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This study aims to provide a social accounting of early women's football as a form of consciousness raising, and to provide a platform to raise questions about the path of the future of the women's game.

Newspaper archival materials supplemented by books and journal articles.

British woman's football was repressed for 50 years by the football association.

This is a discussion paper, rather than a full academic manuscript.

This paper is designed to enable questions to be raised about equality, and what that means in 2022.

There is an opportunity to reconsider a “feminine” version of the field of football.

There is an opportunity to use feminist theories to consider the past and future of women's football.

Football is the world's most popular sport and the role of football on campus is of interest to university public relations (PR) and management professionals tasked with operations, promotions and reputation management. The purpose of the study is to explore similarities and differences in the structure and promotion of football on campus in the USA and the UK.

The authors completed this case study research by focusing on two related cases using cross-case pattern identification. Consistent with case study research, data collection methods were combined. Depth interviews with PR and management professionals at USA and UK universities were supported by archived documents, published media and social media accounts.

Football maintains a high level of popularity among students on campus, but each country's approach reveals different models and competitive market forces. In the USA, varsity football faces competition from popular revenue-producing sports (e.g. American football and men's basketball), but growth in the overall game, which is assisted by international influences, indicates future advancement opportunities. In the UK, football is the dominant campus sport with unique ties to professional football and high growth potential for the women's game. The lack of a fan-based model indicates the possibility for structural change, but stiff competition exists with the historically popular and well-developed professional game.

A well-known limitation of case study research is the absence of generalizability, and each case has aspects that are unique to the research (Lucas et al., 2018). That applies in this instance as well. Variance is expected to exist between, and among universities and, based on this data, this is not possible to generalize to other universities. However, future survey research could use these results to help with the development of research questions using quantitative methods.

Sports PR research using the case model with professional teams has been conducted, but the authors found no published PR research comparing the structure and promotion of football at USA and UK universities. The outcomes can help with future research inquiries and theory development and are instructive for professionals working in the field.

This study aims to identify the determining factors of perceived altruism and attitude toward an inclusive sponsorship activation, as well as the impact of these variables on the attitude toward the sponsor.

Online survey data were obtained from 1,228 respondents from France, the UK and South Africa. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results show that the cause-brand fit has a strong positive impact on the perceived altruism toward the motivations underlying inclusive activation, while skepticism toward advertising has a very weak negative impact. In return, perceived altruism positively influences the attitude toward inclusive activation and sponsor attitude. Furthermore, this attitude toward inclusive activation is positively influenced by involvement in women’s soccer and France men’s national football team identification. The attitude toward inclusive activation also positively influences the attitude toward sponsor attitude. However, contrary to what had been advanced, identification with the France women’s national football team and the nationality of the respondents (French, British or South African) had no impact on the attitude toward inclusive activation, while the perceived importance of the cause had very weak impact on attitudes toward inclusive activation.

This study highlights the potential benefits of investing in inclusive sponsorship activations, particularly with respect to their positive impact on consumer attitude toward sponsor attitude. It also highlights the importance of establishing, in advance, a strong association between the brand image and the cause supported, so that the motivations underlying the inclusive activations are perceived as more altruistic.

Ticket sales are an essential source of income for football clubs and federations. Analyzing the determinants of fans' willingness-to-pay for tickets is therefore an important exercise. By knowing the match- and fan-related characteristics that influence how much a fan wants to pay for a ticket, as well as to what extent, football clubs and federations can modify their ticket offering and targeting in order to optimize this revenue stream.

Using a detailed discrete choice experiment, based on McFadden's random utility theory, this paper formulates a Bayesian hierarchical multinomial logit model. Such models are very common in the discrete choice modeling literature. The analysis identifies to what extent match and personal attributes influence fans' willingness-to-pay for games of the Belgian men's and women's football national teams.

The results show that the strength of the opponent, the type of competition, the location of the seats in the stadium, the day and kick-off time of the match and the ticket price exert an influence on the choice of the respondent. Fans are attracted most by competitive games against strong opponents. They prefer to sit along the sideline, and they have clear preferences for specific kick-off days and times. The authors also find substantial variation between socio-demographic groups, defined in terms of factors such as age, gender and family composition.

The authors use the results to estimate the willingness-to-pay for match tickets for different socio-demographic groups. Their findings are useful for football clubs and federations interested in optimizing the prices of their match tickets.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, no stated preference methods, such as discrete choice analysis, have been used to analyze the willingness-to-pay of sports fans. The advantage of discrete choice analysis is that options and variations in tickets that are not yet available in practice can be studied, allowing football organizations to increase revenues from new ticketing instruments.

Football is at once both a global sport and one that is defined by fiercely guarded local boundaries. For a firm operating within this highly lucrative industry and with ambitions of establishing a strong international presence for itself, a balance must be struck between riding on the game’s global appeal on the one hand and the need to somehow embed itself within particular local spaces on the other. This study aims to analyse how one such firm, the holding company City Football Group (CFG), is going about achieving this.

This is a conceptual paper that adopts a broadly inductive approach, building on an extensive analysis of both theoretical research and publicly available secondary data to develop a framework depicting three key strategies associated with CFG’s internationalisation.

Three factors are identified as being especially pertinent in CFG’s international expansion: the composition of CFG’s top management team; the attempts to establish a unifying “City identity”; and CFG’s forays into more peripheral leagues around the world after having established itself at the “top end” of the game.

The framework presented in this paper is particularly oriented towards a practitioner audience. Managers of firms operating in football, as well as in other industries in which the pressure to be both globally integrated and locally responsive is particularly acute, can draw lessons from both the framework and the broader insights presented here on CFG’s global expansion.

Football is widely regarded as the world’s most popular sport, and fans often take matters very seriously when it comes to the club they support. How football clubs are run is, therefore, a matter of considerable societal interest, as demonstrated by various fan protests over the years. As global, multi-club ownership structures like that adopted by CFG become more commonplace, this study will provide football fans with some insight into the strategies of these companies and how their own clubs fit within these ownership models.

This study addresses an under-researched topic: the international expansion of a prominent football holding company.

This chapter provides a study of how gambling companies use the cultural and social capital of Newcastle United Football Club, in the English Premier League, to establish a connection with the club's fans to promote gambling. Newcastle United had two gambling sponsors during the period of this study, from 2017 to 2020, including a front of shirt sponsor, FUN88, an online gambling brand with a large following in Asia. Data were gathered from a range of sources, including from the social media platform, Twitter, to identify the methods the company used to engage fans and to encourage betting on the outcome of matches. The data from the study were explored thematically to describe the relationship developed between the football club and its principal gambling sponsor in order to drive business for the latter with the club's followers. The findings showed how FUN88 evoked Newcastle United's cultural tradition to promote gambling and generate business globally whilst the club actively promoted their ‘primary partner’ through its media channels. The lure of free match tickets was used to encourage fan engagement. Corporate practices promote the consumption of unhealthy commodities through their marketing whilst consumers (fans) are responsibilised for any harms engendered by their gambling practices. The ubiquity of gambling brands has enabled gambling to become a normalised part of football culture. The findings from this study show how FUN88 has used all elements of the sponsorship assemblage to create an emotional connection whilst engaging with Newcastle United's fans to increase consumption of its products.

The purpose of this paper is to provide commentary on Soccer Society debate that is used to create accountability research agenda.

The methodology applied is thematic analysis of debate in relation to accountability research gaps.

The authors found that areas for future football accountability research include refereeing, human rights in event hosting, governance, ownership, networks and club and fan finances.

The study contributes to debate commentary and agenda for football accountability research.

The primary purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the key perspectives that emerge in this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Special Issue as a basis for determining the existence or otherwise of a Soccer Society, as well as reflecting on the challenges that evidence of corruption in soccer (the beautiful game) has had on the game to date. Reflections on these matters are then utilised to offer a prospective analysis of issues for further research.

The paper is a reflective analysis that draws on existing societal work to provide key dimensions of accounting and accountability for significant organisations in the world of sport in general and soccer in particular.

Much prior research on soccer has largely focussed on the internal workings of soccer organisations, with little discussion of the importance of context. This paper explores the influence of the game more broadly. Moreover, a number of the papers included illustrate an overwhelming sense of joy and pleasure from experiences of the beautiful game, as well as providing evidence of the general societal good that can flow from it. However, the study also highlights concerns emanating from weak, and seemingly pliable, governance, regulatory and accountability regimes that provide a fertile field for corruption and sportswashing.

This paper highlights a research agenda as an encouragement to interdisciplinary accounting researchers to investigate accountability and governance issues as a basis for evidence-based discussions of the impact of soccer and its regulation.

This paper specifically, and the Special Issue more broadly, offers a set of original empirical and theoretical contributions with respect to an activity that has faced limited scrutiny and consideration by academic accountants. Together, they offer a substantive body of work to enable future research in this area.

Despite increasingly persuasive women-focused marketing of gambling products, there has only been limited investigation around women sports betting. Men remain the focus of much of the conversation about sports betting as they have generally been found to be the most active sports bettors and the most at risk of experiencing harms associated with their behaviour. This chapter aims to fill this gap by exploring the characteristics of young women sports bettors in the United Kingdom and the relationship between sports betting and the experience of gambling harms. To do this, we created two models of analysis. Our analysis is based on data from the first wave (2019) of the Emerging Adults Gambling Survey (EAGS) dataset (n = 3,549). The EAGS is a non-probability longitudinal survey that includes individuals between the ages of 16 and 24 who were residents in Britain at the time of data collection. Firstly, we examined the associations between women sports bettors and several factors identified as important predictors of sports betting. Secondly, we sought to understand the relationship between women's sports betting and the harms associated with this activity. From these models, we found that women's sports betting was most reliably predicted according to fandom and peer influence. We also found that women sports bettors were more at risk of experiencing harms associated with difficulties with family and friends than women gamblers using other products.

The purpose of this study is to explore the plurality of logics composing an organizational field and how that plurality affects a sport governing body's (SGB) sense of self. The authors sought to determine what logics exist in a specific field and how they interact according to Kraatz and Block's (2017) types of organizational responses. Finally, the authors explore how an organization's responses affect organizational outcomes.

The authors analyzed 476 unique organizational web pages and documents and 293 news media articles from four news outlets. The authors conduct a content analysis informed by Gioia et al.’s (2013) method to explore the website data to understand the logics of the field. The authors analyze the media articles for media accounts of events and determine how logics inform an SGB's actions (Cocchairella and Edwards, 2020).

The authors find institutional plurality leads to a fractured organizational sense of self, resulting in poor outcomes. The authors' findings suggest Kraatz and Block's (2017) as well as other previously theorized strategies do not lead to an organization reconciling competing logics. Rather, the strategies employed led to outcomes harming the organization's legitimacy and financial well-being.

There are several calls within the broader management field and the sport management field to address institutional plurality (Kraatz and Block, 2017; Robertson et al., 2022). Unlike previous research studies, this study finds detrimental effects of plurality on an organization. The authors discuss the strength of the strategies employed and why the strategies failed.