumer needs have a positive impact on PI of sports NFTs? Based on the results, the study seeks to offer advice on concrete characteristics sports NFTs should possess in order to foster mainstream adoption.

To address the current gap in the literature and provide an answer to the research question, this paper uses structural equation modelling exploring the impact of consumer values and consumer needs or wants on purchase intention regarding sports NFTs.

The results of this study indicate that social needs or wants (SNW) have the strongest impact on purchase intention, as well as on experiential and functional needs or wants. NFTs should therefore possess characteristics that foster community, interaction and connection with other team or athlete supporters while enhancing the overall consumer experience. Incorporating these elements into future NFTs can help sports organizations tap into the social SNW of consumers by providing opportunities for connection, interaction and collective experiences within supporter communities.

Due to the low response rate of Baby Boomers, the results of the study cannot be applied to this cohort. Additional research, potentially using physical in-stadium surveys and targeted specifically at the BB cohort may shed light on their particular values, needs or wants and impact on sports NFT purchase intention. Moreover, Generation Z respondents may statistically be underrepresented in the sample due to the fact that only respondents aged 18 and older were included in the study. Hence, the part of Generation Z, which was born after March 2006 and had not yet come of age at the time of this research, was explicitly excluded from the survey. Results should be applied carefully to the population of sports team or athlete supporters due to the method of data collection which was based on convenience sampling and may therefore not be representative. Since the survey was exclusively administered online, people with no Internet access are not represented in this research.

Sports organizations and marketers can leverage the strong impact of SNW identified in this study to position their NFT portfolio accordingly. Using athletes themselves or other influencers as product ambassadors may trigger purchase intention of consumers. Additionally, it is crucial that socializing agents, such as family, friends, colleagues and other team supporters with a strong influence on consumers own or promote NFTs. Marketers can support this adoption process by encouraging testimonials, reviews and user-generated content that showcase how NFTs have positively impacted others. Reaching a critical mass of adoption among supporters as a first step will ultimately impact consumers’ desire to satisfy ENW and FNW as well. Consumers may then recognize the benefits of using NFTs to enhance their overall consumer experience and to make their lives easier, for instance by using NFTs as season tickets or to collect loyalty points they can redeem later.

This study is the first attempt to determine the relationship between consumer values, consumers’ needs or wants and their impact on purchase intention regarding sports NFTs.

The purposes of the paper were (1) to examine the primary motives for owning sports NFTs and (2) to investigate their influence on fan consumption behavior toward sports teams for NFT-holders and non-holders and to examine whether any difference between NFT-holders and non-holders existed.

A qualitative case study approach of both individual and focus group interviews was used to identify major motives for the ownership of NFTs for sports NFT-holders and non-holders of Kbollect in particular. Data were analyzed through a thematic content analysis utilizing nCoder.

Five common motives – financial rewards, exclusivity, hedonic motivation, sense of belonging and effort expectancy – were identified. For both sport NFT-holders and non-holders, financial rewards were the most influential motive. Whether sports fans own sports NFTs or not, they all indicated that ownership of sports NFTs would reinforce their consumption behavior.

The findings suggest to scholars and practitioners that sports NFTs primarily serve as a marketing tool, rather than constituting a viable means of investment. This observation holds true contingent upon two conditions: first, the reduction of technological barriers for non-sports NFT holders in acquiring sports NFTs; second, the provision of more palpable and attainable advantages for sport NFT-holders. Additionally, for existing NFT-holders, providing strategies to ensure a sense of belonging to the NFTs community would be beneficial.

The authors attempted to provide the most influential motives for sport NFT-holders and non-holders of sports NFTs. It was anticipated that these motives to influence fan behavior towards the sports team, possibly leading to increased engagement like higher game viewership, greater event attendance and a greater likelihood of buying team merchandise.

The chapter articulates the transition to and evolution of the commercialisation of Chinese professional football. It is periodised based on major turning points. The research yielded two major findings. First, there exists a distinct ‘Chinese way’ of commercialising football. However, it does not indicate that Chinese football doggedly avoided the Western governance model. For the club governance, Chinese football authorities set about recommending privately operated enterprises, large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. Second, the commercialisation transitions of professional football in China were triggered by exogenous policy shifts, rather than endogenous changes in market structures, resulting in higher horizontal financial fragility than is associated with the commercialisation model adopted in more developed Western markets. The applicability to voluntary football clubs is assessed as well.

The motivation for this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of some of the important and trending topics in the sport industry. Besides this, to consider the changing landscape of ownership, strategies and organisation of several types of sports in the contemporary environment, there is a need for deeper contextual knowledge of how different sport/s, leagues, clubs, associations, teams etc. own, organise and strategise at local to national to regional to international contexts.

This paper introduces the special issue on the sport industry that welcomes three interesting contributions of focusing on the important themes related to the sport industry. They include (1) digital transformation and needed capabilities, (2) fan engagement in a digital way using social media and finally (3) the relevance and relation of social capital in the organisational strategy of sports organisations.

Four generic insights related to the themes and emerging trends in marketisation, ownership and digitalisation strategies in the sport industry are introduced in this paper. The first insight is that sports digitalisation and politicisation significantly impact the strategising, organising and networking activities of sports owners to foster value capture. Secondly, owners’ performance duality of marketisation of their sports clubs and vested business interests unravels the paradoxes of idealism and profit-maximisation. Thirdly, individual sports stars position themselves as an influential platform of value creation through on-field performance, social engagement and self-interests. Finally, the fourth insight is that the dual aims of sporting on-field success and profit making of large capital-funded sports clubs endanger the autonomy and governance of sports bodies/associations and an equitable sporting competition environment.

This paper provides an overview and reflections on the contributions of the papers in this special issue. The papers give different perspectives on how sport has been influenced by the development in society (1) with increasing digitalisation influencing organising of sport clubs and strategies for engaging fans, and (2) the influence of marketisation and politics in ownership strategies. As such, four insightful reflections are developed based on the originality of the contributions and the related extant literature presented on the themes of marketisation, ownership and digitalisation of the sport industry.

From the buying club’s perspective, the transfer of a player can be interpreted as an investment from which the club expects uncertain future benefits. This paper aims to develop a decision-oriented approach for the valuation of football players that could theoretically help clubs determine the subjective value of investing in a player to assess its potential economic advantage.

We build on a semi-investment-theoretical risk-value model and elaborate an approach that can be applied in imperfect markets under uncertainty. Furthermore, we illustrate the valuation process with a numerical example based on fictitious data. Due to this explicitly intended decision support, our approach differs fundamentally from a large part of the literature, which is empirically based and attempts to explain observable figures through various influencing factors.

We propose a semi-investment-theoretical valuation approach that is based on a two-step model, namely, a first valuation at the club level and a final calculation to determine the decision value for an individual player. In contrast to the previous literature, we do not rely on an econometric framework that attempts to explain observable past variables but rather present a general, forward-looking decision model that can support managers in their investment decisions.

This approach is the first to show managers how to make an economically rational investment decision by determining the maximum payable price. Nevertheless, there is no normative requirement for the decision-maker. The club will obviously have to supplement the calculus with nonfinancial objectives. Overall, our paper can constitute a first step toward decision-oriented player valuation and for theoretical comparison with practical investment decisions in football clubs, which obviously take into account other specific sports team decisions.

This chapter reviews possible regulatory updates needed to address the four general challenges arising from digitalization of financial services, regardless of the business models of the financial services providers. These challenges are customers' data rights, artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, cybersecurity and financial exclusion.

To extend research into sport consumer behaviors related to online sports betting, this study is designed to identify and examine the relationship between online sports betting motivations and online sports betting intentions. By applying a push-pull framework from online sport consumption and gambling studies, nine motivations to engage in online sports betting were identified. These motivations were hypothesized to motivate online sports betting intentions.

A quota sampling technique based on the sports bettor demographics available in the American Gaming Association (AGA, 2019) and the Pew Research Center (2022) obtained a total of 550 completed surveys that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. For data analyses, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to examine the measurement model and the hypothesized model, respectively.

The results revealed that four motivations (i.e. monetary gain, excitement, convenience and negative technology-readiness) were related to online sports betting intention, while five motivations (i.e. sport fandom, positive technology-readiness, impulsivity, socialization and promotion) were not.

The results provide foundational theoretical knowledge of what motivates sports fans to participate in online sports betting. Furthermore, the findings assist practitioners in their allocation of resources by enhancing their understanding of online sports betting motivations.