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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 It is stated that the best original and significant unpublished contribution in sport management is given this award.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.

Purpose Turnover of employees is a key challenge for companies. The same is true for sports clubs that must set appropriate incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention. As salary caps and team budgets restrict monetary incentives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of organizational support on turnover intention of professional team sports athletes.Design/methodology/approach The paper applies a combined approach of qualitative and quantitative research and considers the specific requirements of European professional team sports. First, a qualitative study investigates organizational support in team sports and identifies relevant non-monetary incentives. Second, a quantitative study tests the effects of the identified organizational support incentives on turnover intention using a unique data set of professional team sports athletes. Third, a moderation analysis measures possible effects of age.Findings Through the qualitative study, three relevant non-monetary incentives could be identified in the context of professional team sports: integration of family (IOF), second career support, and private problem support. The subsequent quantitative study of football, ice hockey and handball athletes assesses the effectiveness of the identified incentives. All three incentives negatively influence athletes’ turnover intention, while IOF has a substantially stronger negative effect on turnover intention for younger athletes.Originality/value The findings indicate the importance of organizational support to decrease athletes’ turnover intention. Although money is relevant, sports clubs also need to address non-monetary incentives to decrease their athletes’ turnover intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting on the websites of football clubs based in five European countries with different levels of football corporatisation. Design/methodology/approach: The study examines CSR reporting on the internet by football clubs based in five European countries. Multiple regression analysis is used to analyse some factors which influence reporting and test a set of hypotheses. Findings: The findings suggest that clubs from countries in which the level of corporatisation is higher disclose more CSR information. Also, clubs with higher public visibility disclose a higher variety of CSR information. Originality/value: This study adds to the scarce research on CSR reporting in professional sports leagues by providing new empirical data and by extending prior research comparing such practices within different international frameworks of CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most European industries have a history of gradually opening international markets, with growing international capital mobility and increasing free trade of goods and services. However, although labour markets have been officially deregulated as well, there is much less international mobility of labour, mainly due to cultural and social barriers. An apparent exception to the rule been the industry of professional team sports in Europe, where the Bosman verdict in 1995 has freed the European player market while the product market was still nationally protected. In this paper, we try to derive the consequences of this deviant evolution in the European sports industry, concentrating on the competitive balance within and between national leagues and on the player salary levels, using a simplified ‘two country–four team’ model with quadratic revenue functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis of the Americanization of European club sports competitions has been the subject of much analysis. The main concept examined in this article is the growing reliance on demographic criteria, particularly the economic potential of the market zone. The purpose is to consider the consequences (rather than the likelihood) of a scenario in which demographic criteria become the sole variables of club location and their qualification in European championships. Such a change would have consequences for the both the private (shareholders or potential investors, direct supporters or general audience, sponsors, etc.) and public (federations, local government, states, European governing bodies) sectors. The first part of the paper reviews the relevant demographic criteria in sports and then recalls the current strategies for league organization on both sides of the Atlantic. The second part is devoted to assessing the consequences of these strategies for those involved. General questions are then raised about the future of professional sports teams in Europe. The analytical method is based on principles taken from demographics, geomarketing (as geographic information system, GIS) and the political economy of sport. The data concern six major leagues on both sides of the Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Economics / Ekonomia is the property of Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Collected Papers of the Faculty of Law in Split / Zbornik Radova Pravnog Fakulteta u Splitu is the property of Split Faculty of Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines the legal status of proposals for home-grown player rules in European football. It states that the home-grown player rules involve quotas on the selection of football players in European club competitions that may result on national discrimination. Further, the rules, background and the perspectives of the European institutions on the rules are also presented.

This paper focuses on a qualitative comparison between European football and U.S. team sports with respect to the effects of the number of goals per match, impartial errors of the referee, and overtime versus ties on the natural level of competitive balance. The more goals and the more perfect the referee, the more drastic are the measures needed to maintain competitive balance. Taking into account that the optimal level of competitive balance is lower in open leagues than in closed leagues, the combined effect of these factors may explain why in U.S. team sports special measures are in force to maintain competitive balance, which are absent in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased activity of multiple stakeholders (e.g. agents and owners) have created new challenges for some coaches working in professional sports clubs. The purpose of this project was to draw attention to the normative or accepted practices inherent in sport work, some of the day-to-day realities of some coaches working in this context, and to understand how coaches' perceptions of other stakeholders come to bear on their individual circumstances, career expectations/objectives and professional agency. Data were generated from semi-structured interviews with seven professional basketball coaches who worked in top-level European clubs. The analysis reveals the coach's relationships between some owners and agents differed with respect to exercising professional agency, and, coach's decisions and actions were tied to their professional ideals as well as understandings of what they need to undertake their work effectively and negotiation and/or adjustment strategies. Occasionally coach's work practices could be viewed as antithetical to employment security, however, the presence of insecurity was at times embraced and used strategically to affect workers' career decisions. Amid contemporary regional geo-political shifts, this work aids examinations of global sport settings, structures and issues that may contour sporting professionals' lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this research was to determine the existence of relative age effect (RAE) in five European soccer leagues and their second-tier competitions. Even though RAE is a well-known phenomenon in professional sports environments it seems that the effect does not decline over the years. Moreover, additional information is required, especially when taking into account second-tier leagues. Birthdates from 1,332 first-tier domestic players from France, England, Spain, Germany and Italy and birthdates from 1,992 second-tier domestic players for the 2014/2015 season were taken for statistical analysis. In addition to standard statistical tests, the data were analyzed using econometric techniques for count data using Poisson and negative binomial regressions. The results obtained confirmed a biased distribution of birthdates in favor of players born earlier in the calendar year. For all of the five first-tier soccer leagues there was an unequal distribution of birthdates (France χ2 = 40.976, P<0.001; England χ2 = 21.892, P = 0.025; Spain χ2 = 24.690, P = 0.010; Germany χ2 = 22.889, P = 0.018; Italy χ2 = 28.583, P = 0.003). The results for second-tier leagues were similar (France χ2 = 46.741, P<0.001; England χ2 = 27.301, P = 0.004; Spain χ2 = 49.745, P<0.001; Germany χ2 = 30.633, P = 0.001; Italy χ2 = 36.973, P<0.001). Econometric techniques achieved similar results: estimated effect of month of birth, i.e., long-term RAE on players’ representativeness, is negative (statistically significant at the 1% level). On average, one month closer to the end of the year reduces the logs of expected counts of players by 6.9%. Assuming this effect as linear, being born in the month immediately before the cut-off date (i.e., December/August), reduces the logs of expected counts of players by approximately 75.9%. Further, ID (index of discrimination, that is, the ratio between the expected counts of players born in the middle of the first and the twelfth month of the selection year) is 2.13 and 2.22 for the first- and second-tier, respectively. In other words, in the top five European first-tier and second-tier leagues, one should expect the number of players born in the first month of the calendar year to be twice the number of those born in the last month. The RAE in the second-tiers is the same as in the first-tiers, so it appears that there is no second chance for later born players. This reduces the chances to recover talented players discarded in youth simply because of lower maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the First World War, the practice of football underwent rapid development in continental Europe as a professional sport as well as a new diplomatic instrument. This article aims to analyse the role and the involvement of Swiss football leaders in this context of commercialisation, mediatisation and politicisation, from the 1930s to 1954, when in the same year Swiss officials organised the World Cup and held the Basel congress, which laid the first stone of a European governing body: the Union des Associations Européennes de Football (UEFA). The analysis of those officials’ involvement stresses the importance of the role played by Switzerland in the administration of the game (the headquarters of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association have been based in Zurich since 1932, the UEFA moved to Bern in 1960), in the organisation of a great number of international games and competitions for clubs (Coupe of Nations in 1930) and national teams (World Cup in 1954), but also more broadly in the international relations, where sport – and especially football – was increasingly used as a tool of diplomacy in changing geopolitical configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examine the relationship between professional sports and antitrust laws in the U.S. and European Union. Topics discussed include no jurisdiction to eliminate sports exemptions in U.S. and EU; origin and parameters of the antitrust exemption for professional sports, and the de facto exemption for professional sports.

This article demonstrates the potential of program theory evaluation (PTE) in evaluating sport league reforms through an analysis of the Union Cycliste International's (UCI) competition reform in professional road cycling. It is asserted that PTE can yield different insights in comparison with other evaluation models about why a sport league reform succeeds or fails. With respect to the UCI competition reform, previous assertions that the failure of the reform was caused exclusively by team-related problems are rejected. In contrast, it is asserted that the reform was unsuccessful due to problems related to both teams and race organizers: (1) the unwillingness of race organizers to participate in the competition; (2) implementation failure of the start duty of ProTour teams; and (3) the dependency of professional cycling on European races and teams. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

European football is in a spiral of intra-league and inter-league polarization of talent and wealth. The invariance proposition is revisited with adaptations for win-maximizing sportsman owners facing an uncertain Champions League prize. Sportsman and champion effects have driven European football clubs to the edge of insolvency and polarized competition throughout Europe. Revenue revolutions and financial crises of the Big Five leagues are examined and estimates of competitive balance are compared. The European Super League completes the open-market solution after Bosman. A 30-team Super League is proposed based on the National Football League. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research analyzes the attendance of individuals at a National Football League (NFL) training camp, comparing attendees within an 80-mile radius around the training camp with attendees from the NFL team's city who drove 100-140 miles to attend the training camp. Over 1,700 training camp attendees were surveyed. The results indicate that training camp attendees from the local region and those from the NFL city were found to be significantly different in terms of age, use of information sources, and previous attendance at the training camp. Proximity to the training camp location was the most important influence on the decision to attend the training camp. However, the data also suggest that proximity to the NFL city (team identification) was also an important influence on attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current labour dispute in the National Hockey League raises the question of why work stoppages in North American team sports happen frequently, while in European sports no serious labour disputes have been observed to date. The long history of work stoppages in major North American leagues such as Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League and the National Hockey League is related to industrial organization in these leagues. The monopsonistic environment in North American professional sports leagues enables employers to restrict the mobility of players, while on the European sports labour market restrictions have largely been abolished since the Bosman ruling in 1995. Players in Europe therefore do not have to fight for their labour rights, while in North America professionals have to fight to prevent further restrictions. The industrial organization of leagues therefore plays a crucial role in the compensation of players and differs between Europe and North America, especially through the relegation system which governs most European leagues. It is concluded that industrial structure in European sports limits monopolistic power in the labour market. An “Americanization” of European sports would make labour disputes more likely than they are now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Eastern European Sport. As far as choices open to East European sports politicians and bureaucrats are concerned--the European Commission suggested a European model of sport which was wholly based on the tenets of not only professional sport in general but more narrowly on the nexus of sports, TV and sponsorship rights that have developed in professional football. These models have been adopted and adapted in the former colonies of Britain, Germany and France, but there is another, very different model in the U.S.

This article discusses European Commission (EC) sports policy and the risk inherent in shaping a sports policy that fails adequately to distinguish between professional sport and recreational/amateur sport. According to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), football in particular, and sport in general, possesses unusual characteristics that distinguishes it from normal commercial sectors. It insisted that these unusual characteristics should be considered in shaping the application of the EC law. The key feature that distinguishes sport from normal industries is mutual interdependence of participants. There were two landmark ECJ rulings in April 2000 which raised the issue of EC law applicability to sport.