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Sustainable development of entrepreneurship could be comprehensively analyzed using a simulation model for entrepreneurship ecosystem based on the system dynamics approach. Thus, a complete analysis of the entrepreneurship ecosystem is of high importance. However, an effective analysis of entrepreneurship ecosystem involves many challenges, such as the presence of several factors which interact with each other in various ways with different complex effects in time. Therefore, the approach used in this study is employing analysis of entrepreneurship ecosystems in sports industry using analysis of dynamic systems.

Several applied issues such as entrepreneurship opportunities, infrastructures, market opportunities and entrepreneurship space in the borders of the dynamic model developed based on the literature and experts' opinion. Finally, a set of strategies based on experts' opinion are ranked with the objective of improvement of evaluation measures using network analysis decision-making approach and fuzzy TOPSIS.

The results obtained indicate the important role of sports entrepreneurship opportunities, sports tourism, market opportunities, entrepreneurship infrastructures and entrepreneurship-oriented environment in the development of sports entrepreneurship infrastructure in Iran. The credibility and efficiency of the proposed model for analysis of sports entrepreneurship have been ultimately shown.

A holistic approach is proposed based on the hybrid system dynamics approach and fuzzy decision-making method to analyses sports entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Traditional sports have seen declining participation at many levels, with football being no different. This is occurring at a time when emergent technologies present new challenges, particularly to the crucial yet ignored cohort of millennials. Without meeting the needs of millennials, football cannot be successful in the future. This research seeks to understand how millennial football fandom (sport, not team) in Australia impacts football participation, whilst empirically examining the impact of football video games (FVGs).

Survey data are collected from online groups, forums and social media pages of Australian football (soccer) fans. Quantitative analysis of millennial fandom and its influence on football participation (for the first time demarcated into play and engagement) is undertaken, including the moderating influence of time spent playing FVGs, amidst covariate influences of age and number of children.

Results highlight the multi-dimensionality of millennial football fandom in Australia, reveal the typical hours spent playing football across a range of participation types (including play and engagement), support fan involvement’s influence on engagement with football, establish that a desire to interact with other football fans manifests in playing more football, specify how playing FVGs moderates these relationships, supports the covariate influences of age and evidences that playing FVGs does not hamper football play.

This is the first study to examine millennial fans of football (the sport, not tied to a club) and the influence of fandom on football participation. By separating football participation into two forms, play and engagement, we highlight discrete influences, whilst evaluating for the first time the moderating influence of the time millennials spend playing FVGs. For sport managers and administrators, these are important findings to facilitate better segmentation, recruitment, retention and participation, each with broader societal health benefits. This is undertaken in Australia where football is not a dominant code, relegating fandom to a niche, thus revealing important findings for sports and business management.

The purpose of this study was to compare four different consumer pathway models based on identity theory, attitude/loyalty theory, lifestyle theory and hierarchy of effects theory, each with associated instruments measuring connection to the team.

The authors did a two-study analysis, first collecting data from people aware of an NFL team (N = 218) and then an MLS team (N = 209) to determine which connection item performed better.

The authors found that the Consumer Pathway for Sport Fandom based on the hierarchy of effects theory and its associated interest measurement item performed better than the other three frameworks and items. The Interest item shared the most variance with games attended, games intending to attend, games watched via media and games intending to watch via media.

The Consumer Pathway for Sport Fandom represents the entire consumer spectrum from non-aware consumers all the way up to die-hard sports fans. This pathway will allow sport marketers to track their consumers from initial awareness of the product or service all the way through the brand relationship to ultimate loyalty.

Sport ticket sales is often positioned as a “foot in the door” to the sport industry due to ample job opportunities, but anecdotal reports of high turnover raise questions of the efficacy of recruitment, training and retention efforts in sport sales. The purpose of this study was to determine attrition levels among entry-level ticket sales personnel, observe whether entry-level sales positions lead to other non-selling positions within sport organizations and determine if education and market related variables are related to job tenure.

LinkedIn profiles were analyzed for 1,122 entry-level ticket salespeople listed in media guides between 2015 and 2019 in the “Big Four” North American professional sports leagues. Names were obtained from 26 NBA, 21 MLB, 20 NHL and 12 NFL teams. Survival analysis provided defection rates and demonstrated the relationship between those rates and key variables.

One in every four entry-level ticket salespeople defected within the first year and one in every two defected within 26 months. Only 8% moved on from ticket sales to a non-sales role within the sport industry. Increases in cost of living, working for an NFL team and having sport industry experience prior to taking a sales position decreased the likelihood of defecting, while increased distance between the salesperson's university and the team's location increased the likelihood of defecting.

This study applies survival analysis to a sport human relations context to understand turnover in a specific occupational discipline and establishes the turnover rate for sport sales positions.

This study investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the sustainability of sports business models by means of a specific case analysis, conducted on M-I Stadio S.r.l., the service management firm that provides all types of backstage activities related to football matches performed at San Siro Stadium in Italy.

Building on interviews on its management team's direct experience and on archival data, the authors depict the consequences of the pandemic in terms of corporate governance, accounting choices and overall strategic business development through information triangulation from a forward-looking perspective.

Complying with restrictions, M-I Stadio S.r.l. preserved its financial position by embracing digitalization, increasing information flows with partners and adopting a risk aversion behaviour. Overall, results indicate that the pandemic played a catalyst role in the transformation process of the football industry. Moreover, apart from the physical and virtual merge acceleration, well-being for athletes, society and the planet, transcending the gaming part of sports activities has also been taking place. The study also illustrates the foreseeable developments of sustainable sport management practices from a critical perspective.

Since the San Siro Stadium management company might represent one of the forefront companies, within the sports industry, this study results should be conveniently taken into consideration by sporting authorities and international bodies, emphasizing the relevance of sustainability (i.e. environmental and social practices within the sports industry) and digitalization so as to better prepare sports organizations and to provide the overall industry with the tools deemed necessary to navigate this important transition in a smoother way.

The purpose of this study was to gather insights from sport marketing professionals and identify key opportunities, challenges and knowledge that sport marketing educators and researchers could utilize in developing curriculum and research agendas.

A qualitative approach was used, and data were collected through in-depth interviews with 15 sport marketing professionals. Participants were asked questions related to the knowledge, skills and experiences that they believe are important for students to have to be successful in the industry, as well as the types of research that would be most useful in their day-to-day work.

Industry professionals noted collaboration, transformation in digital marketing, data and analytics and experiential marketing as key trends facing the industry today. The findings suggest that sport marketing curriculum should focus on soft skill development such as communication, relationship building and empathy alongside hard skill development such as data analysis and storytelling. As well, findings show research areas where scholars can aid practitioners with a focus on consumer insights, technology, measuring ROI and experiential marketing.

With these findings, educators and scholars can better prepare students for successful careers in industry and contribute to the ongoing advancement of the scholarly field. This study serves as a starting point for further research in this area, and it is hoped that it will spark continued collaboration between academia and industry.

There remains a critical issue in sport management scholarship in that the field lacks a well-defined framework for delineating practical implications in research. This research aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What types of practical implications can be identified in sport management research? (2) How can sport management research frame the practical implications of the study in a way that is both theoretically sound and useful for practitioners?

Through a scoping review and within the lens of Jaworski (2011)'s framework for managerial relevance, the study examined 427 articles from European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Management and Sport Management Review published between 2000 and 2020.

This study presents a five-pronged framework that identifies target managers, organizational tasks, time horizons, philosophical impact and desired outcomes. Furthermore, the current research offers suggestions for how to present managerial implications in sport management research.

The findings shed light on the managerial relevance of the recent sport management body of work, developing an important framework for practical implications for the field to reflect and incorporate into future studies. With a theoretical understanding of how to frame the practical implications of sport management research, the gap between academia and industry can continue to narrow, and the relevance to the industry may be more pertinent than ever before.

Football exists and evolves in a dynamic ecosystem, displaying a massive and multidimensional influence on most contemporary societies, and football has grown into a significant industry with a plethora of stakeholders. This research is the first to comprehensively identify the key industry stakeholders and their distinct value, from the individual club perspective, and to conceptualise and test their interrelationship toward the development of a corresponding framework of club benefits.

The study applied a multilevel approach to collect and verify qualitative data. It initially developed a preliminary conceptual framework, which was first validated by an expert panel and was subsequently extensively tested in the Cyprus-specific context, which offered fertile ground for such a study. The empirical stage rested on 41 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with very high-ranking individuals from the top nine football clubs, as well as with key industry stakeholders.

Though the examined industry is partly in line with international norms, it is also highly affected by unique characteristics that alter the various stakeholders' role, producing (even negative) value of varied typologies that is directly linked with the industry's financial, sporting, cultural and social conditions.

The research ultimately presents scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a systemic and comprehensive understanding of the individual club stakeholder value offerings, delivers a tested framework as a tool for social and business management and prescribes future avenues for research, governance and practice.

Extant studies on the subject are either partial or focus on individual stakeholders and evidently lack requisite scientific comprehensiveness. The current research bridges this significant gap in knowledge by exhaustively identifying the key industry stakeholders, explicating their relative social, economic or other value in the individual club perspective and developing a value-based stakeholder framework.

This paper aims to identify different combinations of causal conditions (celebrity attributes) that explain our outcome: destination image. More specifically, three main research questions guide our work: (1) Which attributes should an outstanding sportsperson have to enhance the image of his/her country as a destination image? (2) Are these the same for different product categories? (3) Do tourists and residents differ?

To this end, the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) was used with a sample of 187 participants (105 tourists and 82 residents).

Results show that some attributes of a sports celebrity are more critical than others in enhancing destination image. Those attributes of sports celebrities appearing in the intermediate and parsimonious analysis should be prioritized. This is the case of trustworthiness. Second, experience is a peripheral requirement (only appeared in the intermediate analysis). Third, attractiveness is unnecessary and an even and undesired attribute in many solutions. Fourth, when comparing tourists and residents, both groups value the role of football players, while residents also appreciate the role of marathon runners. Tennis players are the less relevant sports celebrities to build Spain’s destination image.

First, a new statistical analysis in the marketing discipline, QCA, has been used. The use of qualitative approaches to investigate destination images has been scarce. Second, the study of the role of sports celebrity endorsement on brand–place attachment has yet to be investigated. Third, studies about the role of residents in the image of a tourism destination/city are scarce. Tourists and residents must be investigated because they can benefit from sports celebrities' activities.