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This study aims to detect the dimensions of the in-store customer shopping experience from the sports retailer perspective and to investigate how the role of sports equipment stores is changing.

This exploratory study performs semi-structured interviews with retail managers of sports equipment stores.

This research reveals the importance of the dimensions of immersive design, sensorial ambient elements, social relationships, trialability and real experience sharing in designing a memorable in-store shopping experience in sports stores, and it highlights that the store's role in the sports context is transitioning from sales space to an interactive, immersive, engaging and convivial place. It proposes a model to design the in-store customer shopping experience effectively.

Sports equipment managers can make their physical stores as experiential as possible by investing in expert, passionate personnel and technology in order to create a real in-store experience of the product and the sports practice.

While sports equipment retailers acknowledge the importance of providing customers with a memorable shopping experience by creating an evocative environment and placing multiple touchpoints in stores, management scholars have paid limited attention to sports stores. This study explores the ways in which sports retail managers can design their stores effectively in experiential terms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a competitive evolutionary process we call “innovation overshooting” that has been observed in equipment-based sports, using windsurfing as a case study.

The case-study approach is based upon primary data gathered through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with pioneers of the case-study sport and through analysis of international and domestic industry publications and grey literature.

New sports, in particular equipment-based “lifestyle” sports, can experience a rapid rise in popularity but eventually technology-driven competition leads to equipment overshooting the capabilities and financial budgets of most users. This Schumpeterian market process leads to a rapid decline in participation and the eventual collapse of the market for the sport’s equipment.

Models of endogenous overshooting are established in the study of finance and business cycles, and have recently been extended to the music and design industry. The authors extend this to the sports equipment sector finding clear evidence of evolutionary competitive technological and market overshooting.

The purpose of this is to analyse co‐branding as leverage for both teams and equipment manufacturers in their internationalization endeavours. In other words, how can teams and equipment manufacturers benefit from their association in order to expand internationally?

The study involves four football cases for the 2009‐2010 season: Paris Saint‐Germain and Nike, Olympique de Marseille and Adidas, Olympique Lyonnais and Umbro, and the French national football team and Adidas. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with managers involved with the four teams and their respective equipment manufacturers. The managers were marketing directors, VPs of marketing, sales managers or presidents of their respective organization. Sponsors, university professors and journalists who interact closely with the teams and equipment manufacturers were also interviewed.

It seems as if the team and its equipment manufacturer do not have a formal strategy to jointly benefit from their association. That would be very important for a successful collaboration and for joint internationalization. Currently, the actions appear a little too ad hoc and opportunistic, with some exceptions (i.e. PSG and Emirates Cup). In other words, the commitment does not really transpire yet in the co‐branding partnerships studied.

Other teams in other sports and other countries should be studied in the next stage of the research. All the more so since the paper focused on a convenience sample, comprised of only French teams. Furthermore, special attention should be paid to the differences between North America and Europe. Indeed, in North America, the league is very much involved and controlling in the international expansion of its teams to the point that the league dictates the internationalization of its teams, brands and merchandising offering; whereas in Europe, teams have much more freedom to expand abroad.

The global brand strategy, which refers to a new market and an existing co‐brand name, would be the most appropriate for sports teams and equipment manufacturers. This would be especially true when both the equipment maker and the sports team benefit from a strong brand equity, which they could carry into international markets and use to trigger a strong synergy abroad. The global brand strategy bears some resemblance with the “Brand Conquistador” strategy, where partnership, either between two teams or between a team and an equipment maker, is used in order to expand internationally.

Floorball is a Swedish sports innovation which emerged and started to be played about 40 years ago. The purpose of this paper is to explore value capturing in this relatively new sport and the various contributions made by different actors towards market development of the sport.

The research utilizes a theoretical framework of value capturing in professional team sports for research. The analysis is based upon 13 semi-structured interviews with representatives from three groups, “players/coaches,” “board members and “manufacturers/retailers.”

All economic actors within the research framework contribute to various extents to the market development of the sport, yet they all need to cooperate, exemplifying that innovation for market development and value for the sport can only be co-created.

The sample is taken from the Swedish market and may, thus, be considered biased.

All economic actors within the research framework contribute to market development of the sport to various degrees, yet they all need to cooperate, exemplifying that innovation for market development and value for the sport can only be co-created.

This paper provides unique insights into the development of floorball as a “new” sport.

Ethics in IT, community informatics, management.

Undergraduate and postgraduate information technology and citizens' rights, strategic decision making.

This case spotlights Athlete Sports in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). It focuses on the malfunction of the company's equipment that is rented from ABC Sports Equipment. Athlete Sports has been in the UAE over a decade and has positioned itself fairly at the top due to its qualified coaches and quality of facilities it provides. The case highlights the company's transition from owning equipment to leasing equipment that increases profits. However, it also sheds light on ABC Sports' venture into code reusability in order to upgrade equipments faster. The case looks closely at the ultimate consequences of ABC Sports' practice and the impact it has on Athlete's Sports' clients and the subsequent decisions the managers are expected to make.

This case can be used to teach strategic decision making, and ethics in information technology.

A teaching note is available on request.

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 purpose of this paper is to examine the existing literature in entrepreneurship and innovation and its linkages to sport.

This research involved four main stages: definition of the key aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship; synthesis of the typologies purporting the interplay between entrepreneurship and innovation in sport; showcasing entrepreneurship and innovation in-practice in a sports context; and identifying steps toward the development of an overall sports policy framework.

It was observed that through entrepreneurship, innovation plays a crucial role in contributing to the sports industry through research, and technology adaptation. The wide variation in the adaptation techniques of innovation in the entrepreneurship realm for sports can be supported by three aspects: a strong culture of innovation, the adaptation of technology from other sectors for sports entrepreneurship and network support.

This study highlights the critical role that entrepreneurship and innovation can have on the sports sector. Those in the sports’ field can use this research to continue to push the development of products and services that can improve the field.

There is little emphasis on sports in mainstream entrepreneurship or innovation research. Therefore, this research is one of the few in this area to look at the interconnectivity between entrepreneurship, innovation and sports.

The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had devastating impact on sporting activities, education and global health. Given the impact of the pandemic-related restrictions and closed fitness centers and other sports facilities, the coping strategies adopted by athletes while training at home to continue their training remain an important question. The purpose of this review is to examine the findings of key studies focusing on the impact of the pandemic on sport training.

A review was conducted on Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed to identify articles on physical activity and sport training during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eligibility criteria included peer-reviewed empirical and quantitative studies. The selected articles were reviewed using contextual analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic had devastating impact on sports activities globally. Studies evaluating the influence of the pandemic on sports training have revealed abysmal decline in training volume and general physical fitness, limited access to facilities and equipment and significant reduction in training load. The damage of the pandemic on the sporting world should serve as a guide for proactive steps that should be taken to prevent recurrence of a similar calamity.

This paper highlights important lessons to be learned from the lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic by stakeholders in sport, including the importance of improvisation of sports facilities by utilizing available spaces at home and neighborhood for physical training.