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Today media and sports are indivisible, having a kind of inseparable, mutually influential relationship. Media attracts audiences and generates profit through sports. In its turn, sports content is disseminated, transmitted, and popularized through the media. Thus, theoretically, sports and media exist in symbiosis. However, practically, this relationship is complex and includes many factors. First of all, in recent decades, the process of overall digitalization (and digital transformation) of all fields of life has had a crucial impact on sport, media, and their interrelationship. This paper aims to conceptualize and analyze the possible impact of digitalization on "winner-takes-all" (WTA) (winner-takes-most, WTM) dynamics in the professional sports industry, notably for spectating audiences, and answer the question: "Can digitalization be seen as a driver of ecosystem change and how it should be tested?" This conceptual model paper seeks to construct and develop a theoretical framework that can explain and predict relationships between concepts of digitalization and key sport spectating variables: audience, TV rights, and revenue through a prism of WTA. We found that the technological change in the sports media market and the greater global-orientated strategy of leading sports organizations have re-sorted and compressed many market shares, but the effect of technological disruption has been significantly less pronounced for the most powerful digital leaders in the industry. To this end, we represent digitalization as the main accelerating factor of the WTA effect (along with other auxiliary effects) in the sports industry and propose future research directions and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present paper is to put a milestone on the roadmap toward a global economic system of professional sport, at least as regards its financial dimension, i.e., its model of finance, its ownership, and some new trends in global sport finance. Professional sport went through a radical change during the 1990s when switching from gate receipts to TV rights revenues as its major source of finance and from local/domestic to internationalised/globalised sources of revenue. This change was more marked in European soccer (football) before spreading throughout other professional sport disciplines. In fact, the whole distribution of sport financing was restructured as shown in this paper. Starting from this evidence of the first stage of sport finance globalisation, it appears that new transformations have been at work in sport finance more recently. In particular, soccer moved from globalisation of flows (revenues, finance) to asset globalisation in terms of club ownership. At last, this paper discusses the emergence of new trends in global sport finance such as treating professional (soccer) players as financial assets and crypto-assets penetrating the sports business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With recent technological advancements, quantitative analysis has become an increasingly important area within professional sports. However, the manual process of collecting data on relevant match events like passes, goals and tacklings comes with considerable costs and limited consistency across providers, affecting both research and practice. In football, while automatic detection of events from positional data of the players and the ball could alleviate these issues, it is not entirely clear what accuracy current state-of-the-art methods realistically achieve because there is a lack of high-quality validations on realistic and diverse data sets. This paper adds context to existing research by validating a two-step rule-based pass and shot detection algorithm on four different data sets using a comprehensive validation routine that accounts for the temporal, hierarchical and imbalanced nature of the task. Our evaluation shows that pass and shot detection performance is highly dependent on the specifics of the data set. In accordance with previous studies, we achieve F-scores of up to 0.92 for passes, but only when there is an inherent dependency between event and positional data. We find a significantly lower accuracy with F-scores of 0.71 for passes and 0.65 for shots if event and positional data are independent. This result, together with a critical evaluation of existing methodologies, suggests that the accuracy of current football event detection algorithms operating on positional data is currently overestimated. Further analysis reveals that the temporal extraction of passes and shots from positional data poses the main challenge for rule-based approaches. Our results further indicate that the classification of plays into shots and passes is a relatively straightforward task, achieving F-scores between 0.83 to 0.91 ro rule-based classifiers and up to 0.95 for machine learning classifiers. We show that there exist simple classifiers that accurately differentiate shots from passes in different data sets using a low number of human-understandable rules. Operating on basic spatial features, our classifiers provide a simple, objective event definition that can be used as a foundation for more reliable event-based match analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper examines Sports Analytics, focusing on injury patterns in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and their impact on players' performance. It employs a unique dataset to identify common NBA injuries, determine the most affected anatomical areas, and analyze how these injuries influence players' post-recovery performance. This study's novelty lies in its integrative approach that combines injury data with performance metrics and salary data, providing new insights into the relationship between injuries and economic and on-court performance. It investigates the periodicity and seasonality of injuries, seeking patterns related to time and external factors. Additionally, it examines the effect of specific injuries on players' per-match analytics and performance, offering perspectives on the implications of injury rehabilitation for player performance. This paper contributes significantly to sports analytics, assisting coaches, sports medicine professionals, and team management in developing injury prevention strategies, optimizing player rotations, and creating targeted rehabilitation plans. Its findings illuminate the interplay between injuries, salaries, and performance in the NBA, aiming to enhance player welfare and the league's overall competitiveness. With a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis, this research offers unprecedented insights into the dynamics of injuries and their long-term effects on athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local governments provide many crucial services from limited budgets, yet often subsidize the profitable, private businesses in professional sports leagues in the United States. Policing represents one important public service. Policing typically constitutes large portions of government budgets and also generates revenue through fines and forfeitures. Existing evidence suggests that large municipal expenditures in other areas can have an ambiguous effect on policing outcomes. This paper addresses the question of whether large public expenditures on sports facilities affect drug asset forfeiture using two-way fixed effects (TWFE) and generalized dynamic model specifications (GDMS). The results are similar across estimation methods, with static TWFE results suggesting a treatment effect of $1,274–5,589 in additional forfeiture per million in subsidies and results from the newer GDMS estimators suggesting $7,703 per million in subsidies. The results imply that, beyond generating no tangible local economic benefits, public subsidization of sports facilities also leads police to make up budget shortfalls by more aggressive policing, which has important implications for racial equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, because the complex system discrete model has brought good results in the application of many research directions such as human management analysis, control system prediction, and animal group prediction, how to combine the complex system discrete model with the prediction of enterprise brand communication effect has become a current research hotspot. Based on this, this paper studies the application of the discrete model based on the complex system in sports club to enterprise brand communication and designs a model of the impact of professional sports club on enterprise brand communication based on the SIR model and PSO algorithm. Firstly, this paper analyzes the research status of the impact on enterprise brand communication at home and abroad and optimizes and improves the impact of professional sports clubs on enterprise brand communication and the shortcomings of big data analysis technology in the current research. The complex system discrete model can accurately analyze the enterprise brand communication and conduct big data mining analysis with known professional sports clubs to achieve accurate calculation. The results show that in the process of analyzing the impact of professional sports clubs and enterprise brand communication, the communication mode design of professional sports clubs based on SIR-PSO algorithm can not only effectively deal with various complex discrete data evaluated by club users but also analyze and evaluate the impact of professional sports clubs on enterprise brand communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the return to sport (RTS) rate and performance upon RTS in professional baseball players who underwent biceps tenodesis. A secondary purpose was to compare the postoperative performance of the group of players who underwent biceps tenodesis to a group of matched controls. Methods: All professional baseball pitchers who underwent biceps tenodesis between 2014 and 2017 were included. Players with concomitant rotator cuff repair were excluded. Demographic and performance data (preoperative and postoperative) were recorded for each player. Performance metrics were then compared between the biceps tenodesis and matched control (no history of biceps tenodesis) groups. Results: 14 players (average age 27±4 years; 12 pitchers, 2 position outfielders) were included. Most (79%) were open subpectoral tenodeses while two were arthroscopic biceps transfers, and one was an arthroscopic suprapectoral tenodesis. Fixation methods included cortical button (42%), interference screw (25%), suture anchor (25%) and drill holes (8%). Most players (79%) underwent concomitant procedures (43% underwent SLAP repairs). Among the 14 players, 2 were unable to RTS, 5 RTS but to a lower level, and 7 RTS at the same or a higher level. Thus, overall, while 86% (12/14) were able to RTS, 50% (7/14) RTS at the same or a higher level and 50% were either unable to return or returned to a lower level. Among pitchers, 100% (12/12) were able to RTS, but only 50% (6/12) were able to return to the same or a higher level. For those players who did return to play, it took 245±84 days, and their performance following RTP was unchanged and did not differ from matched controls. Conclusions: While 86% of professional baseball players returned to sport following biceps tenodesis, only 50% returned to the same or higher level. No decline in performance was noted in players who successfully returned. Open subpectoral tenodesis is the most common tenodesis technique performed on professional baseball players UPLOAD-https://planion-client-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AOSSM/blobs/c7753b55-d658-4847-a8e7-7b70c6cad84f/1/Table%5f1.docx UPLOAD-https://planion-client-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AOSSM/blobs/961efbc8-aedb-4cfe-b18f-6b8c07d93ec7/1/Table%5f2.docx UPLOAD-https://planion-client-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AOSSM/blobs/36fbb55a-f22f-468e-a8a3-e7a29979b4b8/1/Table%5f3.docx None [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a landmark study of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the field of sports analytics. We developed a survey that examined personal and job-related demographics, as well as individual perceptions and experiences about EDI in the workplace. We sent the survey to individuals in the five major North American professional leagues, representatives from the Olympic and Paralympic Committees in Canada and the U.S., the NCAA Division I programs, companies in sports tech/analytics, and university research groups. Our findings indicate the presence of a clear dominant group in sports analytics identifying as: young (72.0 %), White (69.5 %), heterosexual (89.7 %) and male (82.0 %). Within professional sports, males in management positions earned roughly $30,000 (27 %) more on average compared to females. A smaller but equally alarming pay gap of $17,000 (14 %) was found between White and racialized management personnel. Of concern, females were nearly five times as likely to experience discrimination and twice as likely to have considered leaving their job due to isolation or feeling unwelcome. While they had similar levels of agreement regarding fair processes for rewards and compensation, females "strongly agreed" less often than males regarding equitable support, equitable workload, having a voice, and being taken seriously. Over one third (36.3 %) of females indicated that they "strongly agreed" that they must work harder than others to be valued equally, compared to 9.8 % of males. We conclude the paper with concrete recommendations that could be considered to create a more equitable, diverse and inclusive environment for individuals working within the sports analytics sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a vast concern about high income inequality in Thailand as opposed to empirical findings around the world showing people's preference for fair income inequality over unfair income equality, it is therefore important to examine whether inequality in income distribution in Thailand over the past three decades is fair, and what fair inequality in income distribution in Thailand should be. To quantitatively measure fair income distribution, this study employs the fairness benchmarks that are derived from the distributions of athletes' salaries in professional sports which satisfy the concepts of distributive justice and procedural justice, the no-envy principle of fair allocation, and the general consensus or the international norm criterion of a meaningful benchmark. By using the data on quintile income shares and the income Gini index of Thailand from the National Social and Economic Development Council, this study finds that, throughout the period from 1988 to 2021, the Thai income earners in the bottom 20%, the second 20%, and the top 20% receive income shares more than the fair shares whereas those in the third 20% and the fourth 20% receive income shares less than the fair shares. Provided that there are infinite combinations of quintile income shares that can have the same value of income Gini index but only one of them is regarded as fair, this study demonstrates the use of fairness benchmarks as a practical guideline for designing policies with an aim to achieve fair income distribution in Thailand. Moreover, a comparative analysis is conducted by employing the method for estimating optimal (fair) income distribution representing feasible income equality in order to provide an alternative recommendation on what optimal (fair) income distribution characterizing feasible income equality in Thailand should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data analysis and action recognition algorithms to conduct in-depth research and analysis of professional sports competition judging and designs a professional sports competition-assisted judging system for use in actual judging. In this paper, a wearable motion capture system based on an inertial sensing unit is developed and designed for kayaking technical motion monitoring to achieve the acquisition, analysis, and quantitative evaluation of kayaker motion data. To limit the gyroscope and pose estimation error, a gradient descent method is used for multisensor data fusion to achieve athlete pose update, and a quaternion-driven human skeletal vector model is proposed to reconstruct the kayaker's paddling technical movements. By calculating the angular sequences of the left shoulder, right shoulder, left elbow, and right elbow joints of the athlete's upper limbs and comparing them with the optical motion capture system, the results show that the motion capture system developed in this paper is comparable to the optical motion capture system in terms of measurement accuracy. It ultimately affects the result of pose estimation. Therefore, high-resolution networks and low-resolution networks can continuously maintain high-resolution features of the image by allowing each representation layer to repeatedly accept the representation information of other networks. A step matrix model is constructed to encode the multiscale global temporal information of action sequences, and action classification is achieved by calculating the response of the step matrix of test samples to the step matrix of each category of actions. The algorithm achieves 78.96%, 91.84%, and 91.18% accuracy of action classification on the Northwestern-UCLA database, MSRC-12 database, and CAD-60 database, respectively. The designed visual motion tracking system was applied to record the motion data of the experimental subjects in the fine motion assessment task and construct the motion assessment database. The experimental results show that the average error between the prediction results of the proposed action assessment method and the manual scoring is 1.83, and the automated assessment of fine movements is effectively realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Professional sport occupies a prominent cultural position in societies across the globe and commercial organisations make use of this to promote their products. The present scoping review explores existing academic literature on the relationship between professional sports clubs and food and drink marketing and considers how this relationship may impact upon the public's health.Design: The scoping review searched six databases. Experts were also consulted. Records written in languages other than English were excluded. We also excluded records relating to mega events (e.g. Olympics, Football World Cup) and alcohol marketing, because of the attention already given to these.Setting: Professional sports clubs.Results: We identified 18 166 titles, reviewed 163 abstracts and read twenty-six full texts. We included six papers in the review. Four were from Australia and New Zealand. The Australasian literature focused largely on the marketing of foods and beverages to children and the potential impact on consumption. Single papers from researchers in Turkey and the USA were identified. The Turkish paper analysed shirt sponsorship in football leagues internationally and showed food and beverage (including alcohol) companies were the most common sponsors. The US paper examined a mixed reaction to a football team named after an energy drink.Conclusions: Commercial relationships between professional sports clubs and Big Food corporations have largely eluded scrutiny in much of the world. The current review highlights the lack of public health research on these relationships. Research exploring the interdependent commercial practices of food and drink companies and professional sports clubs is urgently needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In professional sports physicality is closely connected to an omnipresent capitalist logic. Therefore, professional sports constitute an arena in which bodies are produced, serve as revenue increasing entities, and are ultimately consumed. By taking a closer look at the National Basketball Association's (NBA) as well as affiliated companies' narratological marketing efforts, this paper tries to identify dominant narratives. The NBA constitutes a particularly interesting case, as a racial component highlights the (un)conscious decisions made by corporate leaders. This racial division in fans and athletes could not be bridged for a long time and made the league financially unsuccessful. This changed with David Stern's tenure as commissioner. Theoretically, this paper draws on Stanley Deetz's (1992) concept of "corporate colonization" which implies that, in the act of making sense of the world, interpretations which primarily consider efficiency and/or revenue aspects are selected over other possibilities. This paper highlights the selected modes of (re-)presentation by looking at one of the sport's most recognizable icons, Michael Jordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global shutdown of sporting activities. While professional sports competitions restarted in mid-2020, spectators were usually not allowed. This paper investigates the effect of absent fans and reduced social pressure on performance in professional darts – a setting where individual player performances can be well observed. Considering almost five years of tournament data, we use Bayesian multilevel models to investigate potential heterogeneity across players concerning reduced social pressure. For our analysis, we consider the two main performance measures in darts: the three-dart average and the checkout performance. Our results indicate that the effect of reduced social pressure on performance varies substantially across players. We further find experienced players to be less affected by social pressure compared to relatively inexperienced players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Discrimination in professional sports is a long-standing phenomenon as it concerns international and national governing bodies, sports organisations and players. The focus on discrimination in football is not only due to its tarnishing of the principles and essence of this popular sport, but also its direct confrontation with fundamental values such as integration, equality, dignity, and diversity - all crucial elements of fostering community cohesion. The present paper aims to analyse a court case that centres around statements of a discriminatory nature targeting the sexual orientation of a professional player. After the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) analysed the case regarding the existence of acts of discrimination that had had as main source statements of a discriminatory nature concerning the sexual orientation of a professional football player, it issued a decision that was the subject of a complaint with the administrative court. The Court of Appeal submitted preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), regarding the application of Articles 2(2)(a), 10(1) and 17 of Council Directive 2000/78/EC establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation. The judgement of the court not only addresses the specific acts of discrimination aimed at a professional football player but also serves as a landmark moment in the ongoing battle for equal treatment in employment, regardless of one's sexual orientation. This situation also offered the opportunity to transpose the EU law in the national legislation and properly apply it to build a true Union of equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultivation of professional talents in leisure sports in China started late and has a weak foundation. Compared with developed countries in leisure sports, there is still a big gap in terms of curriculum setting and training direction. Urban residents have differences in the choice of leisure sports, leisure purpose, and understanding of leisure concepts due to factors such as age, gender, education, and occupation. This research mainly discusses the training mode of leisure sports talents under the background of rural revitalization strategy. Combined with the research on the leisure sports industry and high-quality development, this paper clarifies the connotation of the high-quality development of the leisure sports industry and puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to promote the high-quality development of the leisure sports industry. Over time, leisure has become an important symbol of social development and an important field closely related to the quality of life of each person. As a part of rural space, rural sports space is the main material carrier and foundation of rural residents' leisure sports activities. This paper mainly makes an in-depth investigation and research from two aspects: the status quo of rural leisure sports activities and the talent demand of some leisure sports venues. It makes specific classification standards for the types and specifications of leisure sports professionals required by leisure sports venues. This provides a scientific basis for the cultivation of leisure sports professionals. First, the article analyzes the research background and puts forward the research significance. It analyzes the research status of scholars on the leisure sports industry, high-quality development, and high-quality development of the leisure sports industry. Secondly, this paper clarifies the research content, research methods, and technical route of the research basis for the high-quality development of the leisure sports industry. It conducts conceptual discussions on the leisure sports industry and high-quality development. It adopts the grounded theory to construct a model of factors influencing the high-quality development of the leisure sports industry. It also analyzes its action mechanism from three aspects: the core industry system layer, the industry supporting factors, and the external environment system layer. During the survey, 84.4% of them believed that professionals in leisure sports should have a bachelor's degree. The quality of rural sports space directly affects the breadth, depth, enthusiasm, and effectiveness of residents' participation in leisure sports activities. This research is helpful to deepen the urban and rural sports governance and optimize the management system. It is necessary to investigate and analyze the supply quality of rural leisure sports space and propose countermeasures for the integration and layout of rural leisure sports space. The ultimate goal is to build a leisure sports space optimization development model that meets the leisure sports needs of rural residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use and integration of wearable technology (wearables) into professional sports is increasing rapidly. At a minimum, the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS have all integrated wearables into their training. Teams' hope the biometric data obtained from the wearables will sharpen athletic performance, create competitive advantages, enhance fan experience, and generate new revenue streams. However, to obtain these desired outcomes leagues must adequately protect their athletes' biometric data (ABD). The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the CBAs of the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS management of wearables and ABD. Specifically, this paper will discuss the potential gaps in protection of ABD within the CBA and explore whether federal and state laws are applicable to protect the data. Findings from this analysis improve our understanding of professional sport leagues management of ABD and expose the limitations of protection at the league, state, and federal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transfers in the football world have become a hot topic in academic studies in recent years. Spanish league (La Liga) is one of the men's professional football leagues that have driven some of the most notorious transfers. In this way, we test determinants for the transfer relationships of football players in the Spanish League in the most expensive seasons with records (2018/2019 and 2019/2020 seasons). Furthermore, we identify determinants for the values of the observed transfers. The empirical analysis shows relevant findings. We recognize two implications. First, Spanish soccer transfers are not random and this evidence reflects the environment of imperfect competition characterizing La Liga. Second, the nonrandomness of the transfer process can be associated with an increasing inequality among teams and with a threat to the competitive balance in professional sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategy-optimization is a fundamental element of dynamic and complex team sports such as soccer, American football, and basketball. As the amount of data that is collected from matches in these sports has increased, so has the demand for data-driven decisionmaking support. If alternative strategies need to be balanced, a data-driven approach can uncover insights that are not available from qualitative analysis. This could tremendously aid teams in their match preparations. In this work, we propose a novel Markov modelbased framework for soccer that allows reasoning about the specific strategies teams use in order to gain insights into the efficiency of each strategy. The framework consists of two components: (1) a learning component, which entails modeling a team's offensive behavior by learning a Markov decision process (MDP) from event data that is collected from the team's matches, and (2) a reasoning component, which involves a novel application of probabilistic model checking to reason about the efficacy of the learned strategies of each team. In this paper, we provide an overview of this framework and illustrate it on several use cases using real-world event data from three leagues. Our results show that the framework can be used to reason about the shot decision-making of teams and to optimise the defensive strategies used when playing against a particular team. The general ideas presented in this framework can easily be extended to other sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This April 2003 issue of "The American Journal of Economics and Sociology" contains a collection of papers with a decidedly quantitative focus that attempt to measure unusual market phenomena. Each essay offers quantitative assessments of what the editor find to be interesting and unusual market phenomena. Consider Professor Stephanie O. Crofton's analysis of college tuition prices. She hypothesized that colleges that refuse to admit men in order to provide an "all women" campus experience would also end up charging higher tuition prices for their educational services. Her reason is that the preference to matriculate to a "male free" environment is held rather intensely by a small group of women. So who is discriminating really? Are the owners of the business, the trustees, certain employees already at work, or the sovereign customers? Consider the case of the professional sports association such as the National Hockey League (NHL). For quite some time the NHL explored ways to boost attendance at its games. In his contribution to this issue, Professor Rodney J. Paul examines the policy changes initiated by the NHL in terms of their quantitative impact on stadium attendance.

With the rapid technological advances in sports, the number of athletics increases gradually. For sports professionals, it is obligatory to oversee and explore the athletics pose in athletes' training. Key frame extraction of training videos plays a significant role to ease the analysis of sport training videos. This paper develops a sports actions' classification system for accurately classifying athlete's actions. The key video frames are extracted from the sports training video to highlight the distinct actions in sports training. Subsequently, a fully convolutional network (FCN) is used to extract the region of interest (ROI) pose detection of frames followed by the application of a convolution neural network (CNN) to estimate the pose probability of each frame. Moreover, a distinct key frame extraction approach is established to extract the key frames considering neighboring frames' probability differences. The experimental results determine that the proposed method showed better performance and can recognize the athlete's posture with an average classification rate of 98%. The experimental results and analysis validate that the proposed key frame extraction method outperforms its counterparts in key pose probability estimation and key pose extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper "Adoption of technological innovations by sports spectators" we make a brief analysis of the importance of technology in sports and in the fans' experience, and in the last part a technology used by both athletes and fans is presented, which is revolutionizing the sports field. Just as it happens in any other field, in the case of professional sports, modern technology has produced important changes. And if we think about everyday life, instead of going up the stairs, you use the elevator, instead of writing on paper, you use your computer or laptop at the office, the phone, you pay with a card when you go to the table. Technology becomes part of our lives once we come into contact with it, so it is normal to see the world of professional sports very interested in new technologies. We already see many of these technologies in tennis, where the ball can be tracked with amazing precision, in football, where we have the replay and detailed analysis of any movement made by the players on the field. Others are there, but not so well known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the field of sport expertise over the past 20 years has been remarkable, and our understanding of the varying factors affecting athlete development and motor skill acquisition has expanded considerably. Recently, there has been a push toward more sophisticated research designs to continue the advancement of our understanding of sport expertise. Even in a population of performers at the highest levels of performance and competition (e.g., participants in professional sports or those who compete at Olympic Games), there are those with obvious superiority compared to others in the cohort, such as those who win "most valuable player" awards or who are elected to the Hall of Fame. This paper builds a case that athletes who reach this level of achievement possess a more advanced level of skill than those at the elite or expert stage and we refer to this stage of development as "eminence." This paper explores the notion of eminence and provides converging forms of evidence for the division between expertise and eminence. Moreover, it explores the implications of this division for the further examination of skill acquisition across the lifespan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing attention on the intersection of sports and politics, with a particular focus on tying owners' political donations to organization-level outcomes. However, the extant research leverages within-league panels of donations over time, so we know little about inter-league heterogeneities of political donations. Furthermore, extant work does not explicitly investigate the effect of election cycles on owners' donation patterns. These limitations create questions about the generalizability and model robustness of current research. This paper analyzes N = 2,789 donations made by 158 team owners across six professional sport leagues during the 2016, 2018, and 2020 election cycles. Models suggest that donations from WNBA owners were significantly smaller and went to more progressive recipients on average than donations from owners in other leagues. Results also suggest that donations from WNBA, NASCAR, and NHL owners became significantly more moderate during presidential election cycles than during the midterm election cycle. Implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publications on elbow pain (EP) in overhead sports are increasing. The results of previous studies mostly focus on the influence of EP in the ball game and throwing sports. Thus, a bibliometric analysis of these publications may show the direction of hot topics and future research trends. The purpose of this study is to identify the research trends on EP in overhead sports. For the methods, the first step is to use the main keywords of 'Elbow pain' and 'Overhead sport' merging auxiliary vocabulary to reach the relevant global publications between 1970 and 2022 in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The literature data set is imported into EndNote literature manager software to remove duplication. Secondly, the duplication-reduced articles are imported to an Excel sheet according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria of this study. In the third step, VOSviewer software is applied as the main analysis tool in extracting data for analysis from the articles. Then, the main research results for three aspects are obtained by VOSviewer software which extracted and analyzed the parameters of author name, article title, publication journal, keywords, organization, publication country/region, and the sum of times cited from 455 qualified papers. The study found that the United States of America made the most outstanding contribution to this theme study. The research on EP in overhead sports in China requires more attention from scholars. EP in swimming is a new research direction worthy of attention. In conclusion, the research results prove the growth trend of EP in overhead sports. The EP problem not only exists in the ball game and throwing sports but also swimming. Sport commercialization and the involvement of related professional sports organizations determine the degree of EP's attention in a specific sport and the development of solutions. The development of a region or country also affects the depth and scope of EP study. Clinical research development and in-depth exploration are one of the bases to solve EP problems. Non-clinical action is beneficial to EP patients, but it still needs to be explored and studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is conventional in the sports economics literature to assume that professional sports teams are local monopolists and that stadium attendance below capacity has approximately zero marginal cost, implying that prices should optimally be set at the point of unit elasticity, regardless of whether teams are win maximisers or profit maximisers. The empirical literature has puzzled over the finding that prices appear to be set on the inelastic part of the demand curve. This paper approaches the problem in a different way. If the assumptions are true, then tax theory implies that an ad valorem tax such as VAT should be absorbed in full by the sellers. The paper uses company records that identify attendance and gate revenue for over 6000 English Football League games between 1971 and 1974, to examine the impact of the adoption of 10% VAT in the UK on April 1, 1973. The data suggests that pass through rates varied considerably, averaged around 25%, and were seldom zero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: Globalisation is not only about the mobility of capital and proliferation of global problems. It is also about common approaches in public governance. Modern technologies help to disseminate information on sport as well as raise interests and encourage citizens to engage in sport. Globalisation has made it easier. There is no need to travel -- Olympic Games, football matches and various other sports can be watched on TV, with broadcasts offering more insights than live watching on the spot. Globalisation, however, is also seen in various public or grass-root initiatives which, by addressing existing inequalities, support certain groups i.e. women or minorities to help them achieve more equal position in sport. Aim: The paper's aim is to analyse the impact of globalisation (use of modern, digital technologies) on public governance in sport based on the example of Poland. Poland is specific because there exists a strong gender bias and unequal involvement of men and women in professional sport. It translates into financial support. All of the above aspects will be scrutinized. Results: The analyses will be based on the available public data on the financing of professional sport as well as achievements in the Olympic Games between the years 1924 and 2016. Moreover, some light will be shed on media coverage of sports events. The applied research methods include a critical literature review and analyses of gathered statistical data. The paper fills in the gap in the existing literature where impact of globalisation on sport in terms of public governance and gender imbalance is not often discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Over the past decades, analyses of the functioning of professional sport leagues have been done from various angles: economic, financial and sociological; in some cases, comparisons were made between North-American and European leagues. The purpose of this paper is to look at this reality from a different angle, i.e. human capital management, by showing how different the models from both continents are.Design/methodology/approach Based on an identification of the major elements associated to human capital management in professional sport leagues in North America and Europe, this paper compares competitive and coopetitive strategies using an original framework based on consortium sourcing and pooling dimensions.Findings The paper underlines the benefits that North-American professional sport leagues get from acquiring players using a consortium sourcing perspective (coopetition). In Europe, the most powerful clubs use their financial resources to get the best players; as a result, it is always the same clubs with get the best results (competition). In the long run, the European approach might result in less attractiveness to TV viewers, and less revenues for TV networks.Originality/value This paper helps to understand the differences between professional sport leagues in North America and Europe; it also discusses the risk associated to the adoption, without any adjustment in the human capital management, in Europe of the North-American model based on a coopetitive perspective. This dimension is seldom mentioned in articles dealing with professional sport leagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the progress of society and the development of science, the competition of competitive sports has become extremely fierce, and the talents of competitive sports have gradually shown their strong vitality. Elite athletes are an important group for the development of China's competitive sports industry. To continue to progress and develop, it is inseparable from the careful training of elite athletes. In order to closely integrate the needs of China's socialist modernization and the training of elite athletes, sports schools that focus on cultivating elite athletes need to strengthen their sense of urgency and mission. It is necessary to meet new challenges at the height of social development and constantly optimize the construction of the curriculum system and the reform of the teaching operation mechanism. The discussion and research of the current elite athlete's talent training model has become a real problem faced by sports colleges, education departments, and sports departments. This paper conducts an experiment on the modeling of the sports athlete's social network based on machine learning, and the experimental data are shown as follows: among the athlete social network pictures optimized by machine learning, there are 1,200 male athletes, accounting for 48%, and 1,000 female athletes, accounting for 40%. Before the optimization, male athletes accounted for 70.58% and female athletes accounted for 16.3%, which was a decrease of 22.58% for male athletes and an increase of 23.7% for female athletes. From the above data, it can be seen that after the research on the social network of sports athletes through machine learning, it has a positive effect on the development of the social network of athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically assesses peer effects of high performing team members in reciprocally interdependent team production. Using data from the National Basketball Association (NBA), we identify peer effects by exploiting unforeseen in‐game injuries of high performing players. Results indicate that without a high performing player, other team members maintain efficiency and the division of tasks among each other. However, they slightly increase risk taking and decrease their individual output, resulting in an inferior overall outcome. These effects depend on whether a high performing player has a team‐oriented or a self‐oriented role in the team. Additionally, we observe that relatively skilled players try to step in for the absent high performing player. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In professional sports clubs, the growing number of individual IT-systems increases the need for central information systems. Various solutions from different suppliers lead to a fragmented situation in sports. Therefore, a standardized and independent general concept for a club information systems (CIS) is necessary. Due to the different areas involved, an interdisciplinary approach is required, which can be provided by sports informatics. The purpose of this paper is the development of a general and sports informatics driven concept for a CIS, using methods and models of existing areas, especially business intelligence (BI). Software engineering provides general methods and models. Business intelligence addresses similar problems in industry. Therefore, existing best practice models are examined and adapted for sport. From sports science, especially training systems and information systems in sports are considered. Practical relevance is illustrated by an example of Liverpool FC. Based on these areas, the requirements for a CIS are derived, and an architectural concept with its different components is designed and explained. To better understand the practical challenges, a participatory observation was conducted during years of working in sports clubs. This paper provides a new sports informatics approach to the general design and architecture of a CIS using best practice models from BI. It illustrates the complexity of this interdisciplinary topic and the relevance of a sports informatics approach. This paper is meant as a conceptional starting point and shows the need for further work in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the development of economic ties between professional sports and media in the past ten years by the example of the Olympic Games media coverage. The main purpose of the research is to identify the regularities that are formed in the communicative environment of elite sports. The paper is focused on the Olympic Games as the global sports events that include several types of sports competitions. The subject of the study is the sport as a product. The object of the study is the sport entertainment products in the media sphere. The relevance of the research is that the interconnections between sports and media expand and change rapidly and are influenced not only by the development of new technologies but also by a coronavirus situation. The systematization of literary sources on the selected matter indicated the need for further studies to reflect the rampant evolution of sports media and the lack of unified terminology for viewing professional sports through the prism of mass media as a media product. The methodology of the research is based on the analysis of open-source statistical data and a set of empirical materials (official websites of sports organizations, TV channels, and social media pages). The author viewed these materials from four perspectives: the audience, the marketing approach, the sports themselves as a source of information, the mainstream and the new media. The results allowed identifying the main trends of the information space formation around the object under study. These trends prove that the structure of the «Elite Sports» media product is becoming more complex, and the number of communicative links and broadcasting opportunities of sports events has increased. Finally, the author proposed a conceptual model of representing professional sports as a media product on the example of the major sports events, through defining its communication links. The findings of the research could be useful for setting vectors for studying mainstream and new media in the chosen area. The study can be of interest to sports journalists, bloggers, managers, and officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern-day landscape of Olympic and Professional sport is arguably more competitive than ever. One consequence of this is the increased focus on identifying and developing early athletic talent. In this paper, we highlight key challenges associated with talent (athlete) identification and development and propose possible solutions that could be considered by research and practice. The first challenge focuses on clarifying the purposes of talent identification initiatives such as defining what talent is and how its meaning might evolve over time. Challenge two centers on ways to best identify, select and develop talent, including issues with different approaches to identification, the need to understand the impact of development and the need to have appropriate resourcing in the system to support continued development of knowledge. Finally, we discuss two challenges in relation to the 'healthiness' of talent identification and development. The first examines whether a talent identification and development system is 'healthy' for athletes while the second focuses on how sport stakeholders could discourage the apparent trend toward early specialization in youth sport settings. Whilst this paper discusses the research in relation to these challenges, we propose multiple possible solutions that researchers and practitioners could consider for optimizing their approach to talent identification and development. In summary, talent is a complex and largely misunderstood phenomenon lacking robust research evidence, and given concerns that it is potentially unhealthy, talent identification and selection at younger ages is not recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By drawing on primary scholarly literature on the dual career in sport, this article aims to identify the key features and problems concerning the development and implementation of programs promoting school and university education for young footballers. The paper highlights the importance of bridging the gap between professional sport and learning in young footballers by promoting dissemination actions within dual-career programs. To implement these actions, the authors have investigated and examined by comparative, historical, and hermeneutical methodology the role that team manager may play to support programs that, in the context of Italian legislation and regulations, encourage the development of specific skills in young footballers. These skills deal mainly with coping with transitions affecting athlete-students and student-athletes' sports experience and post-career years. The paper will conclude with a list of educational principles to be developed as practical actions to implement dual-career programs for young footballers attending high school or university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports have been deemed beneficial for the better functioning of a person. Indulgence in sporting activities is a rich and rewarding experience. However, the amount of mental stress increases for athletes who compete in professional sports and academic students. The challenging characteristics in the mental state of sports students include: Lack of Proper fitness, Poor skill development, and Overtraining enrollment are considered essential factors. Hence, in this paper, a human–computer interaction-based Augmented intercommunication framework (AICF) has been proposed to enhance the sports student's current competitiveness, performance experience, and mental state analysis. The location-based strategy is introduced to improve mental strength and training in preparation for the sports student. The behaviour recognition algorithm is integrated with AICF to boost sports students' skill production, both physically and mentally. The simulation results show that an augmented intercommunications system achieves 97% accuracy, a performance of 98%, feasibility of 95%, resilience of 16%, and an efficiency of 99%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessment of physical fatigue is crucial to preventing physical injury caused by excessive exercise, overtraining during daily exercise and professional sports training. However, as a subjective feeling of an individual, physical fatigue is difficult for others to objectively evaluate. Heart rate variability (HRV), which is derived from electrocardiograms (ECG) and controlled by the autonomic nervous system, has been demonstrated to be a promising indicator for physical fatigue estimation. In this paper, we propose a novel method for the automatic and objective classification of physical fatigue based on HRV. First, a total of 24 HRV features were calculated. Then, a feature selection method was proposed to remove useless features that have a low correlation with physical fatigue and redundant features that have a high correlation with the selected features. After feature selection, the best 11 features were selected and were finally used for physical fatigue classifying. Four machine learning algorithms were trained to classify fatigue using the selected features. The experimental results indicate that the model trained using the selected 11 features could classify physical fatigue with high accuracy. More importantly, these selected features could provide important information regarding the identification of physical fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a combined Huizingian-Bourdieu framework, this paper analyses the significance of sport's transformation into a business and how the prevailing business structure that defines professional sport has influenced the 'lived experience' of those playing at sport's elite level. Furthermore, this paper highlights how the actions of players, coaches and other participants serve to reinforce, legitimise and normalise the business characteristics of sport's dominant business structure. Importantly, this paper illuminates how the professionalization of sport corrupts the act of playing and indeed gives rise to play tactics, such as 'sledging', which both reflects the increased seriousness of sport and, in its very execution, further reinforces the dominant business structures of professional sport, all the while corrupting the essence of sport – play. In doing so we are challenged to consider how society's fields could be different in structure, and in the 'lived experience' within the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The article analyses different sponsorship strategies of professional sports teams and sponsors from Germany and Spain. Since sport is still a young industry, companies are increasingly interested in it, especially since it is growing rapidly, both at the professional and spectator levels. Because very little research has been done so far, the article is based on interviews with experts from the professional sports industry. These people are the most knowledgeable about the industry and place a high value on the interviews conducted. The authors attempt to better understand the current situation of sponsorship within the industry. Design - This research follows the interpretivism approach with a qualitative method of collecting primary data. On this basis, an inductive approach was used, to investigate the interpretations of the people with whom the interview was conducted. The chosen research strategy consequently was based on expert interviews. Findings - The interviews it became clear that there is one main problem that all teams have to face and that still discourages companies to join the industry, a lack of trust and knowledge. A governing body or federation could possibly solve that problem. Nevertheless, there are other important results stated in this paper that could also lead to a better understanding of the industry and situation at hand. Value - The provision of theoretical evidence on possible new sponsorship strategies for electronic sports teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research inspecting the demand for tickets for professional sports has mostly used aggregate data in their estimations. In a nutshell, it implies that all fans would be driven by the same determinants. In this research, we test whether this hypothesis holds. We analyse all first-tier Brazilian League home matches of both Flamengo and Fluminense at the iconic stadium Maracanã (Brazil) from 2014 to 2019. Ordinary Least Square regressions model individual equations for each sector for comparing their determinants. Our empirical results offer evidence that ticket price and Uncertainty of Outcome have different impact on demand for tickets according to the sector. Further research is encouraged to inspect whether similar behavior is detected in other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Athletic performance, technique assessment, and injury prevention are all important aspects in sports for both professional and amateur athletes. Wearable technology is attracting the research community's interest because of its capability to provide real-time biofeedback to coaches and athletes when on the field and outside of more restrictive laboratory conditions. In this paper, a novel wearable motion sensor-based system has been designed and developed for athletic performance assessment during running and jumping tasks. The system consists of a number of components involving embedded systems (hardware and software), back-end analytics, information and communications technology (ICT) platforms, and a graphical user interface for data visualization by the coach. The system is able to provide automatic activity recognition, estimation of running and jumping metrics, as well as vertical ground reaction force (GRF) predictions, with sufficient accuracy to provide valuable information as regards training outcomes. The developed system is low-power, sufficiently small for real-world scenarios, easy to use, and achieves the specified communication range. The system's high sampling rate, levels of accuracy and performance enables it as a performance evaluation tool able to support coaches and athletes in their real-world practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The covid-19 virus struck the global society with full power in the first months of the year 2020 and the sports industry was not spared from its impacts. This paper looks at the consequences that the pandemic had for the stability of professional contracts, mainly in the field of football and ice hockey; nevertheless, these observations could be applicable to other professional sport disciplines as well. The situation often brought tensions between the well-respected principle of contractual stability in sport and the acute needs of the clubs and players. It could be considered that even if the pandemic fades away one day, it will leave its footprints on the shape of professional sport. Besides general discussion of the legal consequences of the covid-19 pandemic for professional contracts this article also seeks to provide practical input by drafting a model covid clause for future professional sport contracts and by considering other possibilities of reflecting unforeseen global instances of force majeure in athletes’ agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In elite sports, training schedules are becoming increasingly complex, and a large number of parameters of such schedules need to be tuned to the specific physique of a given athlete. In this paper, we describe how extensive analysis of historical data can help optimise these parameters, and how possible pitfalls of under- and overtraining in the past can be avoided in future schedules. We treat the series of exercises an athlete undergoes as a discrete sequence of attributed events, that can be aggregated in various ways, to capture the many ways in which an athlete can prepare for an important test event. We report on a cooperation with the elite speed skating team LottoNL-Jumbo, who have recorded detailed training data over the last 15 years. The aim of the project was to analyse this potential source of knowledge, and extract actionable and interpretable patterns that can provide input to future improvements in training. We present two alternative techniques to aggregate sequences of exercises into a combined, long-term training effect, one of which based on a sliding window, and one based on a physiological model of how the body responds to exercise. Next, we use both linear modelling and Subgroup Discovery to extract meaningful models of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents qualitative research in sport management and suggests that case study is an appropriate qualitative methodology for research and practice in sport finance. The purpose of qualitative methodology is presented along with the process of a case study. The intention of this paper, for academicians working in sport management, is twofold. The first aspect is for researchers to consider using qualitative case study methodology in instances where such practice will progress the knowledge and understanding of specific situations while invoking a deeper response to research questions. The second facet of this paper focuses on the framework of case study methodology, as applied to a research project in the field of sport finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first systematic economic analysis of professional sports was undertaken nearly three decades ago. Since that time, the field of sports economics has expanded to such an extent that it supports a journal devoted to it, "Journal of Sports Economics." The author shares that when he was asked to edit a special issue of Managerial and Decision Economics on sports economics, he saw it as an opportunity to bring something a little different and with a little bit of controversy to the readers of this journal. In particular, he resolved not to solicit papers in subjects where the ground had been trodden. Rather, he wanted papers that were fresh, on sound theoretical ground, and, where empirical, were careful in the econometrics.

This paper explores the use of social media, specifically Twitter, in two English football clubs during their first season under the professional structure of the WSL. The study uses data from the clubs' Twitter accounts and interviews with key employees. A total of 1088 tweets were analysed. Four themes emerged: player availability; status; cooperation and social media strategy. The findings showed that while women's football has made great strides, the increased use of social media by players has not been supported by proper media training. Furthermore, the increase in status has not been matched by better funding. It is important that the increased awareness surrounding women's football is matched by an increase in player well-being as this will impact the standing of women's football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orienteering has gradually changed from a professional sport to a civilian sport. Especially in recent years, orienteering has been widely popularized. Many colleges and universities in China have also set up this course. With the improvement of people's living conditions, orienteering has really become a leisure sport in modern people's life. The reduced difficulty of sports enables more people to participate, but it also exposes a series of problems. As the existing positioning technology is relatively backward, the progress in personnel tracking, emergency services, and other aspects is slow. To solve these problems, a new intelligent orienteering application system is developed based on the Internet of things. ZigBee network architecture is adopted in the system. ZigBee is the mainstream scheme in the current wireless sensor network technology, which has many advantages such as convenient carrying, low power consumption, and signal stability. Due to the complex communication environment in mobile signal, the collected information is processed by signal amplification and signal anti-interference technology. By adding anti-interference devices, video isolators and other devices, the signal is guaranteed to the maximum extent. In order to verify the actual effect of this system, through a number of experimental studies including the relationship between error and traffic radius and the relationship between coverage and the number of anchor nodes, the data shows that the scheme studied in this paper has a greater improvement in comprehensive performance than the traditional scheme, significantly improving the accuracy and coverage. Especially the coverage is close to 100% in the simulation experiment. This research has achieved good results and can be widely used in orienteering training and competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]