Antecedents, activities and outcomes of social selling in professional sports clubs

The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship among professional youth sports clubs’ participative fun, friendship qualities, and social competence of the youths who are actively participating in the professional youth sports clubs. For this study, I have gathered 345 samples of youths who are participating in professional youth sports clubs managed by professional sports clubs, and I have secured 309 valid samples of survey materials. The data have been processed using the program “SPSS 19.0” to conduct a questing factorial analysis and a credibility analysis. Moreover, using the program “AMOS 18.0”, I have conducted an analysis of a structural equation model to verify the study model. Meanwhile, the significance level is set to be 0.05. The following are the research results. Firstly, it turned out that participative fun of professional youth sports clubs affects friendship qualities significantly. More specifically, based on the analysis result of the final model, we can see that the analysis of effect about the research hypothesis of path coefficient significantly affects directly. Participation in professional youth sports clubs allows the participants to experience sports fun, such as breaking away from the routine of daily life, enhancement of health and fitness, improved interpersonal relations, and encountering competition and even gaining victories. Furthermore, interpersonal relations will be strengthened based on such experiences. Therefore, it is verified that such factors affect friendship in social relations significantly. Secondly, the participative fun of professional youth sports clubs affects social competence significantly. More specifically, based on the analysis result of the final model, we can see that the analysis of effect about the research hypothesis of path coefficient significantly affects both directly and indirectly. This proves that social competence such as social activity, social cooperation, social hyper sensitiveness, and social stability can be developed through professional youth sports club activities. Furthermore, it also proves that positive mutual synergy effect is affected significantly. For example, such increase in social competence level leads to an increase in the level of participative fun of professional youth sports clubs. Lastly, both friendship qualities and social competence of professional youth sports clubs are affected significantly. More specifically, based on the analysis result of the final model, we can see that the analysis of effect about the research hypothesis of path coefficient significantly affects directly. This suggests that social competence such as self-disclosure, intimacy, competency is increased through participation of professional youth sports clubs and through improvement of friendship qualities. It leads to smoother management of social lives. Moreover, positive changes of friendship qualities significantly affect social living abilities as well.

This paper addresses the question: How do professional team sport clubs perceive the sport-specific efforts and challenges of the digital transformation? Based on qualitative insights from professional football, basketball, and handball clubs in the German-speaking region, we give insights into how professional sports clubs engage, cope and struggle with digital transformation. We show, that from eight interrelated fields of action, which collectively shape digital transformation processes, professional sports clubs address fundamentals of digital transformation and advanced transformers. Our findings highlight that the way clubs interpret and organize the relationship between the two domains on-field and off-field plays a central role in shaping their digital strategies. Rather than following a uniform pathway, clubs exhibit distinct patterns in how they integrate or separate on-field and off-field initiatives, pointing to the need for context-sensitive approaches. The work offers a sport-specific lens through which the complexity of digital transformation in team sport clubs can be better understood and systematized.

The professional sports industry is generally recognized as a business that generates profits, but in reality, most domestic professional sports industries are operated with the support of parent companies and affiliates. The purpose of this study is to suggest a plan to improve the overall tax system for professional sports clubs. The problems in terms of securing finances for domestic professional sports clubs are as follows. First, there is the problem of financial support from parent companies and special related parties. When a professional sports club receives advertising expenses or support for agenda advertising expenses from a special related party, the amount of the joint advertising expenses paid by the special related party becomes an issue. Second, there is the problem of advertising expenses support from persons other than special related parties. there is no incentive to spend advertising expenses. Third, there is the problem of the depreciation system for professional sports club facility investment assets. In order to induce more active facility investment by professional sports clubs, improvement is needed so that specific facility investments can be processed as immediate depreciation. Therefore, this study presents the following improvement measures for the tax system of domestic professional sports clubs. First, improvement is needed to recognize advertising expenses for special related parties. It is reasonable to assume that advertising expenses paid by special related parties to professional sports clubs are based on the sales of the special related party who paid the advertising expenses.S econd, it is necessary to introduce a tax deduction for advertising expenses other than special related parties. Third, a measure to apply the immediate depreciation system to facility investment by professional sports clubs is needed.

BackgroundWith the rapid development of the sports industry and the increasingly mature market environment, many sports organizations in Europe and the United States have gradually realized the importance of social responsibility. They often use holidays to carry out social responsibility activities and improve the brand image by performing social responsibility. China's sports industry has developed rapidly in recent years, but professional sports still need to learn from European and American countries in fulfilling their social responsibilities. At present, the contradiction between the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people and the insufficient and unbalanced supply is becoming increasingly prominent. Professional sports is an important industry to meet people's spiritual and cultural needs. Professional sports clubs are responsible for training excellent athletes for the country, seeking economic benefits for the club, providing public services for cities and communities, disseminating urban sports culture, promoting sports development, protecting the environment, engaging in philanthropy and other important responsibilities. They are the core of professional sports. Whether professional sports clubs can actively fulfill their corporate social responsibility will have an important impact on the development of professional sports. Therefore, it is of great significance to understand the current situation of social responsibility of professional sports clubs and the influencing factors of consumers' emotion, and to explore the ways for professional sports clubs to fulfill their social responsibility.Research Objects and MethodsTaking CBA club as the research object, this study investigates the implementation status and influencing factors of CBA club's social responsibility from the perspective of the psychological perception of sports experts and spectators by using the combination of quantitative questionnaire survey and qualitative content analysis. In order to improve the impact of sports club rules on consumers' emotion, this study first revised the emotion questionnaire compiled by Dong Yan and Yu Guoliang (2007) according to the basic characteristics of the environment, and then measured the subjects' emotion with the revised scale. Among them, positive emotion (30 items in total) includes two dimensions: positive high arousal emotion and positive low arousal emotion, and negative emotion (42 items in total) includes two dimensions: negative high arousal emotion and negative low arousal emotion. The questionnaire adopts Likert's 5-level continuous evaluation, “1” means “completely unqualified” and “5” means “fully qualified”. Statistics show that the internal consistency reliability of the two subscales of positive emotion and negative emotion is 0.5% 75 ~ 0. Four factor validity: 245 21,x2 / df = 1. 96, CFI = 0. 94, TLI = 0. 91, RMSEA = 0. 050, SRMR = 0. 067.ResultsThe survey results show that sports experts and ordinary audiences are not satisfied with the current implementation of corporate social responsibility in CBA clubs. It is generally believed that the lack of corporate social responsibility in CBA clubs is serious. Sports experts believe that the most important factors affecting the performance of social responsibility by CBA clubs are unclear property rights, vague relationship between responsibilities and rights in the business process, lack of perfect social responsibility supervision and evaluation mechanism, while ordinary audiences believe that there is a lack of perfect corporate social responsibility supervision and evaluation mechanism, backward system and imperfect relevant laws and regulations. The results showed that the effect of interpersonal emotion regulation on implicit positive emotion decreased with the increase of regulation difficulty level; And expression inhibition is the mediating variable of regulatory effect, which has some mediating effect. With the enhancement of expression inhibition, the mediating effect has an increasing trend. Because interpersonal interaction can more activate psychological processing processes such as empathy, viewpoint selection and attention conversion, it will help interpersonal emotion regulation to positively predict implicit positive emotions at the level of automatic processing. The result of the negative regulation effect of regulation difficulty is consistent with the theoretical viewpoint proposed by the dual resource model of interpersonal emotional interaction. The dual resource model holds that the emotional regulation of interpersonal interaction is based on the resources of two nervous systems. Self regulated public resources can realize top-down cognitive control, and the work of this system needs to be realized at the level of consciousness.ConclusionThis paper puts forward the ways to promote the implementation of social responsibility of professional sports clubs: clarify the legal subject status of professional sports clubs, legalize the social responsibility connotation of professional sports clubs, comprehensively build the social responsibility awareness of professional sports clubs and stakeholders, strengthen the social responsibility consciousness of professional sports clubs, and establish a scientific social responsibility evaluation system of professional sports clubs, Improve the social responsibility supervision system of professional sports clubs.AcknowledgmentsNational Social Science Foundation of China 20BTY051: Research on competitive balance driving high-quality development of Professional sports in China.

The relationship between big food corporations and professional sports clubs: a scoping review

Professional sports clubs are an important part of professional sports, and their development has a certain role in promoting the strength of China's competitive sports and the prosperity of the sports industry. However, the development of professional sports clubs in China is still facing many challenges. Among them, the key to their long-term development is to improve their financing ability and solve their financing difficulties in order to improve the performance of professional sports club. At present, research on the financing methods and financing difficulties of professional sports clubs has achieved certain results, but no systematic research on the application of blockchain technology to solve the pain points of professional sports club financing has been established. This study systematically compares the current situation and development problems of financing for professional sports clubs in China from the new perspective of combining blockchain and professional sports club financing. In addition, this article proposes a solution for the application of blockchain technology to optimize the performance of professional sports club, which has important theoretical and practical significance for promoting the development of professional sports clubs.

In recent years, social demands and academic interest in the environmental and social contribution activities of professional sports clubs have increased. This is due to the spread of the idea that building good relationships with various stakeholders is essential for clubs to enhance their corporate value. However, it is not easy for professional sports clubs to continuously implement sustainable environmental initiatives (ESI) due to the financial burden. It is unclear to what extent consumers are aware of the ESI implemented by professional sports clubs and how much they are willing to spend afterwards, and there are no studies on ESI by professional sports clubs in Japan. Furthermore, it is significant and extremely important to clarify the results of ESI conducted by professional sports clubs on their teams from a marketing perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward professional sports clubs that conduct ESI. To achieve the objective, stakeholder theory and social identity theory are applied as a theoretical background to examine the impact of perceived ESI on intention to support a club and intention to attend a game. Data were obtained from a sample that included potential as well as existing consumers, and it was found that the perception of ESI influenced the intention to support a club and the intention to attend a game. The results of the multiple-group structural equation modeling revealed that the perception of ESI influenced the intention to support a club and the intention to attend a game, even among consumers who had no experience of attending a game. In the future, it will be necessary to elucidate the mechanism and causal relationship by which the perception of ESI enhances intentional loyalty, through what kind of psychological process.

The development of CSR reflects the level and characteristics of professional sports organizations, and the CSR of professional sports clubs varies among different countries and regions. In order to explore the content of the CSR of Chinese professional sports clubs in a more comprehensive and systematic way, this study organizes previous studies on the CSR of clubs in different countries and regions, and analyzes the differences between Chinese professional sports clubs and clubs in Europe, North America, Japan, and other countries and regions. We collected the opinions of 20 experts through semi‐structured interviews and combined them with the “Five in One” overall layout to construct and explain the CSR system of professional sports clubs in China in the new era, filling the gaps in research on this topic. Research suggests that social economic responsibility, social political responsibility, social cultural responsibility, social construction responsibility, and social ecological responsibility constitute the CSR system of professional sports clubs in China. Within a certain range, the larger the scale and stronger the comprehensive strength of a club, the stronger its ability to fulfill its responsibilities, the more targets it fulfills, and the richer its content. The institutional environment and social awareness may account for this difference, and in a government‐led social environment or in the case of nationalized club ownership, the Chinese plan may be more applicable. Our research not only provides theoretical reference for subsequent research on the CSR content of professional sports clubs but also helps guide the CSR practice of clubs of different sizes, thereby promoting the exploration of diversified CSR development patterns of professional sports clubs in the academic community.

This study is a case of the conversion process between the professional sports club commissioned type and the regional type of the Jeollabuk-do School Sports Department from March to December 2021. The Jeollabuk-do Office of Education promoted the ‘School Sports Department Specialized Sports Club Conversion Plan’. The policy of converting the sports club to a professional sports club is a policy to convert the existing school sports club into a professional sports club through a voluntary and democratic agreement among members in order to promote the nurturing of local student athletes and to ensure efficiency and transparency in operation. It is being implemented based on the collaboration between the sports association and sports organizations) and the Office of Education. As such, the professional sports club conversion policy is a self-reliant school sports policy promoted at the local provincial education office level, not the national level, to overcome the crisis of local school sports extinction due to population decline and to normalize school elite sports. Through this, it can be seen that not only has sufficient meaning and value as a research material related to school sports, but it is also a case that can provide basic data to improve the problems of local school sports departments that are in danger of extinction.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine and understand the effect of the SNS related marketing activi-ties, which have recently emerged as an essential element for each club, including professional sports federations or associations, on the confidence in club and the intention to watch, and the direction of marketing activities related to professional sports. and assist with strategy formulation. Method: In this study, as of 2022, 260 fans of the four major domestic professional sports (professional baseball, professional soccer, professional volleyball, and professional basketball) were surveyed and the convenience sampling method was used as the sampling method, while the survey was conducted by the self-administration method. Among the collected questionnaires, 253 questionnaires were used as the valid samples, excluding the data with insincere responses or omission of some of the contents of the survey. The measurement tool was a questionnaire, and the data processing is the SPSS 23.0 Program, a statistical package program, and the frequen-cy analysis, reliability verification, factor analysis, correlation analysis, and the multiple regression were performed. Results: In this study, as a result of factor analysis and reliability verification, the SNS related marketing activities turned out to be event factor (α=.884), information factor (α=.871), and advertisement factor (α=.814), and confidence in club was classified as a confidence in club factor (α=.887), and intention to watch was classified as an intention to watch factor (α=.912). Furthermore, the SNS related marketing activities (event factor, information factor, and advertisement factor) affect the confidence in club, and the SNS related marketing activities (event factor, information factor, advertisement factor) affect the intention to watch, while the confidence in club was found to have an effect on the intention to watch. Conclusion: In this study, the SNS related marketing activities of professional sports clubs affect the confidence in club and the intention to watch, and related organizations including professional sports clubs that are develop-ing the SNS related marketing activities or planning the SNS related marketing activities in the future rather than providing information at the strategic level of ticket sales and publicity, from the consumer s point of view, will need to identify information related to their needs and desires, truly understand consumers, and provide the desired information appropriately through strengthening a reciprocal relationship to ensure that they can feel satisfaction. Furthermore, in the social media environment, it is necessary to develop diverse contents through various methods to accurately understand the interests of advertisement audiences and satisfy their needs, and it is determined to have a positive effect on in club and intention to watch, and professional sports clubs should use SNS related marketing activities more actively, and professional sports clubs will need to use the SNS related marketing activities far more actively.

ObjectiveProfessional sport occupies a prominent cultural position in societies across the globe and commercial organisations make use of this to promote their products. This scoping review explores existing academic literature on the relationship between professional sports clubs and food and drink marketing and considers how this relationship may impact upon the public’s health.DesignThe scoping review searched six databases. Experts were also consulted. Records written in languages other than English were excluded. We also excluded records relating to mega events (e.g. Olympics, Football World Cup) and alcohol marketing, because of the attention already given to these.SettingProfessional sports clubs.ParticipantsN/AResultsWe identified 18,166 titles, reviewed 163 abstracts and read 26 full texts. We included six papers in the review. Four were from Australia and New Zealand. The Australasian literature largely focussed on the marketing of food and beverages to children and the potential impact on consumption. Single papers from researchers in Turkey and the US were identified. The Turkish paper analysed shirt sponsorship in football leagues internationally and showed food and beverage (including alcohol) companies were the most common sponsors. The US paper examined a mixed reaction to a football team named after an ‘energy’ drink.ConclusionsCommercial relationships between professional sports clubs and ‘big food’ corporations have largely eluded scrutiny in much of the world. This review highlights the lack of public health research on these relationships. Research exploring the inter-dependent commercial practices of food and drink companies and professional sports clubs is urgently needed.

The COVID-19 crisis represented a major challenge in various social and economic sectors, and the sport context was no exception. Professional clubs had to deal with an intense organisational and operational environment, which is essential to apply their tangible and intangible assets to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage. This study aims to examine the role of entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and learning orientation in the performance of professional football clubs. In light of the lens of the resource-based view and adopted a qualitative approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews during the pandemic period with stakeholders from five football clubs participating in professional competitions. The results show that entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and learning orientation influence sports clubs’ performance. This study is relevant for sports organisations as it identifies a set of assets that, when strategically managed, can increase organisational performance and generate and enhance their competitive advantage and sustainability. It shows a relation between organisational orientations, the resources implemented in clubs and their performance. Competition stimulated sports organisations to adapt, renew, reconfigure and re-create their resources and capabilities in tune with the environment. Furthermore, professional sports clubs try to follow strategies that improve their sports performance, adapting entrepreneurial orientation to developing new services, products and activities, accepting risks and being proactive. This study is relevant for sports organizations in general, as it identifies a set of assets that, when strategically managed, can increase organizational performance as well as generate and improve a competitive advantage.

This study explores the multifactorial synergistic effects and configurational pathways for enhancing corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance among Chinese professional sports clubs. Drawing on 188 valid questionnaires from Chinese professional football and basketball clubs, the research employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the influence of seven antecedent conditions, commercial environment, government regulation, expectancy pressure, economic interests, internal emotional traits, moral quality, and information disclosure, on CSR performance. The findings reveal that CSR performance results from the interplay of multiple factors, identifying two equivalent pathways for enhancement: the coupling of government pressure with internal autonomy, and the coordination of commercial environment with internal moral qualities. These insights clarify the complex causal mechanisms underlying CSR implementation in professional sports clubs and propose two strategic approaches for promoting CSR: optimizing external institutional frameworks and activating internal endogenous motivation. The study offers configurationally grounded pathway options and managerial implications for improving CSR practices in Chinese professional sports clubs.

With the reconstruction of the global sports industry competition pattern, traditional income cannot meet the strategic goals of sustainable development of professional sports clubs.Therefore, professional sports clubs are shifting towards a diversified revenue strategy, breaking through the barriers of traditional professional sports club revenue, and actively exploring new profit paths.This study is based on the European professional football club Real Madrid (2010, 2024) as a case study, analyzing how it breaks through traditional income barriers and innovates and optimizes in diversified business paths, providing reference for the commercialization development of other professional sports clubs.Research has found that Real Madrid has achieved a qualitative change in its revenue structure through a "three-dimensional collaboration" model.Future professional sports clubs need to build an innovative ecosystem of "technology empowerment data-driven ecological collaboration".This study provides a theoretical framework and practical paradigm for the digital transformation of professional sports clubs, helping them break through the "trap of traditional income".

The purpose of this study was to extract factors which evaluate intangible benefits provided by professional sports clubs and verify relative importance of each factor. In order to attain the purpose of this study, the following process was conducted. The expert group with 16 members was organized by officials from professional sports clubs, sports business and marketing experts and local community experts. At the first step, factors and indicators for evaluating intangible benefits were extracted through the expert group. At the second step, evaluating indicators for intangible benefits were discovered by using Delphi method. Lastly, the importance of evaluating indicators were verified through AHP analysis. The results are as follows. The relative importance of intangible benefits from professional sports clubs were ranked economic benefit, cultural benefit, social benefit and psychological benefit in that order.