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Children's right to play and leisure has historically and currently been violated by the many demands of adults. This is now evident in the widespread structuring of the time of middle-class children in programmed activities, including sports. In a contribution to this special issue on leisure, citizenship and human rights the paper begins with an overview of how participation in sports became so work-like for many children. This is followed by an examination of the struggle to define such work as child labour. And the paper concludes with a consideration of how it may be possible to transform sport, protecting participants under the framework of children's and labour rights – nurturing children accomplished in sport without exploiting or abusing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2016, Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to improve his country's economic and strategic position through sports diplomacy. These efforts include investments in a diverse portfolio of sports properties, including hosting marquee professional sporting events at home and financing leagues and teams abroad. It is all part of Saudi Arabia's 'Vision 2030' strategic plan to diversify the Kingdom's economy. This paper discusses the foreign and domestic policy purposes underlying Saudi Arabia's sports diplomacy and their wider implications for the global economy. I argue that the sports diplomacy initiated by MBS is an investment both in the long-term strategic interests of Saudi Arabia and in the longevity of the ruling regime. Soft power accumulation, as would be predicted by the sports mega-events literature, is a secondary consideration. This paper unfolds in three parts, First, I discuss the relationship between sportswashing, sports diplomacy, and soft power. Second, I provide an overview of Saudi Arabia's sports engagements since 2014. Third, I explain Saudi Arabia's behaviour relative to the literature on sports diplomacy. Fourth, I explain Saudi Arabia's sports diplomacy with reference to the goals laid out in its Vision 2030 policy. I conclude with a discussion of the wider implications of Saudi Arabia's sports diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States Supreme Court ruling that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was unconstitutional in May 2018 has changed the professional sport landscape. Currently, states are working to create and pass sports betting laws and capitalize on the financial opportunities, while professional leagues are looking to do the same. One way the leagues can further benefit financially from sports betting is selling athletes' biometric data (ABD) to data providers, such as Sportradar and Genius Sports. However, the dearth of legal precedent on protections of ABD and the lack of delineation of ownership of ABD within collective bargaining agreements poses obstacles for leagues to overcome before offering ABD in sports betting platforms. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss (1) the current state of sports betting in the United States, (2) the legal precedent around ABD, (3) the challenges that stem from legal precedent or laws, and (4) a solution for how leagues can sell ABD to data providers while being compliant with applicable laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applied performance analysts are increasingly seen as sports science professionals; however, there is no accepted framework for professional practice. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a framework for professional practice in applied performance analysis (PA) which identifies the components of practice and the expertise underpinning it. A six-step framework analysis was conducted: (1) An initial conceptual framework was devised based on well-accepted components of applied practice; (2) A systematic review identified 90 papers relating to applied PA practice; (3) Papers were coded to the initial framework and additional themes recorded; (4) Themes were analysed and synthesised to construct a draft framework; (5) This draft was validated by surveying 24 experienced applied performance analysts and academic experts; (6) A revised framework is reported based on stakeholder engagement feedback. Nine components of practice were identified; establishing relationships and defining roles, needs analysis and service planning, system design, data collection and reliability checking, data management, analysis, reporting to key stakeholders, facilitation of feedback to athletes and service review and evaluation. Our evidence suggests that applied PA practice is underpinned by five areas of expertise: contextual awareness, building relationships, performance analysis and sporting expertise, technical expertise and professional behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Players involved in the various football codes compete throughout the calendar year around the world. Therefore, environmental stressors such as temperature and altitude should be considered in preparation for, and during, matches. We aimed to systematically review the observational and quasi-experimental studies that have been specifically designed to quantify the effects of temperature (hot or cold) high altitude on in-match physical performance indicators. A search of electronic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, PubMed/MEDLINE) was conducted, with 19,424 papers identified as relevant. Following sifting in relation to the eligibility criteria, 12 papers were deemed directly relevant. The reviewed studies scored 6–9 (on a 0–9 scale) for quality assessment using a previously used scale. The major outcome variables relevant to the current review were total distance (m), high-speed running (m) and high-speed runs (count) measured during matches. Standardized effect sizes (ES) were heterogeneous across studies for total distance (ES: −0.96 to −0.14) and high-speed running (ES: −0.69 to 0.12) for >1000 m vs sea-level, time spent at the given altitude being a putative factor for this heterogeneity. Heat had mainly detrimental effects on performance, but ES were, again, heterogeneous across studies (ES: −1.25 to 0.26), dependent on temperature. Given the small number of studies that involved mostly male athletes, and large heterogeneity across studies, more research needs be conducted on physical performance in these environmental conditions, with attention paid to standardizing outcomes and broadening the approaches of studies to guide future decision-making in professional sporting environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have explored the specific risk factors of sports betting attending to the singularities of sports bettors. However, many of these are also present in other gambling profiles (e.g. younger age, males, higher education, skill-based gambling) and fail to tackle the essentially distinguishing trait of sports betting, namely, its symbolic association with sport. This conceptual paper argues that sports betting draws from a rich pool of meanings from professional sport that influences how sports betting products are understood. It argues that, unlike other gambling products whose symbolic covering has to be built after, sports betting relies on a preexisting symbolic pool that structures its social significance. Sport confers to sports betting attributes of agency, control, and skill that make betting products more skill-oriented and less chance-based, but also other attributes of health, game, fun, and nature that decrease the perceived risks associated with sports betting. The paper contends that the symbolic association of sport and sports betting poses particular barriers for treatment of gambling disorder in the form of resistant cognitions about winning because professional sport embodies narratives of success deeply engraved in modern society, to an extent other gambling forms cannot compete in creating via their marketing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments in many countries are increasingly interested in using community sport as a vehicle for improving public health through physical activity (PA) promotion. This has been associated with an increasing interdependence between the community sport and health policy sectors. However, there are no empirically grounded studies which have examined this directly and systematically in England. By examining Sport England's Get Healthy, Get Active (GHGA) initiative, this paper presents novel evidence derived from interviews held with strategic policy-makers from Sport England and a professional football charity (Everton in the Community), and 67 men who engaged in one of the GHGA funded programmes, Active Blues. The findings reveal how the increasing interdependence between community sport and health policy has been characterised by tightly contested and congested relations of power at local and national levels. Although Sport England was the lead organisation which coordinated and was accountable for community sport, it was nevertheless highly dependent on organisations outside of the sector, including health organisations, to deliver their community sport goals. This was indicative of the relatively vulnerable and marginal position which Sport England, and sport policy, occupied in the policy landscape and the associated generalisation of interests from sport to public health. The policy spillover from more powerful policy sectors such as health, to comparatively less powerful ones like community sport, raises questions about the degree to which government can realistically expect to achieve their formal community sport and health policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Johan Huizinga's most prolific study of play, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture he states that for play to be considered authentic, genuine and real it must be fun, free, spontaneous and creative. Huizinga believed that play ought to be separate from ordinary and real life with the outcomes of play baring little to no consequences beyond the play contest (1950, 7–13). While Huizinga acknowledged that play could be utterly absorbing it should only be serious within the contest itself and not thereafter. Yet given the serious, structured, commercialised nature of the professional sports industry how can Huizinga's discussion of play be useful today? This paper will highlight that even in the professional world of sport, Huizinga's play characteristics still have an important role to play in ensuring professional athletes and teams can reach their full potential. Indeed, the confrontation between Huizinga and professional sport leads us to re-think Huizinga's account of play. Using the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) as a case study, this paper will highlight how making the club environment and playing the game as fun and free as possible assisted the Tigers in winning their first AFL Premiership for 37 years in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports referees are not always as unbiased or impartial as they ideally should be. Studies have shown, for example, that in their decisions, referees seem to be biased against people of different race, gender or height or biased in favour of the home team. There is no doubt that such partiality work against official ideals of fairness and non-discrimination in sport. The problem with this is that being affected by implicit biases potentially causes the referees to make unfair decisions, with the result that some people are penalised disproportionately within the realm of sport. In this paper, we argue that sports organisations ought to require referees to undergo implicit bias testing as part of their mandatory training, in order to gain knowledge about biases and to take the proper counter-measures to combat such biases. Finally, we present and critically discuss four objections to our argument and conclude that none of them are plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 existence, nature, and social make-up of the cultural omnivore has been a topic of consistent scholarly inquiry in recent decades. Studies exist examining these dynamics both across cultural fields (inter-domain) and fully within them (intra-domain). However, even as one of the most culturally salient domains of leisure, sport is often relegated to the side-lines of these debates. This study sets out to analyse the leisure 'following' of professional sports. Using large-scale survey data from Canada, and employing a variety of statistical methods, this paper finds numerous distinct omnivorous categories, as well as a univorous group of professional sports consumers. The results reveal that the omnivorous groups have elevated levels of cultural and economic capital. However, it is two more selective omnivorous profiles, rather than the most omnivorous group, that show the highest concentration of cultural and economic capital. These results shed doubt on the status of intra-domain omnivores by volume as the consumption profile of high status groups. This paper also presents gendered results from these consumption groups in the first large scale investigation of female professional sports following in Canada or elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Match day revenue is still an essential source of income for many professional sports clubs worldwide. This paper studies the determinants of ticket pricing in the English Premier League and examines whether and to what extent stadium goers pay a premium for sporting success and spending by clubs in the players' labour market. We estimate regression models for the cheapest and most expensive tickets of clubs playing in the English Premier League for the five seasons between 2014/15 and 2018/19 inclusive. Our study shows that ticket prices are driven by several variables including the opponent and local derbies. The impact of team performance is asymmetric affecting only the most expensive tickets. Capacity utilisation and total labour cost impact the prices of both types of tickets. This research provides insights for both leagues and individual clubs. For example, the findings can be used as a benchmark to assess the magnitude of price increases that the market may be willing to bear. Additionally, clubs can explore the extent to which greater revenues can be extracted from different types of consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes mass start competitions in professional biathlon, where 30 biathletes start simultaneously. This structure allows us to test the existence of discouragement effect, according to which biathletes reduce their efforts when lagging far behind the leaders. We use data on all 180 mass start competitions, for both genders, in World Cups, World Championships, and Olympic Games between the 2001/02 and 2019/20 seasons, and compare the gap times between the two consecutive ranks. For the same period, we execute the same analyses for all sprint and individual competitions that use interval starts. We find that, in mass starts, the 95% confidence intervals of the gap times between the two consecutive ranks overlap in the range of rankings between 3 and 25 among men and between 5 and 24 among women, with mean gaps of 6.6 and 7.7 seconds among men and women, respectively. However, that gap increases sharply for the four bottom ranks (that is, ranks 27–30), which have mean gaps of 29.8 and 31.2 sec among men and women, respectively. However, in sprint and individual races, the lag time between two consecutive ranks does not exceed 4 (sprint) and 10 (individual) seconds in the range of rankings between 10 and 60. The results suggest that bottom-ranked biathletes in mass starts strategically reduce their efforts when there is nothing at stake. Such a strategy increases the duration of TV broadcasts and does not help maximize suspense, which is one of the main drivers of TV demands in professional sports. We offer an alternative format, according to which a certain number of the bottom-ranked biathletes will be eliminated after each bout of shooting. Such a format should dramatically increase the suspense-to-time ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates factors impacting corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns' key performance indicators (KPIs) by extending the sport sustainability campaign evaluation model (SSCEM) with three key variables: ascription of responsibility, fit between the team/sustainability initiatives, and receptivity to messaging from the team. We collected data from a US national sample using a Qualtrics panel. The specific population of interest for this part of the project was people who were able to identify a professional or college sport team local to their geographical area (N = 205), which meets the SEM sample size requirements with only 11 items in the model. This study found that fit, ascription, and attachment to the team explained 43.0% of the variance in receptivity. Ascription and receptivity explained 64.9% of the variance of sustainability intentions. The entire model explained 68.4% of the variance in support for green corporate partners. Future research can extend the SSCEM by adding these concepts, explaining additional variance, and assessing actual receptivity to team messaging about sustainability. Sport practitioners can use this model to show green corporate partners the impact of messaging by the team on corporate partner sales and show increased fan sustainability intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time of pandemic has been a challenging one for most people in sport organizations. These individuals include athletes, coaches, support staff members, and administrators, as well as sport psychology practitioners. A range of human and systemic factors have coalesced to create volatility, ambiguity, and stress for all these stakeholders, affecting how they work, relate to one another, and make decisions. Within this context, this paper centers attention on why and how practitioners of sport psychology in professional sport organizations can manifest leadership by taking actions in support of athletes and coaches, actions that are under practitioner control and influence. The leadership actions considered include promoting an interdisciplinary perspective on providing mental health support to athletes; communicating and collaborating with other professionals; emphasizing acceptance; embracing routines; manifesting humility; and engaging in the process of professional practice. This article concludes with reflections about how these leadership actions can transfer from professional sport organizations to collegiate settings and scholastic school environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the European Sport Management (EASM) award. It is stated that the best original and significant unpublished contribution in sport management is given this award. It is mentioned that by encouraging new researchers at the start of their career, the award stimulate diffusion of new ideas and innovative research in sport management.

Existing research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in professional sports organisations highlights the positive external effects of CSR, while employee-related and organisational outcomes are widely ignored. We aim at filling this gap by analysing the relationship between perceived CSR (PCSR) and perceived organisational performance (POP) in professional sports organisations (PSOs) and how this relationship is mediated by organisational identification and employee satisfaction. Based on a systematic literature review on the organisational outcomes of CSR we derive our research model and three hypotheses that are tested using parallel regression analyses. We hypothesise that PCSR is positively related to POP and that this relationship is positively mediated by organisational identification and employee satisfaction. Our sample consists of 338 employees of professional football, basketball, handball, ice hockey and volleyball clubs in Germany. Our results suggest that PCSR among employees of PSOs is positively related to POP, when controlling for age, gender, income, education, sports discipline, and organisational level. Furthermore, our results provide evidence that the positive relationship between PCSR and POP is positively and partially mediated by organisational identification and employee satisfaction. Our paper enlarges prior knowledge on internal outcomes of CSR in professional sports organisations by quantifying existent contributions on the impacts of PCSR on POP and providing a model for how this relationship is affected by organisational identification and employee satisfaction. Our results provide scholars with a framework for further scientific investigation and practitioners with a concept for integrating the positive impacts of CSR into approaches to developing both their organisation and its employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates Howe and Leota/Turp's accounts of gamesmanship by examining case studies of gamesmanship from professional darts. While Leota and Turp make some substantial improvements on Howe in reconceptualizing the idea of sporting excellence, I claim that there are points of criticism that must be addressed, notably in their claims that sports do not prescribe necessary skills, and that it is impossible to distinguish between legitimate sporting strategy unaccounted for by the rules on the one hand, and gamesmanship on the other. Leota and Turp criticise Howe's account of rules for being misconceived: rather than rules prescribing necessary skills as Howe claims, rules actually proscribe skills and set limits on behaviour, rather than prescribing skills. I use darts and other sports to make the case that rules actually do both things. Elsewhere, in the phenomenon of 'grouping', I argue that we find a skill completely unaccounted for by the rules of darts and not a necessary skill for playing darts, which nonetheless counts as excellence for darts. This problematizes some claims from Leota and Turp on which their account of gamesmanship hinges. An aspect of Howe, Leota and Turp's accounts on which they all agree is the importance of psychological resilience in sporting endeavours, which I discuss with reference to darts and rule changes in professional sport. The article ends with a discussion of an example from darts of a potential gamesmanship strategy, from a match between Michael van Gerwen and Darius Labanauskas, that unquestionably remains within the rules of the sport and which could not be eradicated through rule changes because it would violate the spirit of the sport. This is an interesting, controversial example for studies of the different forms of gamesmanship and their categorization, and indicates some limitations on what I say in my argument. [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]

The performance profile technique is a standard, theory-driven sport and performance psychology intervention for enhancing various psychological outcomes within athletes and teams. Despite the popularity of the technique, current literature and practices are focused almost exclusively on performance profiling for deficiency driven purposes and addressing identified areas for improvement. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a radical adaptation of the performance profile technique anchored in positive psychology (i.e., strengths-based approaches and broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions) and solution-focused principles to build mental readiness in single-session contexts. The conceptual, theoretical, and empirical rationale, overview, benefits, and applied considerations of the strengths-based performance profile (SBPP) are presented herein to propose a novel strengths-focused application of the performance profiling procedure. To conclude, we discuss how the SBPP technique can be used to help athletes, coaches, and sport psychology professionals better understand, assess, and capitalize on existing strengths in preparation for upcoming performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A goal of most professional sport organizations is to minimize factors that contribute to negative psychological and emotional outcomes and maximize factors that support more positive outcomes. In order to address these concerns in professional sport, a mental wellness initiative was created for the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club. This paper provides an overview of the initiative. The model includes the following dimensions: mental health education, skill building, identification of at-risk athletes, access to clinical professionals, crisis management procedures, and reducing stigma. Suggestions are provided for other organizations to consider and adopt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper discusses philosophical and methodological approaches underlying the study of fatigue and the existing models and hypotheses of fatigue. In our view, the most suitable framework for analyzing the phenomena of nature and physiological states of the human organism is that of dialectical materialism, contrary to the commonly held reductionist and idealist approaches. As such, we show that psychophysiological, environmental, and temporal factors interact simultaneously during physical activities, with quantitative changes in their constituent elements. If, or when, these quantitative changes reach a certain magnitude, there is a qualitative change in desired performance, in other words, fatigue. We also show how the relations between different factors that contribute to fatigue influence such quantitative and qualitative changes. Our proposed model is useful for scientists and sports professionals with a contextual understanding of the factors that contribute to fatigue, and consequently can provide insights into the development of interventions to improve physical-technical-tactical performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Czechoslovak national team finished as the runners-up of the 1934 FIFA World Cup in Italy but it was welcomed as moral winners by hundreds of thousands in their home country. Never before had a sporting event been followed so keenly by the largest social strata, thanks to the live radio broadcast of the final match. The tournament left a deep imprint not only in the collective memory but also in popular culture. This paper traces the reception of the event, showing how its image was used as the showcase of the First Czechoslovak Republic, how it was transformed and misused gradually by the communist regime that presented it as a deterrent example of elitism and prima donna behaviour in professional sport, and finally reinvented at the beginning of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement of the degree of competitive balance, how evenly teams are matched, is central to the analysis of professional sports leagues. A common problem with within-season competitive balance measures, however, is their sensitivity to the number of teams and the number of matches played by each team, i.e. season length. This paper uses simulation methods to examine the effects of changes in season length on the distributions of several widely used variants of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index applied to wins in a season. Accounting for both the lower and upper bounds of the index improves its robustness to variation in the numbers of teams or games played per season, but does not completely remove overestimation of imbalance associated with shorter season lengths. Overall, McGee's balance measure significantly mitigates the dependence on the number of matches and, of the measures considered, is recommended as the most robust to variation in season length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a total lockdown of the major football leagues, aiming to prevent the threat of an uncontrolled spread of infections, and forcing the players and match officials to home-based physical training. Differently from players, no health and physical fitness maintenance guidelines were published for match officials. Before the return to structured conditioning and officiating, match officials must perform a medical assessment, as well as systematic COVID-19 testing and detailed pulmonary function evaluation. The hygienic-sanitary prevention strategies for virus transmission must be strictly followed. In the remaining part of the present season, alterations of the game rules, namely halves of 30-40 min and no allowance for lost time, aiming to reduce the match officials physiological load may result as a safer option. Nonetheless, match officials' cognitive and physical demands, will probably be exacerbated by the increased number of substitutions per game, proposed to reduce players' match load. The proposed match scenario further stresses the importance of well-developed aerobic and anaerobic fitness in elite level match officials. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to guide a safe and successful return to play for match officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Professional sports teams and leagues operate in a crowded market, thus, occasionally change league structures to remain competitive in the marketplace. However, the implications of such changes on strategic marketing planning is seldom explored. Design: Semi-structured interviews with 11 second-tier Rugby Football League (RFL) club executives and 1 national governing body executive. Findings: Very few clubs had a marketing strategy, therefore, engaged in very little strategic marketing planning. Furthermore, the main barriers were resource and skills, and, organisation and leadership. Practical Implications: The RFL need to concentrate on making sustainable shared resources which develop capabilities. For example, developing a standardised yet mouldable strategic marketing package would reduce the financial and knowledge resource barriers. Research Contribution: d This paper makes theoretical contribution to sport management, specifically barriers to strategic marketing practices within professional sports organisations. It also brings lower-tier professional sport clubs into focus, which are often overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily affected a wide range of stakeholders in the sport sector. Yet, some professional sports managed to gain exceptions from the restrictive anti-COVID-19 policies. The current paper assumes that the effects could have been ambiguous. On the one hand, professional sports could have benefitted from its position as provider of live TV events. On the other hand, the exceptions for professional sports could have stirred the anger of a frustrated public. We explore these questions by examining two unique dataset on TV ratings for and identification with the German men's national team during the EURO 2020. We find that the national football team, which has been depicted as last national 'campfire', has been a relative loser in terms of viewership, which might, however, also reflect the team's long-term decline. We find also that approval of a special treatment for professional football has been linked to higher team identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The popularity and profitability of American gridiron football is beyond dispute. Recent polls put football as the overwhelming favorite of people who follow at least one sport and huge revenues are reported at both the professional and the university level. We know, however, that what is the case tells us little about what ought to be the case, and it is to the latter question that this paper is directed. I offer a three-pronged attack on the ethical acceptability of American football, both amateur and professional, based on (1) harm to the players, (2) objectification of the players, and (3) harm to others done by the players, leading to the conclusion that the sport, as currently constituted, is morally unacceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have long argued that institutions like religion or the economy can become relatively distinct spheres that facilitate and constrain action, goal setting, and decision-making. But few empirical studies have looked closely at how institutions become relatively distinct cultural and structural domains. This paper examines how institutional entrepreneurs—in this case, Major League Baseball (MLB) sportswriters—build and sustain institutional boundaries by considering how they create a distinct cultural discourse that infuses baseball places, times, and events with culturally distinct meanings. Drawing from sportswriters’ columns, documentaries, and monographs written on baseball I show that MLB entrepreneurs have developed and disseminated a discourse oriented around the generalized medium of sport exchange, interaction, and communication: competitiveness. Using these data, this article examines how baseball writing becomes quantified and embodied in tangible and intangible forms. Additionally, the paper draws on sport columns that illustrate how MLB entrepreneurs protect the autonomy of a sacred core (the Hall of Fame) from internal threats (gambling and performance-enhancing drugs) and external corruption (the influence of money). The paper ends with a discussion of implications for the applicability of the findings to other sports and institutional domains. [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 details the political and legal contestations that shaped the status and development of professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in Canada from the sport's high-profile and highly contested arrival in 1996, to its legalization across the country after 2013. The transformation of MMA from criminal activity to sporting spectacle in this short period of about 15 years was due, in part, to contextual and political factors centred on indigenous political contestation in themselves not related to the sport; and in part to political debates that focused on the activity's popular acceptability, augmented by a lobbying campaign devised by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) the sport's pre-eminent promotion company, in the province of Ontario. As a result of these contestations, legal constraints formulated at both the federal and provincial levels had been rescinded by 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has, among other things, a significant impact on the economic situation of sports in general and professional soccer in particular. Our paper points out the main effects of the crisis on professional soccer. To this end, the general effects of the pandemic on sports will be briefly outlined, followed by a discussion of matches played behind closed doors. Based on the general conditions and particularities of the team sports industry, possible solutions for dealing with any problems arising from the pandemic will be discussed from the perspective of economics. As a result, we prefer intra-industry market-based solutions such as a solidarity fund or measures of self-regulation to possible state subsidies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of the philosophy of sport literature reveals that arguments regarding the issue of sex segregation in athletics have been advanced from time to time, but there has been little sustained discussion, no consensus, and no change in existing practice. In this paper, an effort to advance the conversation, I begin with Jane English’s seminal 1978 article as a springboard and employ existing literature on the question of sex segregation in order to raise difficulties with English’s analysis and outline the basic alternative positions that have been taken on the issue. My own contribution to the conversation is in the introduction of four distinctions – between individual and team sports, direct and indirect competition, contact and non-contact sports, and amateur and professional sports – that have not been part of the discussion about the conditions under which men and women might compete against one another. These distinctions resolve several difficulties noted by others and suggest a more nuanced conclusion about desirable changes to the structure of sporting competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

The purpose of this paper is to explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is implemented in professional sport, specifically to compare and contrast different organisational structures used in the implementation of CSR. A qualitative case study methodology was adopted, drawing on interviews with key stakeholders of 12 professional sporting organisations and their relevant CSR departments. Secondary sources such as annual reports, newsletters, websites and other organisational documents were also collected and analysed. This research found a variety of challenges and opportunities for employing CSR, including alignment of strategies, conflict of power and access to resources. Discussions explore how communication, collaboration and different governance models can improve the inter-relationship of these entities. This paper offers an empirical identification of critical opportunities and challenges within professional sporting organisations. This paper extends the current research by looking at CSR management and governance, specifically exploring the inter-relationship between professional sporting organisations and their associated foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistence of doping in professional sports—either by individuals on an isolated basis and by whole teams as part of a systematic doping programme—means that professional sport today is rarely if ever untainted. There are financial incentives in place that incentivise doping and there are data that show that doping is often a systematic, organised enterprise (either at team-level, or at state-level). The main question to be answered today in professional sports is whether doping’s repressive anti-doping policies do not have greater negative consequences for society. Whilst some have suggested legitimising safe doping under medical control, in this paper, I argue that doing so will do little to prevent clandestine use of dangerous performance-enhancing substances, and suggest an alternative solution to lifting the ban on doping, i.e. starting from extending liability for doping in sport beyond athletes to those holding power and authority over athletes, to changing winning incentives for doping, to making sport sustainable in the longer time by devising ways of providing athletes with a steady income which is not linked to record breaking or sponsorships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because social media encourage two-way communication and interaction, they are valuable relationship-building tools for the marketer who chooses to use them to build dialogue and engage customers. In sport, these tools are ideal ways to improve customer relationships because consumers already have a desire to connect with products. However, measurement of the effectiveness of social media as marketing tools remains limited. From a relationship-marketing standpoint, social media should be evaluated based on their ability to improve relationship quality, which leads to a host of positive business outcomes. To do this, sport marketers must measure the impacts of social media engagement on customer relationships. The purpose of this conceptual paper was to explicitly connect social media marketing to relationship marketing and use relationship marketing as a framework for understanding measurement of marketing on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of the present review serves to provide information about the viability and utility of research centers for sport management faculty. To achieve this objective, the present paper begins with a discussion on the evolution of research centers in the United States. Second, the need for research centers in the contemporary university setting is established and the benefits of research centers to both society and science (i.e. sport management) are identified, along with existing challenges and barriers. Third, the present examination explains specific heuristic categories of research centers developed by Ikenberry and Friedman (1972) through the frame of leadership, resources (e.g. standard, adaptive, shadow), and relationships (e.g. university-industry, programmed/corporate alliance, for-profit spin-offs, technology transfer, etc.) that sport management faculty should understand before creating their own center. Fourth, we describe research center evaluation methods and identify general but necessary points of emphasis to develop a proposal for universities. [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]

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The paper proposes that the governance of the Chinese football industry since 1994 can be best described as having undergone three stages of development: a primary stage (1994–2003) in which the early form of a Chinese football industry was established; a stage of development challenges (2004–2012) in which the Chinese football industry faced a slowdown of growth and challenges of governance failure and a decline in market appeal; and a revitalized development stage (from 2013 to 2019) in which the Chinese football industry gave signs of strong recovery. After more than two decades of development, China's football industry has become more economically independent of government, though the industry still faces a series of problems and dilemmas. These problems include a poor management system; the on-going financial deficits of its football clubs; inadequate market expansion; the football bubble economy phenomenon; and the absence of a brand culture for the football clubs. All of these factors continue to restrict the healthy development of the governance of China's football industry. However, escalating reform in the industry and the increasing importance attached to it by the Chinese Central Government suggests improved prospects for the industry. [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 present study explored how the organizational cultural experiences of elite youth footballers shaped their identity development and behavior. The first author occupied the position of sport psychology practitioner-researcher within 1 professional football club over 3 years. Traditional ethnographic research methods were employed, including observations, field notes, reflections, and informal interviews. A cultural sport psychology perspective on identity as a social construction and research on the cultural characteristics of professional football were used as frameworks to make sense of the data. Despite the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan in 2012, the traditional masculine culture of professional football dominated the studied club. Creative nonfiction vignettes revealed that youth players were encouraged to develop their self-stories focused on a single-minded dedication to professional football. The limited identity-related resources offered at both club and cultural level are detrimental for players in terms of their well-being and long-term psychological development. From the results of this study, we suggest that future sports psychology practice within professional football may best be delivered at an organizational level. However, for sport psychologists to be effective in this role, they must develop an understanding of the subcultural features and characteristics of the organization. In line with this, there would be great value in introducing a focus on organizational culture within sport psychology professional training and education routes. Lay Summary: This paper explores the impact of the professional football culture on the psychological development of elite youth footballers. From the findings we suggest that sport psychology should be delivered at an organisational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision in 2005 of the world governing body of cycling, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), to introduce a new competition, the UCI Pro Tour, was a highly significant development in professional road cycling. Using this development as the case study setting, this paper draws on stakeholder theory and network theory to examine this changing environment. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, complemented by analysis of publicly available information, this study explores how this process of change has affected the professional road cycling network, the interaction between its stakeholders and the balance of power among those stakeholders. While commercialism has a long history in professional road cycling, the paper concludes that the change process has been driven by a wish for commercial deepening within the network and by a desire to challenge some of the well-established relationships and dependencies that have existed therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Question: Research on cause related marketing (CRM) in sport has mostly focused on conceptualization rather than on implementation. The purpose of this paper is to add to that knowledge by exploring the specific CRM implementation decisions an organization attempts to make, and to what extent these are in line with the defined strategy. Research Methods: Employing a qualitative method and drawing on the analysis of 16 interviews in four European countries, this research explored managerial decision-making with regards to CRM strategy implementation in European professional basketball. Results and Findings: The findings reveal that the majority of the teams studied have marketing expectations behind their CRM engagement, but inconsistencies in implementation prevent them from leveraging CRM to its maximal potential. Depending on the type of CRM strategy adopted, 'mis-alignment' between strategy and implementation is caused by environmental, organizational or individual determinants. Implications: The proposed framework allows (sport) managers to view CRM strategy formulation and implementation simultaneously, rather than separately. It can assist sport managers to better integrate CRM projects, align them with strategy, and attain maximal win-win outcomes for both the organization and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research question: This paper examines the ways in which French and UK professional sports clubs implement and communicate their CSR policies. In addition to identifying similarities and differences between CSR practices in the two countries, our analysis extends and adapts the implicit-explicit CSR framework to the field of sport. Research methods: We used a mixed methods approach to analyse qualitative and quantitative data on the CSR strategies of 66 professional rugby union (Top 14, Aviva Premiership Rugby) and football (Ligue 1, Premier League) clubs that participated in the 2017-2018 season. Results and findings: We found major differences in CSR communication between France and the UK. Communication by French clubs tends to highlight sport's values, involve few media channels, whereas communication by UK clubs explicitly vaunts their social responsibility and involves numerous channels. In the case of CSR implementation, there are similarities between French and UK clubs, especially in the fields their CSR initiatives cover (e.g. health, diversity), as well as differences. However, the scope of initiatives varies more between sports than between countries, with football demonstrating a more international outlook than rugby. Implications: This article expands Matten and Moon's [(2008). 'Implicit' and 'explicit' CSR: A conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 404-424] implicit-explicit CSR framework by identifying the influence of interactions between sectorial/field-level factors and national/macro-level factors on CSR practices, and by distinguishing between CSR communication and CSR implementation. Our results throw light on the shift from implicit to explicit CSR in French professional sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a controversy on sport performance literature about what type of inputs might explain more deeply the performance of sports clubs (inputs specification controversy). By one side, several papers have analysed sports teams' performance using the match-related statistics or wages as inputs, well-known as ex post inputs. By other side, some authors have criticized the use of these ex post inputs, and recommend the use of ex ante inputs, as the market value of the players. We have analysed the performance of football teams estimating technical efficiency with three different inputs specification. The methodologies employed were data envelopment analysis (DEA) and a bootstrapped DEA. Our sample is composed by English Premier League football clubs, during three seasons (2012/13-2014/15). The DEA results indicate that the correlation between the three models is positive and significant. The DEA-bootstrapped results help to restate the robustness of the estimations and endorsed the inputs choices. The correlations of the estimations with market value and match-related statistics are the most striking (90% and 94%, DEA and bootstrapped DEA), which indicate that the existent discussion related to the use of match-related statistics as input is unjustified, because it does not affect significantly the efficiency estimations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As sport assumes greater importance in American society, research specific to the problems of this industry becomes increasingly vital. This paper reviews the current state of research in sport management. Further, four areas for future study are suggested (depending on the variables used): subordinate-related, superior-related, organization-related, and environment-related. Research topics and issues specific to each of these four areas are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]