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Abstract
The inclusion of action sports in the Olympic Games and gaining popularity may necessitate a professionalization of the associated sports organizations to effectively tackle the challenges and meet the expectations of various stakeholders. This study explores the professionalization of action sports newly included in the Olympics by focusing on skateboarding and surfing in South Korea. Data for this study included semi-structured interviews with key individuals (n = 17) and archival materials. The findings indicate that Olympic inclusion triggered the sports’ professionalization at the field- and organizational-levels. There were changes in the institutional environment for the sports at the field-level, and the sports’ central organizations underwent structural and procedural changes. This research provides implications to action sports organizations and stakeholders, especially those in countries where action sports are less popular, who wish to leverage the Olympic inclusion of their sports as an opportunity to establish a more professionalized system for sports.
Acknowledgments
We extend our sincere gratitude to the participants and officials of KSA and KRSF for sharing their insights. We also would like to express our appreciation to the editors and reviewers for their invaluable feedback. This research was supported by Paul Smith’s College.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2024.2335767)
Notes
1 The programme of the Olympics refers to ‘the programme of all sports competitions established by the IOC for each edition of the Olympic Games’ (IOC, 2023, p. 84). In line with previous studies (e.g. Wheaton and Thorpe Citation2019), we describe the inclusion of action sports into the Olympic programmes briefly as ‘the inclusion of action sports’.
2 The KSOC is responsible for elite and mass sport development in Korea. The organization offers diverse supports to national sporting governing bodies, such as distributing public funding (i.e. national sports promotional funds).
3 At the time of writing, surfing is supposed to be included as an official sport program of the 2026 Asian Games for the first time. On the other hand, skateboarding has been the official sport program of the event since the 2018 edition.