International sport federations’ commercialisation: a qualitative comparative analysis

ABSTRACT

Research question: This study examines the conditions and configurations that particularly influence International Federations’ (IFs) commercialisation.

Research method: Crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) is used to determine the conditions that are related to an IFs’ commercialisation. Sixteen interviews were conducted in six Olympic IFs and one international sport umbrella organisation.

Results and findings: The findings reveal a variety of high and low commercialisation configurations. Specialisation is a key condition in both high and low commercialisation, and social media engagement is central in high commercialisation. Strategic planning and low accountability have low degrees of overlap with high commercialisation outcomes. With 13 out of 22 IFs achieving high levels of commercialisation, the findings demonstrate that IFs are increasingly developing business-like behaviours.

Implications: The findings highlight the importance of specialisation and social media engagement to achieve high commercialisation. However, when IFs assume a monetisation agenda, there are associated risks such as stakeholder legitimacy, mission drift, goal vagueness and adherence to good governance principles.

KEYWORDS:

• Olympic international federations
• commercialisation
• set-theoretic method
• mission drift

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We first added up the IF's incomes for the years for which financial statements are available, not including Olympic revenue (Sum A). As the 2012–2015 Olympic revenue allocated to the summer Olympic IFs is known to us, we multiplied a quarter of this by the number of years for which the IF's financial statements are available (Sum B). Finally, we added up Sum A and Sum B. As the 2010–2013 Olympic revenue allocated to the Olympic winter IFs is not known to us, we cannot apply normalisation rules in these cases.

2 We converted the currency used in the IJF's financial reports (i.e. Swiss francs) into Euros based on the exchange rate of 31 July 2014 (CHF 1 = EUR 0.82195).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant 100017_153488.