Sport and development in Hungary and the Central and Eastern European region

Abstract

Emerging markets mean business opportunities and a special challenge for companies whose goals are to build business. The aim of this paper is to analyse the trends of the leisure sports markets in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, with a special focus on Hungary. Comprehensive data collection was conducted between 2010 and 2019 on the leisure sports markets and people’s physical activity in eight post-soviet countries in our detailed investigation of supply and demand for leisure sport in emerging markets. Our research shows that for emerging countries, the development of the economy generally results in a significant increase in the service sector, including the leisure sport industry (revenues, market size, etc.). However, our results show that the level of physical activity and the number of people involved in leisure sports are not increasing. Furthermore, the number of those who never do sports has increased. Finally, we have found that while spending on sports goods has increased, fewer people are actually spending more. This chapter explores these results, the role of business development, and the responsibility of CEE governments in leisure sports.