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The conclusion brings together the narratives and empirical case studies that have been presented in the collection and propose future research agendas. We conclude that emergent, and established, professionalisation of women's sport will continue to pose challenges that need to be made visible. We discuss a need for continued engagement in research media coverage, in all its formats, given its centrality to the commercial success of sport. We also articulate that experiences in and of women's professional sport are characterised by gender inequities. We advocate that it is not enough to think about women's professional sport as the little sister of men's professional sport are argue that there is work to be done for researchers in this area.

This chapter introduces and sets the scene for a discussion on women's sport in a professional era. Initiated in the wake of the second-wave feminist movement in America in the 1950s with the professionalisation of golf and tennis, the move for other women's sports to be professionalised has been slow, sporadic and marred with difficulties. However, since the turn of the twenty-first century, there have been significant changes in the landscape of elite women's sport. Alongside an overview of the developments in elite level women's sport, we conceptualise the terms ‘professionalisation’, ‘professional’ and ‘professionalism’. Furthermore, the chapter identifies the scope of the book, drawing upon the importance to consider women's sport as distinct from men's sport and identifying issues that are specific to female athletes, such as maternity and the gender pay gap. We also recognise the diverse and multiple nature of women's identities, highlighting the intersectionality of female athletes in professional sport (specifically around race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and national identity).

This study surveys professional niche sports sponsors in an effort to empirically understand what selection criteria these companies deem important when evaluating professional niche sports sponsorship proposals. Findings suggest that professional niche sports properties may possess unique attributes on which sponsors place very high levels of importance, such as cost effectiveness, flexibility in assisting sponsors achieve their objectives, a more targeted fan-base and decreased sponsorship clutter. Pragmatically, findings provide professional niche sports managers with tools that may be useful when competing for sponsorship funding against more established mainstream sports properties. Theoretically, the current study begins to fill a gap in the sports sponsorship literature which has primarily focused on mainstream professional sports, major intercollegiate sports and elite amateur sports such as the Olympic Games.

Professional road cycling has the capacity to be a major worldwide spectator sport, but has yet, in the eyes of many, failed to realize its full potential. There is a growing awareness that profound reforms are crucial for the sport’s future success. The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions which the sport must address, and define a new business model for professional road cycling.

The paper uses qualitative data to screen professional road cycling’s current business model, and to present a coherent vision on the changes needed to reform the sport. Information was gathered from archival material and from talks with stakeholders.

The paper presents a blueprint for the future of professional cycling. It identifies 6 vital building blocks and 25 specific action points, beginning with the idea that professional road cycling needs a stable business model that produces a valuable core product.

Professional road cycling is is conservative by nature and changes are extremely difficult to implement. This contribution presents a glimpse of one possible future for professional cycling, if cycling’s policy makers acknowledge the need for profound reforms of the sport and are willing to make the necessary changes.

Turnover of employees is a key challenge for companies. The same is true for sports clubs that must set appropriate incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention. As salary caps and team budgets restrict monetary incentives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of organizational support on turnover intention of professional team sports athletes.

The paper applies a combined approach of qualitative and quantitative research and considers the specific requirements of European professional team sports. First, a qualitative study investigates organizational support in team sports and identifies relevant non-monetary incentives. Second, a quantitative study tests the effects of the identified organizational support incentives on turnover intention using a unique data set of professional team sports athletes. Third, a moderation analysis measures possible effects of age.

Through the qualitative study, three relevant non-monetary incentives could be identified in the context of professional team sports: integration of family (IOF), second career support, and private problem support. The subsequent quantitative study of football, ice hockey and handball athletes assesses the effectiveness of the identified incentives. All three incentives negatively influence athletes’ turnover intention, while IOF has a substantially stronger negative effect on turnover intention for younger athletes.

The findings indicate the importance of organizational support to decrease athletes’ turnover intention. Although money is relevant, sports clubs also need to address non-monetary incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention.

Sponsorship sales in professional sport is an area of increasing attention and growing investment, but the sport management literature offers only limited research about sales strategies and tactics. As a result, practitioners and academics alike have called for investigation in the area. In response to this need, the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore sponsorship sales in professional sport.

Sponsorship sales professionals working for sport properties in the four major North American sport leagues were surveyed on a variety of sponsorship sales-related variables and factors.

A total of 92 sponsorship sales professionals responded to the study, for an estimated 15.3 percent response rate. At the time of the data collection, the 92 respondents worked in the National Football League (NFL) (37), Major League Baseball (MLB) (16), National Basketball Association (NBA) (18), and National Hockey League (NHL) (21). A series of practical, conceptual, and comparative results are presented, highlighted by turnover as a problem, the importance of activation/servicing in sponsorship sales, and the high level of investment clubs are making in sponsorship sales.

First, on “coverage,” the authors acknowledge that variations in the data can be linked, to a large extent, to reporting issues due to the nature of the study, the data, and the sample. Variations in sponsor number or training, for example, are not necessarily indicative of weaknesses in the industry, but occur because of strategic differences among properties. Second, it is important to note that not all properties had personnel respond to the study. Consequently, the figures presented in this study might be a function of the individual personnel who responded rather than a true average figure for a particular league. Third, in terms of the sample, this study deals with a very specific context in the four North American major sport leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL). Thus, one should be careful in generalizing to minor professional, collegiate, Olympic, or other sport contexts.

The finding of this paper states that the turnover of sponsors may be a structural issue and is certainly related to the demand for the particular property (Seaver Marketing Group, 2010). Driven by a number of factors, including technology shifts to digital channels and increased sophistication by the sponsorship sales departments of professional sport properties, a shift in the activation and service paradigm is reported and extended to the specific context of sponsorship sales.

Results show that sport properties in the North American major sport leagues have a strong commitment to sponsorship sales by the organization (commitment of resources), by sport personnel (who support the business side), and by their sponsorship sales professionals who report satisfaction, motivation, and support from their property.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical research study specific on sponsorship sales in professional sport, thus providing direction for practice and future research on an issue of high importance to the sport industry.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the economic effects of Covid-19 on French men's professional basketball club championships. Three research questions are raised: What are the characteristics of the economic model of French men's professional basketball? Has this economic model changed over the 2008/2009 to 2018/2019 period? What are the economic effects of the Covid-19 crisis on the finance of French men's professional basketball clubs?

Relying on a privileged access to the financial data of professional clubs in the two top-tier divisions (456 observations: 222 in Pro A/Jeep Elite and 234 in Pro B), this research focuses on economic models of French men's professional basketball clubs. The breakdown of revenues, expenses and financial performance is examined over the 2008/2009 to 2018/2019 period. The short-term economic effects of Covid-19 are measured over the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 seasons.

The Covid-19 crisis, at least in the short term (2019/2020 season), has affected revenues and expenses. With the closedown of the championship, two out of three main revenue sources have significantly decreased, while two main expense sources have decreased as well. The net incomes of Jeep Elite and Pro B clubs are in the black contrasting with the 2018/2019 season (pre-Covid) owing to clubs having benefited from governmental and federal measures and a stronger support from local authorities and their shareholders.

Given the financial difficulties that clubs would have faced without governmental support, the federation and leagues would be well advised to develop a real crisis management competence within professional clubs. Owners of French professional men’s basketball clubs must increasingly adopt product diversification strategies to be better prepared for future crises.

Recent research on the economic effects of Covid-19 has focused on professional and amateur football. To the best of our knowledge, one does not avail detailed research on the potential effects of a health crisis fought with containment measures on professional basketball clubs. French professional basketball deserves to be studied because it has the third largest professional league revenue (behind football and rugby) and it is the second most practiced sport in France. Its sources of finance, which are different from those witnessed in football and rugby, also make it an appropriate subject for study.

This chapter takes an interdisciplinary approach combining expertise in sports management and in philosophy to examine the premises underpinning the contested claim that professional athletes have a special obligation to be role models both within and beyond the sporting arena. Arguments for and against the claim are briefly addressed, as a prelude to identifying and elucidating a set of factors relevant to a consideration of this alleged special obligation. The chapter considers understandings of sport, play and athleticism from an ethical perspective and examines their relationship to professionalism to determine the extent to which ethical imperatives can logically be upheld or undermined within the professional context. The chapter concludes that professional athletes cannot be expected to be able to respond to the demand that they act as role models within and beyond the sporting arena unless the tensions implicit within that demand are articulated. The chapter calls for recognition of the complexity of ethical decision-making in the context of professional sport and recommends that the training of professional athletes should prepare them to deal with this complexity. Recognition of the complexity of decision-making with the professional sporting context suggests the need for further research into optimal training strategies for young professional athletes and into the genesis and reasonableness of the demand that such athletes act as role models both within and beyond the sporting arena.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between general market demands and consumption levels of professional sport consumers. This study was accomplished through: (a) validating the theoretical constructs of general market demand variables by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis, (b) examining the predictability of general market demand factors to consumption levels of live and televised sporting events, and (c) investigating the relationships between sociodemographic and general market demand factors. Five hundred and twenty-five residents of a major southern US city were interviewed using a questionnaire that included eight sociodemographic variables, 12 market demand variables under three factors (Game Attractiveness, Economic Consideration, and Marketing Promotion), and 10 professional sporting event consumption variables. The factor structure of the general market demand variables was confirmed. Regression analyses revealed that market demand factors were positively (p < .05) predictive of professional sport consumption. Sociodemographic variables were significantly (p < .05) related to the market demand factors. The findings imply that professional sport teams should highlight the market demand variables and adopt differential marketing procedures for various sociodemographic segments in their marketing practice.

As the global economy expands, it would seem to be in the interests of the major professional sport leagues of the US to move into new markets, especially China, one of the fastest growing and largest in the world. In order to sell effectively in this market, it is vital to gain an understanding of the potential fan base. To explore national differences in fandom, a survey was completed by sports fans in both China and the US to assess which sports participants followed and which media they used, to identify fan motives and their feelings about expansion. This study determined that there are clear differences between Chinese and Americans. While many of the Chinese were fans of American sports, they tended to follow individual athletes rather than teams and had relatively low fan identity but high levels of fan motivation. Motives also varied by country, with aesthetics and affiliation the primary motives among the Chinese sample. These distinctions can be utilised to create marketing strategies.