Title
Professional football clubs and empirical evidence from the COVID-19 crisis: Time for sport entrepreneurship?
Date Issued
01 April 2021
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Tallinn University of Technology
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Inc.
Abstract
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread worldwide in a short period and has developed into one of the biggest public health issues of the last decade. The actions initiated by governments to minimize person-to-person contact have also severely affected professional football clubs (PFCs) in the season 2019/20. Given the role of football in Europe, football clubs gained massive public and political attention during the COVID-19 crisis. Based on an exploratory multiple case study approach involving PFCs from five European football leagues, this study investigates the responses of these clubs to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show the relevance of solidarity with certain stakeholders during the pandemic, but also reveal the fragility of PFCs due to their financial structure and underdeveloped managerial and entrepreneurial strategies to cope with the crisis. This study contributes theoretically and empirically to the literature on the entrepreneurial behavior and crisis management of elite sport organizations and illustrates a holistic map of a dense, high solidary stakeholder network.
Volume
165
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencias de la educación
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85099209951
Source
Technological Forecasting and Social Change
ISSN of the container
00401625
Source funding
Libera UniversitĆ di Bolzano
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by the Open Access Publishing Fund provided by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción CientĆfica
Scopus