![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Research question: Despite the attention the Olympic Winter Games has received by scholars, there has been little theoretically informed analysis on the positioning of nations in a dynamic environment. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how nations position themselves in the Winter Games by comparing national funding prioritisations of Olympic Winter sports.
Research methods: The distribution of funding in 2010/2011 is used as a proxy to examine how eight nations prioritise among seven sports. National policies are analysed at two levels: (a) the concentration of funding among the supported sports is measured using the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) and (b) the Spearman’s rho coefficient is used to examine the correlations between the distribution of funding (2010/2011) and success per sport in the past (1992–2006), recent past (2010) and future (2014).
Results and findings: All nations show some prioritisation, but the resulting distribution of funding differs. For example, South Korea diversifies its funding most equally (HHI = 0.18), while Switzerland’s funding is more concentrated (HHI = 0.46). Furthermore, positioning differs depending on the type of sport most prioritised, be it skiing (Australia, Canada, Finland and Switzerland), skating (Japan and the Netherlands), both (South Korea) or bobsleigh/skeleton (Great Britain). Meanwhile, high correlation values were found for Australia, Great Britain, Finland and Japan in all periods, while the Netherlands, Canada, South Korea and Switzerland show high values in specific periods only. The results provide empirical evidence on different positioning strategies regarding the investment in either a focused or a diversified portfolio of targeted sports.
Implications: Using a management perspective derived from economics, this study supports national decision-makers to compare prioritisation policies in their own national context.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thorough feedback and critical advice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In February 2012, Sport and Recreation New Zealand became Sport New Zealand (SportNZ, Citation2016).
2. Gracenote Sports is a company that collects and edits sports performance data.
3. Medal-events are events in which a final rank is given to distribute medals, while qualification events for the final are excluded.
4. This medal in snowboarding was the only medal won by the Netherlands in a non-ice skating sport between 1992 and 2014.
5. This diploma in bobsleigh was the second out of three won by the Netherlands in non-ice skating sports between 1992 and 2014. The Netherlands also won a diploma in 2002 and 2014, both in bobsleigh.
6. For a fuller discussion of the resource-based view, see Barney (Citation2001).
7. For a fuller discussion of the market-based view, see Porter (Citation2008a).