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It has been forecast that before the turn of the millennium air travel in Asia will account for 40 percent of global travel rising to 50 percent by 2010. The International Air Transport Association also forecast world international scheduled passenger numbers to grow by an average of 7.1 percent annually to 2000, to reach 522 million. Air wars over Asia are hotting up, with some of the world’s biggest airlines engaged in intense competition over Asian skies – potentially the richest and most lucrative air travel market on Planet Earth, notwithstanding the 1997 currency turmoil. This article looks at how competition in the Asia Pacific air travel industry was played out in the 1990s. A glimpse of what is to come can be drawn from the several tough skirmishes seen thus far in the 1990s.

The purpose of this paper is to explain that corporate citizenship refers to the specific activities that an organisation engages in to meet social obligations, and which has become an issue of growing importance within the business community. A key area in academic literature concentrates on justifying corporate citizenship initiatives to the corporate sector by illustrating a range of strategic benefits that a firm can achieve. This study is located within this body of work and aims to illustrate the strategic benefits that a football club can gain from the implementation of corporate citizenship activities through the community trust model of governance.

The study draws from qualitative primary and secondary data gathered from Charlton Athletic and Brentford football clubs.

Analysis of the data resulted in the identification of six strategic benefits that a football club can realise through the creation of a community trust model of governance. These are the removal of commercial and community tensions; reputation management; brand building; local authority partnerships; commercial partnerships; and player identification.

The paper considers the importance of these findings for a generic business audience, discussing how organisations can also benefit from the creation of partnerships with football clubs focused on the delivery of corporate citizenship initiatives.

The paper provides information regarding the application of management practice evident in football to other forms of business organisation.

The paper is the first to consider how corporate citizenship initiatives in football can assist firms in other sectors to achieve a range of strategic benefits.

Aims to: supply an exploration and description of the extent to which strategic marketing planning is being undertaken by UK rugby union clubs; and identify, explore and outline the main intra and extra‐organizational barriers and impediments to the development of planning within rugby clubs. Begins with an overview of relevant literature. First, existing views on the content, processes and obstacles to strategic marketing planning are reviewed. Second, the topics of sports management, organization and sports marketing planning are introduced and discussed. After the presentation of the research design and methodology employed, the findings of an exploratory study into the extent and the barriers to strategic marketing planning within UK rugby union clubs are presented. Finishes with a discussion of conclusions and implications for both theorists and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which strategic marketing planning is carried out by Australasian golf clubs and the impact such planning has upon their business performance.

A research methodology borrowed from the “for profit” sector is applied. In total, ten basic strategic marketing practices, each with its own hypothesis, are investigated through a web‐based survey of secretaries/managers of 180 Australian and New Zealand golf clubs.

Analysis shows that while strategic marketing is being adopted by most clubs, compared with their lower‐performing counterparts (on measures of competitive business performance), the higher‐performing clubs place a far greater emphasis upon each of the ten basic strategic marketing practices.

While the survey had a 24 per cent response rate, a small follow‐up survey of non‐respondents showed no significant difference in answers to four crucial questions. Self‐reported, relative performance measures, widely used in the “for profit” sector, have been utilised. The ten basic strategic marketing practices are assumed to be antecedents of success rather than a consequence of such success.

In addition to providing initial understanding of the extent of strategic marketing planning practice in a sport management context in Australasia, this paper identifies those practices which differentiate higher competitive business performance from lower performance.

Increasingly there has been a blurring of the boundaries between competition and cooperation in many sectors of the global economy. This trend has not escaped the tourism industry. Indeed, numerous examples exist where major players in the transportation, accomodation, and telecommunications sectors have joined forces.

Prior research has argued that business practices within English football clubs are amateurish and outdated due to the comparatively small size of clubs and the restrictive nature of the cartel-like industry they compete in. But is this true for large EPL clubs (i.e. those with high market valuation and large number of employees)? Do these clubs have the ability to pursue alternative business strategies, and if so, do their organizational structures, cultures, and behavioral norms support the strategic directions they have chosen to pursue? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper evaluates survey responses from 35 executives and business managers within three large EPL clubs. The study utilizes previously validated scales to examine issues of organizational structure, culture, and behavioral norms.

Despite operating within a closed industry, large EPL clubs are not all pursuing identical business strategies. Consistent with contingency theory, the organizational structure, culture, and behavioral norms of large EPL clubs are, for the most part, in line with what the authors would expect to find in successful, large conventional product or service businesses. However, all of the clubs included in this study appear to be following hybrid models each demonstrating characteristics of several alternative competitive strategies simultaneously.

This initial study is limited to responses from 35 business executives and managers within three EPL clubs.

Although EPL clubs operate within a cartel-like industry, this study shows that business managers within these clubs do have a degree of latitude in choosing between alternative competitive strategies. In order to successfully implement a chosen strategy, business managers must insure that the organizational structure, culture, and behavioral norms within the club’s business group are aligned with the overarching objectives of that strategic choice.

Grounded in open systems and contingency theory, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom that because large clubs are in the business of sport they are somehow fundamentally different from other large businesses.

Under club president Florentino Pérez, Real Madrid Football Club appeared to utilise the proto-image of the firm (PIF) management approach. Such a strategy embraces the use of branding, values and mid- to long-term planning to generate income. In the case of Real Madrid, the strategy comprised the recruitment of 'Galácticos', which helped it to become the world's number one club in terms of both turnover and profile. Although the strategy delivered success economically, questions remain regarding its sustainability for a sporting organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the efficacy of using a multi-paradigm perspective to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and strategic decision-making processes in the context of charitable foundations.

This paper integrates and synthesizes the micro-social processes of “assessable transcendence” (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2014) with Whittington’s (2001) perspectives on strategy. “Assessable transcendence” was achieved from the constant comparison of categories developed through an early iterative process in which data collection and analysis occurred during the same period. In all, 32 interviews were conducted among a sample of key managers in the charitable foundations for the first two divisions of English football.

The present study illustrates empirically that strategic decision making in charitable foundations does not “seat” neatly in any one of Whittington’s perspectives. On the contrary, this study indicates a great deal of overlap within these perspectives, and suggests that conflicting paradigms should be celebrated rather than viewed as signs of theoretical immaturity. Multi-paradigm approaches can potentially reveal insights into the “mechanics” of managerial decision making that are not easily discernible from a mono-paradigmatic perspective.

This is the first empirical work that examines CSR in relation to strategy within the context of the English football clubs’ charitable foundations, and does so by employing a multi-paradigm perspective on strategy formulation and implementation.

Professional football clubs have increasingly initiated two corporate diversification strategies to enfold growth opportunities besides traditional income sources: business diversification and international diversification. Empirical findings from management and sport management literature provide inconclusive evidence on these strategies' financial performance effects, necessitating further research. The purpose of this article is therefore to investigate how both corporate diversification strategies affect the financial performance of professional football clubs.

A 15-year panel data set of English Premier League (EPL) clubs is examined, many of which have employed corporate diversification strategies. Measures for related business diversification (RBD) and unrelated business diversification (UBD) as well as international diversification are established from management literature. Based on fixed effects regression models, their effects on clubs' revenues and profitability are then examined.

U-shaped effects from RBD on revenues and profitability are found, but no effects from UBD. These findings empirically support the theoretically appealing superiority of RBD over UBD and, with increasing levels of RBD, over a focused strategy in management literature. With international diversification, an inverted U-shaped effect on revenues is identified.

Despite focusing only on the EPL, these findings provide new evidence of non-linear financial performance effects from corporate diversification strategies adding to (sport) management literature and setting the stage for future research on these strategies in professional football.

These findings have significant implications for club managers' strategic growth opportunities such as new business models or geographic markets.

This is the first study to empirically examine the financial effects of corporate diversification strategies in the football market context.

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.