Sport is not industry: bringing sport back to sport management

ABSTRACT

Research question: The paper questions the widespread conceptualisation of sport as industry and business in the research field of sport management. It asks if the field largely neglects sport’s special quality and the study of how managing sport organisations has effects on sport and the sporting human.

Research methods: The paper briefly reviews the recent debate of the sport management research field in its three leading journals, but despite being empirical in part, it is foremost a position and conceptual paper. To bring sport back to the centre of the research field, it suggests that sport is conceptualised as a unique institution in an inter-institutional system.

Results and findings: In light of the massive increase of research papers published in the leading journals over the past decades, debate of where sport management research is going and whom it serves is scanty. It is likely that this deficiency reflects its immersion in an ideology of managerialism that leaves us unconcerned about the wider influence of our research field.

Implications: The paper challenges the research field and its journal editorships to debate where sport management is going, and whom it serves. It encourages discussion that will revitalise and strengthen the discipline and its influence on the practice field of sport management.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport industry
• managerialism
• institutional theory
• institutional logics
• sport management

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the comments from Bella Nujen, Christos Anagnostopoulos, Guillaume Bodet, Josef Fahlen, Seamus Kelly and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).