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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]

A peculiarity in professional sports is the fact that leagues regularly hold monopoly power within their sports. However, whether and to what extent these leagues may compete with other leagues across sports is relatively unexplored. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing competition and fan substitution in Germany, where top-tier league managers in handball, basketball, and ice hockey have recently claimed that their teams suffer from football's dominant position. Our attendance demand models confirm the existence of significant substitution effects in this setting, which suggests that leagues indeed do compete economically across sports for fan attendance. [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]

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]

Nutritional supplements (NS) are denned as concentrated sources of nutrients and other substances that have a nutritional or physiological effect and that are used in high frequency among athletes. The study aimed to create a prediction profile for young elite athletes to identify those athletes who have a higher relative risk for using NS. The second objective was to examine the hypothesis that the consumption of NS paves a gateway for the use of illicit drugs and doping substances. A self-designed anonymous paper-and-pencil questionnaire was used to examine the prevalence of NS consumption, doping, and illicit drug use in elite athletes with a mean age of 17 years (SD = 4 years). Logistic regression analysis was employed to assess whether NS consumption can be predicted by independent variables (e.g., biographical data, training characteristics, drug consumption behavior) to create the prediction profile for NS use. 55% and 5% of the athletes (n = 536) responded positively to having used NS and illicit drugs, respectively. Nutritional supplement consumption was positively correlated with age (OR: 1.92; CI: 1.21 to 3.05), the desire to enhance performance to become an Olympic or World Champion (OR: 3.72; CI: 2.33 to 6.01), and being educated about NS (OR: 2.76; CI: 1.73 to 4.45). It was negatively correlated with training frequency (OR: 0.55; CI: 0.35 to 0.86) and the use of nicotine (OR: 0.29; CI: 0.1 to 0.74) but did not correlate with illicit drug use and alcohol consumption. The present results show that NS are used on a large scale in elite sports. The prediction profile presented in this article may help to identify those athletes who have a high risk for using NS to plan potential education and prevention models more individually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is giving sports a timeout. Due to the risk of infection, in Germany no sports events with live spectators were allowed for weeks starting on March 13. The question arises, what would be the impact on spectators and with that on live broadcasting for different sports? While professional sport leagues like handball and hockey (ice hockey) stopped, the football (soccer) league restarted games without spectators on May 16. Using two approaches of sports action as a public presentation of performance and the consumption capital theory, the share of revenues like media, spectators, sponsoring of the biggest sport leagues in Germany is compared. Following this up, the economic impact of COVID-19 on professional sports in Germany is explained. As a result games without spectators ('ghost games'), the gap between major sports and minor sports seems to be becoming larger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the problem of finding an optimal schedule for the German Basketball League (BBL) for the 2011-2012 season. A major issue that we address is that most of the games take place in multipurpose arenas that are also used for other events and are thus not always available. In addition, we must minimize the number of successive home or away games, assign the most interesting games to television broadcasting slots, minimize the distance teams must drive on a newly established derby day, and meet team requests for home or away games and to play specific teams. We present several algorithmic approaches and show how these models fit the BBL's requirements. In this process, we prove that the classic models, which the BBL had applied previously and many other leagues still apply, are too limited to meet these requirements. We show that canonical schedules do not have the desired properties. We proved to the BBL that mirrored schedules cannot meet its needs, and thus convinced it to use nonmirrored schedules for the first time in its history. The BBL's requirements are typical of sports leagues; therefore, the approaches presented are also applicable to many other sports leagues. We implemented our approach in scheduling software that we developed for the BBL and applied to its 2011-2012 season scheduling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sport industry has long used social media as an effective instrument of communication. In the framework of the current study, a content analysis investigated how professional sport clubs in Germany use Facebook and Twitter. The study covers the entire 2015-16 season, which was illustrated via selectively choosing 2 weeks for data analysis; four clubs each from basketball, ice hockey, football, and handball were collected as a sample. All Facebook posts and Twitter tweets published by the 16 clubs during the 2 weeks, a total of 3,412 contributions (Facebook 717, Twitter 2,695), were included in the analysis. The codebook contained 57 variables, and this article presents the results on the identified topics of the published contents on the two social media platforms. On both platforms, the clubs under examination primarily issued statements regarding themselves and their sport-related activities. Twitter is predominantly used as a live medium during games, whereas Facebook allows for significantly greater reach. However, no sport-related differences were found between the two social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has focused on the salaries of athletes and players in professionalised sports. Currently, there is a lack of evidence regarding the income of elite athletes in non-professionalised sports who represent their home country in various competitions (e.g., during the Olympics). For this paper, a theoretical model has been developed to explain the income of elite athletes as a function of individual factors and consumption capital of spectators generated through media exposure of the sport. The model is tested using data from a nationwide survey of elite athletes in Germany who are supported by the German Sports Aid Foundation (n = 1,133). The results show that being an Olympic champion, age, age-squared, being employed, attending school, and the media exposure of the sport have a significant impact on the income of elite athletes in non-professionalised sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Research questionProfessional sports fulfil important societal functions. Previous studies have already attempted to quantify the intangible benefits of successful national athletes or hosting major sporting events. This study chooses an alternative channel of quantification. Based on the theoretical framework of sporting role models, it analyses whether the individual relevance of professional sports increases the frequency of sport participation. To quantify this effect, it subsequently analyses whether the increased sport participation increases sport-related expenditure. Research methodsA quantitative research design based on primary data of approximately 500 German amateur tennis players was chosen. Unfortunately, the econometric identification of the effect of the relevance of professional sports on sport participation behaviours is aggravated by a selection bias. To circumvent this issue, instrumental variables were constructed based on the starting year of the surveyed amateurs' sport participation, which is considered to be exogenous. Results and findingsThe results of the instrumental variable estimations show that amateurs with a higher relevance of professional tennis spend between 21.5% and 24.4% more time playing tennis. In addition, 1% more participation per week increases the yearly sport-related expenditure by approximately 0.45%. Consequently, approximately 200 million euros of the tennis-related expenditure of German amateur tennis participants could be attributed to professional tennis in Germany. ImplicationsThe results of this study provide evidence for positive external effects of professional sports in Germany. These external effects could act as an additional rationale for the use of public funds to promote professional sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children born shortly after the cut-off date applying for age grouping in minor sports profit from being able to remain for almost an additional year in their respective age group compared to those born later in the same year. A shift of the cut-off date in German youth soccer in 1997 allowed us to investigate the effect of a favourable relative age as well as the effect of a change of the cut-off date on the birth-date distribution of soccer players in the Bundesliga (Division 1), the highest professional soccer league in Germany. Both the cut-off date and the change of the cut-off date exerted a significant influence on the composition of professional senior squads. In the 1997/98 season, there was an overrepresentation of players profiting from the old cut-off date of 1 August. In the 2007/08 season, 10 years after the change of the cut-off date, there was an overrepresentation of players born shortly after the new cut-off date of 1 January. This pattern of results shows that owing to the cut-off dates applying in youth soccer, the date of birth of young players systematically influences their later professional success and career. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Carl Diem (1882-1962) was an important sports bureaucrat of his century. He was a planner and principal organizer of the Berlin Games. He served to the Olympic movement from the 1912 Stockholm Games until the year of his death. He was an energetic sports educator and traveled all around the world for consulting to various countries about sports. The purpose of this study was to examine Carl Diem's life and his creative projects about sport and the Olympics. The subject was searched based upon the literature. As a result, it could be said that Carl Diem is one of the most important people in German sport history and in the Olympic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point entails the declarations of the International Olympic Committee, as well as UNESCO and the Council of Europe on sport as a human right. This article adopts a philosophical and historical perspective on the question of which duties, obligations, and constraints stand in the way of realising this utopian perspective of fair and humane sport as a general human right. The work is based on central historical documents and writings. Two strands of argumentation are pursued. Firstly, the introduction of compulsory physical education, particularly in Germany and on the European continent, in the context of nation-building since the 19th century. Secondly, the idea of a world of sport of its own, which emerged from Olympism and was intended to assert itself against political and economic appropriations. Compulsory physical education is not a human right but a duty. The idea of a world of sports of its own has produced further regulations and obligations in certain fields of sports like professional and commercial sports. Doing sport for health and fitness may become a social obligation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]