Considering Future Sport Delivery Systems

Abstract

It is evident that the sports infrastructure in Australia is becoming increasingly more complex and, as proposed in this paper, is evolving into a series of specific industries. This paper describes these changes by applying elements of Porter's (1998) concept of clusters. In essence, clusters represent overlapping industries, and the increasing ability of sports to leverage financial contributions from organisations relying on a sport's ongoing success in the marketplace. Several examples are used to illustrate: (1) the concept of sport clusters, and (2) the issues confronting sports as they interact with a plethora of sport and non-sport organisations. Several outcomes are enunciated in the paper describing the impact of changing sport delivery systems. Conclusions include the need to recognise a broader role for national and state sporting organisations and to leverage financial support from within their cluster to complement existing, but limited government support. The ability to leverage financial resources from within a cluster will also be reliant on revamping inter-organisational networks recognising that a cluster actually becomes the value chain defining supplier and buyer linkages. Finally, a number of research issues are raised calling on scholars to examine changing industry structures and subsequent sporting organisation responses to these changes by mapping the interactions between industries and organisations to better understand cluster networks and competition.