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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.

Financial problems of football clubs during economic crises (such as COVID-19 pandemic) highlight the necessity of achieving economic sustainability. In addition, the economic sustainability of football clubs is accepted as a principle of the development of sports business. Therefore, it is reasonable to conduct a study with the aim of examining economic sustainability in the field of sports club management.

The present study adopted a qualitative approach to research and used semi-structured interviews in order to develop a framework for the economic sustainability of football clubs. A total of 13 members of football clubs in the Iranian premier league participated in this study.

The findings highlighted the fact that a number of factors, including media and social networks, entrepreneurship and development of club business, commercialization of the club, privatization, investment and ownership, strategic communication plan, financial management and management instability, promoted the economic sustainability of football clubs and improved their financial performance.

This study highlighted the importance of the changes in the structure of football clubs and the strategic plans for promoting entrepreneurship and commercialization. Moreover, it underlined the major role of the environmental and management components of football clubs in their financial sustainability.

Professionalization is an important issue in many all-volunteer nonprofit organizations (e.g. recreational sports clubs). Therefore, this study relied on the competing values framework and self-determination theory to investigate whether a newly developed intervention can effectively strengthen the management processes and leadership styles in all-volunteer sports clubs.

For this purpose, a rigorous non-equivalent pre-test post-test control group design was used. The intervention involved two sessions organized in sports clubs in which internal stakeholders (e.g. board members, coaches, volunteers) were invited to discuss change initiatives aimed at enhancing the organizational processes.

An effect on both the management processes and leadership styles was found. As for the management processes, the intervention had an impact on the internal processes, with especially the development of an internal communication plan and the annual assessment of the organization's operations being promoted by the intervention. Regarding the leadership styles, the intervention had an effect on the controlling and chaotic leadership style, with leaders becoming less chaotic and controlling in situations in which (respectively) the business plan was established and the tasks were distributed within the organization.

This intervention study adopted an innovative approach to organizational intervention research by focusing on the enhancement of both the management processes and the leadership styles. Its principles are also relevant and valuable to organizations operating in other organizational contexts.

This study aims to investigate the impact of technologies on the knowledge transfer process. In particular, the authors aim to analyze the topic of knowledge brokers and the relationship between broker and digital tools in the knowledge transfer process in the sport context. The study developed, therefore, aims to investigate the creating of this environment for knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing between man and machine, looking to improve the planning of technical sports projects of the clubs.

This paper presents a qualitative approach aimed at analyzing how platforms and the players’ agents can be useful tools in the knowledge transfer process. The research was conducted through a survey with a structured questionnaire via e-mail to 64 managers at the head of clubs playing in the Italian Series B basketball in the 2021–2022 championship. The total number of questions administered is 21.

The results demonstrate how sports directors, for the construction of a technical sports project, in addition to learning off the pitch by interactions with media, fans, pressure management, leadership skills, positive attitude, tolerance, understanding of other opinions, background and cultures, see the athletes’ agents as the main stakeholder of the managers. The research resulted, by the clubs’ managers, in both formal learning and informal-type learning. Informal learning, by far the most frequently used and most important in the general learning process of executives, is identified in the use that executives make of information available on digital platforms and of the fiduciary relationships that management has with players’ agents.

The results demonstrate the valuable opportunities for executives, coaches, managers and clubs to strategically manage learning and knowledge sharing. Improving and managing knowledge-sharing strategies would help increase knowledge, not only of the sports directors but also of the entire club, thus improving the absolute quality of the game within the Italian basketball divisions. The authors have developed an innovative framework regarding the construction of a “typed sports technical project”, and the authors have identified a series of crucial phases capable of determining the creation of a new roster of athletes.

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.

Based on the “S-O-R” and attachment theories, this paper constructs a research model of the platform attribute factors of sports short video live e-commerce on consumers' psychological conditions, and explores how platform attributes affect consumer behavior through consumer attachment.

The study carried out questionnaire survey through the “snowball” method, and a total of 422 valid questionnaires were collected. The paper uses SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 26.0 to adapt the data and model, and adopts the method of structural equation modeling for analysis.

The research results show that the interactivity, identity, personalization and entertainment of live sports e-commerce platforms can actively stimulate consumer attachment, and directly drive their consumption behavior through their attachment.

Examining the platform attributes and system functions of short video live broadcast e-commerce from the perspective of consumer attachment can help sports e-commerce understand consumers' needs and satisfaction with the functions provided by the platform. Through timely optimization and improvement of system functions, the platform will make the connection between consumers and e-commerce closer, thereby increasing consumer stickiness and promoting the vigorous development of sports e-commerce.

This study identified and defined the platform attributes contained in the sports live broadcast e-commerce platform, combined the S-O-R model with the attachment theory, expanded the analytical framework of the S-O-R theory and made contributions to the extension of the attachment theory.

The authors intend to contribute to the lack of information about corporate social responsibility (CSR) in sports verified in the literature. The main purpose is to understand what the supporters' perceptions of CSR practices in sports clubs are and how these initiatives influence some of their attitudes towards the clubs they support.

Using a total sample of 142 supporters, the study hypotheses were tested with PLS-SEM structural equation modeling.

The authors conclude that CSR initiatives have a positive influence in the supporters' perception of the club and contribute to the positive word-of-mouth communication about the club. The results also show that these initiatives do not have a significant influence on the supporters' intention to become or remain paid members of sports clubs.

It should be noted that research on CSR in the national sports context is scarce, which increases the importance of its contribution to the literature in this area.

The aim of this research is to measure the impact of eWOM (electronic word of mouth) and brand celebrity use on the purchasing behavior of sports consumers.

To test the model hypotheses, sports consumers who use social media and have purchased at least one online sports product were selected as the research group. Online survey method was used, and 836 participants were reached. The model was tested with structural equation modeling (SEM) through smart PLS software.

As a result, the quality, credibility and usefulness of the information consumers encounter on online platforms cause them to adopt information about products or services, and then exhibit online purchase behavior. While the attractiveness and trustworthiness of celebrities are seen as important factors affecting consumers' online purchase of sports products, the effect of celebrity expertise was found to be ineffective in this study.

Marketers can develop more effective eWOM strategies by considering consumers' expectations. Businesses that want to implement an effective marketing strategy may prefer celebrities in product promotions or advertisements of their brands.

This research revealed the effect of eWOM and celebrity endorsement on the online purchase behavior of sports consumers in terms of the sports industry. Unlike previous studies, this study examined these variables together on sports consumers and contributed to the development of models.

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 social and economic importance esports has gained over the past decades has led to a quickly evolving academic interest in the topic. Yet, current perspectives on esports frequently are not precise enough, too context-specific and/or focus on the question whether esports is sports or not. This means that no precise structural concept has been provided thus far. Such a conceptualization as well as a categorization of esports and related types of video gaming are provided in this paper.

This paper is based on a narrative review considering academic literature from 2000 to 2021 and publications of relevant esports organizations. The review is conceptually extended by structural parallels to traditional sports.

The central outcome of this research is conceptualizing esports as a victory-driven, organized performance comparison of exclusively human players playing video games in a competitive setting. This comparison is based solely on the performance achieved during a defined time frame according to fixed rules with comparably equal team (starting) conditions. This conceptualization is embedded in a general categorization of video gaming based on structural similarities with and differences to esports. Moreover, characteristics that were rejected in regards to the conceptualization and the categorization are discussed.

This paper provides a comprehensive categorization of esports and other types of video gaming based on structural similarities and differences. It is thus of high relevance for academia and sport management practice alike and can further the development in both fields.