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The main goal of this paper is to consider the necessity of founding ethical committees in professional sports. In the first part of the paper the authors consider the emergence of the first ethical committee in medicine, and the emergence of bioethics as a social movement and academic discipline. In the second part of the paper, the authors examine few examples of ethical committees in contemporary professional sport and the need to set up ethical committees within sports associations to consider numerous ethical problems: doping, match fixing, referee errors, racism, injuries, sex/gender and body issues, sexual abuse in sports etc. These topics are also an inevitable field studied within bioethics, so the following question arises: 'Is the official establishment of ethical committees in professional sports as an aspect of 'bioethicalization' of sport a real need that is imposed due to the growing ethical problems that are present in modern sports?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper was to examine the invisible hand behind a corrupt structure in professional sports. Specifically, this paper sought to explain the match-fixing phenomenon in sports from the perspective of the Code of Brotherhood (CoB, yiqi 義氣) and to address the underlying mechanisms through which illegal behaviour is generated and continuously practised, as well as the dynamics serving both individual agendas and organisational interests. Taking Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) as a case study, the findings revealed that the origin and embodiment of CoB, the nature of CoB, and the CoB as the driver of trust illustrate how CoB functioned in and paved the way for match-fixing. The application of CoB as an emic Chinese construct helps to explain why match-fixing is conceived and realized, not just for money, but rather in the name of righteousness and loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses sports hero formation in relation to national identity, arguing that it can be a critical component of the development of a hero. A netnographic approach, that encompassed a number of virtual spaces and methods of analyses, was utilised to examine the formation of sports heroes within the setting of a new professional sports team. Drawing upon the work of Joseph Campbell and Orrin E. Klapp, it contextualises the sporting hero in the wider narratives of hero typologies. It argues that the formation of sports heroes is shaped by established notions of national identity and longstanding mythological archetypes rather than heroes' personal traits or deeds. Universal hero myths, furthermore, provide recognised narratives that frame the emergence of new heroes in otherwise very different societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an application and a further development of Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning's (2008) Quest for Excitement thesis through the analysis of the recent phenomenon of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) in USA. The research method is based on qualitative data analysis of different digital sources concerning bare-knuckle fighting, ranging from newspaper reports, interviews with promoters and fighters, social network posts, videos, etc. The main finding is that BKFC portrays certain features (e.g. no gloves, blood) that constitute a 'spectacularization of violence'; it apparently increases the perceived danger of the practice even though it does not increase real harm (e.g. concussions, deaths). BKFC employs other strategies emphasizing control, safety and respectability as a counterweight to obtain an adequate tension balance within the US threshold of sensitivity to violence concerning professional combat sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs are touted as catalysts for both economic stabilization and growth within various industries. In the case of men's professional hockey in North America, one such entrepreneur was Conn Smythe, owner of the Toronto Maple Leaf franchise and Maple Leaf Gardens. This paper summarizes Smythe's success in relation to internal characteristics, such as personal attitude, skills and expertise, and external characteristics such as cultural, political and economic change. His influence upon the professional sport industry is also discussed in both positive and negative terms. In conclusion, the complexity and contradiction of Con Smythe as a hockey entrepreneur are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a statistical analysis of the violence and incivility of professional football players on and around the field and how the disciplinary bodies manage these phenomena. The sanctions issued by the disciplinary committees were examined with the objectives of (i) empirically determining the distribution of sanctioned behaviours and their evolution, and (ii) evaluating how these infringements on sporting ethics were handled. The 6027 observations collected from professional football competitions in France over ten seasons (2007–2008 to 2016–2017) highlight contrasting changes in sanctioned violence and incivilities and show that the disciplinary code was not fully applied in certain subcategories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Switzerland's National League is the world's third most high-paying ice hockey championship after the NHL and the KHL, even though Switzerland is a small country with a population of 8.5 million and the league's professional clubs are based in areas that vary enormously in terms of their local potential (demographic and economic). How do these clubs exploit such different local potentials? In this paper, we examine the relationship between a club's local potential and its commercial, financial and sporting results. Based on our data, we outline the specific characteristics of the different models adopted by Switzerland's first division ice hockey clubs and draw up an empirical typology of four types of club. Our study's contribution is both methodological and empirical. We describe an operational model that can be used to characterize local potential and three types of club expertise: marketing, managerial and sporting expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capitalist sports-media complex is heavily subsidized in many countries. Teams, leagues and their corporate partners enjoy state-donated land and stadia, favourable tax rates, legislative and judicial relief from antitrust requirements, the player and fan development systems of state-supported playgrounds, schools, colleges and universities, and the legitimation of public ceremonies. They claim these benefits on the basis of the economic spin-offs they generate and the ‘branding’ of cities and regions they headline. But in an earlier political tradition these expectations were reversed. Both sports entrepreneurs and professional athletes were expected to contribute financially to the development of amateur and community sport, on the grounds that it is these programmes that train the players and educate the fans on which capitalist sport depends. One such example was the tax on professional sport levied during the interwar years by the Ontario Athletic Commission (OAC), the subject of this paper. The OAC was the very first state sports body in Canada, and in many ways it set the mould for the state-directed and state-financed programmes of the federal and provincial governments today, although the tax on professional sports no longer exists. The paper was written in 1994, while I was still a member of the board of the publicly owned Stadium Corporation of Ontario, which operated Toronto's SkyDome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The result has been a veritable explosion of detailed and compelling accounts of various aspects of the game as a social phenomenon, including anything from the development of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the organization of women's ice hockey to violence on and off the ice, as well as the staging of the sport as a Cold War battleground. This is perhaps especially true about ice hockey outside of North America, as the expansion of the European Union, the increasing internationalization of the NHL and the rise at the turn of the millennium 2000 of the transnational Russian equivalent, the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), have contributed to a profound transformation of the sport both on and off the ice. The National Hockey League (NHL), as one of five major leagues (with baseball as the prime model), is closely linked to the entertainment industry and is based on the principle of profit maximization, which means that the franchise (club) owners strive to achieve the greatest possible financial profitability. At the end of the article, Altukhov, Mason and Osokin compare KHL logics with NHL culture, which leads to a discussion of the future of the KHL. [Extracted from the article]

Studies of elite and professional athletes have pointed to a high level of tolerance of pain among such athletes, coupled with a willingness to continue training and competing even when injured and in pain. The central object of this article is to examine some of the ways in which non-elite players of rugby union and rugby league at a British university respond to and manage pain and injury. The central finding is that the attitudes and behaviour of the non-elite rugby players appear to be broadly similar to the attitudes and behaviour of elite and professional athletes in other sports. This suggests that key elements of the ‘culture of risk’ which has been identified in elite and professional sport are not confined to elite sport but that they are also characteristic of non-elite sport. Particularly important in this regard is the culture of ‘playing hurt’, that is, continuing to play with pain and injury, the value of which is clearly accepted by the non-elite rugby players in this sample. These findings suggest that the ‘culture of risk’ cannot be adequately explained in terms of relatively recent commercial and financial pressures in professional and elite sport to ‘play hurt’, but that it may be a more deeply rooted characteristic of sport at all levels. The paper also examines some of the implications of these findings for government policies designed to improve the health of the nation by encouraging people to participate in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the basic tenets and assumptions of agency theory, which has emerged as a significant stream of research in the broader organizational studies literature. Following an overview of the agency theory literature, and a description of the agency relationships that exist between parties, we discuss agency problems and the costs associated with maintaining agency relationships, along with solutions to said agency problems proposed in previous work. In doing so, we incorporate examples from the sports industry, and previous research examining agency theory in a sporting context. The article concludes by discussing of the value of agency theory as a framework to understand the sport industry. As a result, we hope to provide an alternative theoretical basis for studying organizations and their stakeholder within the sports industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a significant increase in research around Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the sport management context and it has been argued that CSR outcomes have marketing implications. Despite this increase, there is a gap in identifying the influence that CSR initiatives have on marketing performance within a professional sport management context. Moreover, the South African sport industry is rapidly professionalising with a need for the application of business management practices to the unique sport industry. This study explored the relationship between CSR and the marketing performance of selected professional sport organisations across South Africa. Six organisations were selected, representative of the three major professional sport codes in the country, namely cricket, rugby and soccer. Following a qualitative research approach, key personnel at the organisations were purposefully selected for in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted and the following core themes emerged: marketing objectives; income/revenue growth; marketing share; and CSR initiatives. The study proposed a set of criteria to assess the influence of CSR on marketing performance, which included: tickets and sales; brand loyalty; brand perception; media coverage; and sponsorship. The study clarifies the relationship between CSR and marketing performance in the South African professional sport environment and presents policy and practice-based recommendations based on these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dehumanization of professional athletes by sports fans has become a talking point for mainstream media, and fantasy sports participation is in the crosshairs. The social competition and romanticized ownership of the game spur strategy where participants theoretically utilize professional athletes in a mechanistic fashion, and as a result, may dehumanize them in the process. Previous work studying dehumanization in gaming has found outcomes related to moral disengagement and isolation. Recent research, however, found fantasy football participants actually humanize their own fantasy athletes over non-fantasy athletes. The current study looked to confirm the previous work and extend it to the context of fantasy baseball. Two samples of fantasy participants (football and baseball) were tested from a mechanistic dehumanization perspective. The results provide an opportunity for broadcasters, developers, teams, leagues, and even athletes to capitalize on the unique relationship between fantasy participants and professional athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to define the concept of sustainability as it applies to one of the most competitive and accelerated subsystem of human activity, elite sport (or professional sport) to construct a robust understanding of it. Based on qualitative research with Hungarian Olympic athletes, we created an elite-sport-based Sustainable Sport questionnaire with 23 statements to test and map emerging topics related to elite sport. Revealed elements of Sustainable Sport include (1) future orientation, (2) community, (3) decommodification, and (4) a redefined concept of performance. This definition reflects the problems of sport particularly, and (hypothetically) of society and the economy in general. It points toward both environmental sustainability (strong sustainability) and enhanced wellbeing and may serve as a broader guide to human activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a rapidly changing international relations system, several governments are turning to sport as a cost-effective and high-profile soft power asset. However, in using sport as a tool, much of that function relates to mega-sport events, elite sports and professional athletes and neglects to include the grassroots level, where the organizations, interventions and stakeholders are considered irrelevant for state-led public diplomacy. Yet, grassroots sport-based, sport for development interventions are regularly claimed to strengthen people-to-people relations, contributing to the socio-economic development across groups. As such, gaps in the theory and practice of sport diplomacy endure what, for example, is the relation between the bottom-up, participatory approach of grassroots sport and the top-down, elitist understanding of state-led public diplomacy. This article aims to demonstrate the linkages between grassroots sport, sport diplomacy and Sport for Development and Peace while also attempting to conceptualize the term 'grassroots sport diplomacy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essential requirement of sport, and especially elite professional sport, are umpires, judges, referees, and other adjudicators of the rules of the games. Yet studies of match officials, in the social sciences especially, have only relatively recently begun to gain traction. This article traces the challenges and opportunities association football match officials (referees and assistant referees) in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) faced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and early 2021. It provides an overview of the strategies and actions that the AFC took, primarily drawing on analysis of ethnographic observations, documentary evidence and notes from the research diary of an AFC elite referee with the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA). The article identifies key aspects of pandemic-related developments and indicates how these may have altered future processes of training and development of referees in the AFC for good. The article thus offers a distinctive contribution to the development of referee studies focussing as it does on the experiences of match officials outside of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ice hockey is an established site for talent identification and development in Finland. In this ethnographic study, I examine the discourses that top gatekeepers of Finnish elite junior hockey construct and favour with respect to the human capital potentiality of ice hockey players. Building upon Foucauldian discourse analysis, the study identified two competing discourses within the Finnish ice hockey domain. The dominant one considers a player to be a capital investment, and the aim is symbolic and economic success; the lesser, but still very vital, discourse looks at a player as an individual with potential that can be nurtured with the right attitudes and conditions. Together, these discourses create a social space in which up-and-coming hockey players' talents are identified and decisions are made about their possible future athletic careers. These conflicting discourses create tensions for coaches—that is, whether they must obey commercial logic despite their own motivation for working with junior athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the efficacy of educational partnerships by sport management and business programs with professional sports clubs. We utilize a case study of the Lock Haven University partnership with Wolverhampton Wanderers of the Premier League in England which was formed in 2019. Both organizations are seeking to expand their footprint, particularly in the North American marketplace. We view the partnership from the lens of value adding for students and for professional sports organizations. Further discussions of leveraging other relationships for student project work, study abroad and internships are also made in our presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Cuban is known by many as one of the first-ever fan owners in the National Basketball Association. Using the wealth he amassed from his hard work and innovative practices in the software and technology industries, Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks franchise around the turn of the millennium and began forming what would become one of professional sport's more entertaining and successful franchises over the past few decades. Along the way, his unique philosophies and leadership styles helped pave the way for likeminded managers in modern sport, and the examples he set are worthy of highlighting for their effects on the industry and society as a whole. This examination therefore takes a closer look at Mark Cuban, discussing his meteoric rise and the methods that have helped him achieve a high degree of financial and sporting success. His participative leadership style and unique management and marketing methods, in particular, are noted for the impacts they have had on professional sport and the broader business world. His embracement of analytics and thoughts on sport in higher education are also examined in light of their relevance to modern sport and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to identify important functions of a mentoring programme in Germany targeted at elite athletes and how they facilitate the transition phase from sporting career to professional career. We adapted the Mentor Role Instrument by Ragins and McFarlin to sport. The newly created scale was assessed by means of principal component analysis (PCA) and validated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with data collected from n = 80 (for the PCA) and n = 197 (for the CFA) elite athletes taking part in a mentoring programme. The results reveal that mentors fulfil the functions of a benefactor, counsellor, supportive friend, role model and accepting partner. The overall functions of the mentoring relationship had a significant positive impact on satisfaction with the support in transitioning into a professional career. A key implication is that mentoring is a well-received instrument in supporting athletes with the transition phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's professional team sport leagues have experienced a dramatic increase, yet research exploring the employment conditions and the perspectives the players involved is relatively sparse. The commencement of an inaugural rugby league competition for women in Australia and New Zealand provided a unique research opportunity to explore physical, sociocultural and organizational conditions and requirements of women athletes, and to identify inclusive management strategies and policies. Forty-nine perspective players for the professional competition were interviewed about their views on the transition of the women's game from amateur to professional status and the associated management considerations. Two aggregate themes emerged from the interview data analysis: Gender identity and Institutional practice. The interview findings, together with an analysis of other women's professional team sport enterprise agreements, informed decision making about the league's size, duration and individual contract inclusions. Further implications for practice and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of rugby union football in Australian society presents a rich context to play and display critical social issues, particularly, identity formations and contestations. This essay examines the development of elite rugby union in Australia from its inception to professionalization. In its amateur development, the processes of colonization and cultural impositions created its culture and legacy. With the overlapping of sporting and economic networks, rugby union entered the professional era. This essay argues that the development from amateurism to 'shamateurism' to professionalism was uneven and contested on various levels. Whilst the development of rugby union in Australia was both a reflection and manifestation of globalization it did not totally parallel the globalization of sport in general, indeed rugby union football remains a particularly 'glocal' game. The points of resistance and departure, this essay concludes, distinguish the identity of rugby union from other sporting institutions and their wider social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, Janus is used as a metaphor for examining the nature of cultural diversity in Australian sport. It does so by firstly presenting a historical context for sport in Australia and the relative lack of cultural diversity found in sport. Within a country dominated by the running codes of football and cricket, the position of soccer in Australia was somewhat unique as it became a bastion for many non-Anglo migrant groups. However, in the 1980s and 1990s soccer's lack of organizational success at the state and national level was negatively ascribed to the tensions between the ethnically affiliated clubs, the same clubs that were ironically the stalwarts driving the growing popularity of the sport. We examine the initiatives used to restructure the game in Australia to make football more appealing to mainstream (i.e. non-ethnically aligned) spectators. The contemporary situation is explored through secondary documentation and the results of a survey of 3,056 spectators undertaken during the first season of the new A-League are presented. The essay concludes with a discussion about the relative success of the restructure in terms of changing the face of Australian soccer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores different understandings of fans and fandom between sport studies and pop culture studies through presentation of survey data originally collected for a study on global fandom/global fan studies. Email surveys from 65 fan scholars around the world reveal important distinctions between sport scholars and pop culture scholars in terms of their basic understandings of fans and fandom, the role of self-reflexivity in fan research, and the location of sport and other pop culture scholarship in the academy. Analysis points to a disjuncture between sport and pop culture fan studies that ultimately limits the ability to fully understand the range of fan experiences and fandoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport has always been a serious business in Australian life at local, national and international levels. The future of Australian sport depends on whether she decides to become a major sporting nation in terms of international achievement and international power, by allowing Australian sport to become fully professional. In all likelihood Australian sport will become professional to enable it to remain internationally competitive and to reflect the major section it makes up of the entertainment industry. However, there are opponents who believe that professionalism and money would inevitably destroy the fundamental goodness of sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the increasing seriousness of sport, the merging of sporting, media and economic concerns, and argues that in some cases, professional or elite sport has become so similar to work that we should no longer consider it to have similarities to a leisure activity. Moreover, these changes to sport will have an impact upon people's illusio, or emotional engagement with such activities. In particular, this essay examines the way in which the meaning of sport to participants, and the generation of ‘tension excitement’ among spectators, has been affected by drug controversies in sports such as cycling. The essay questions the longer-term impact of these processes on the future of sport and, in particular, illusio in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 1998 FIFA faced a crisis. The European Commission objected to football's transfer system (payment of fees for players who change clubs during the life of their contract), seeking its abolition. Three years earlier, in Bosman, the European Court of Justice found against the compensation system (payment of fees for players who change clubs after the expiry of their contract). FIFA, together with UEFA, lobbied the European Commission and leading politicians, to turn the Commission away from this position. FIFA and UEFA were not only successful in securing the maintenance of the transfer system, but also achieved resurrection of compensation fees for players less than 23. This study provides an account of the major machinations of these events and a critical commentary on the rules developed. The study maintains that the rules are inconsistent with the European Treaty, confused and contradictory and will be overly bureaucratic. FIFA's objects could be more easily achieved by the introduction of a simple administrative rule; placing an upper limit on the size of playing squads of clubs in leading, or top-flight, divisions. Part I, which appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of this journal, examined the economics of professional team sports, the Bosman case and the interactions of various parties in constructing a new set of rules. Part II describes the new rules and provides a critical commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]