Sport organizations: An investigation of digital technologies and their impact on performance in the Italian context

Luisa Varriale,Paola Briganti,Tiziana Volpe,Maria Ferrara,T Le Dinh,M Drăgoicea

doi:10.1051/itmconf/20224104004

Luisa Varriale, Paola Briganti + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/itmconf/20224104004

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Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the Italian football clubs outlining their orientation in adopting digital technologies at any level, primarily for improving their overall performance. In the last decades, we observe the increasing implementation and spread of digital technologies worldwide in any economic settings, including the sport industry, where especially in the football business, the digital technologies have been playing a crucial role in supporting managerial, work out and training processes and making them much more competitive and high performing. This study, through a comparative analysis of the Italian football clubs in the Serie A for the year 2021/2022, aims to provide a portrait of these sport organizations and their way to be much more technologically advanced adopting the digital technologies (accessible website; learning and training applications; match analysis tools, etc.). After a brief review of the literature on the topic, we investigate the Italian football clubs mapping them considering some specific main features (i.e. the degree of innovativeness of website, the adoption of e-training or match analysis solutions, etc.). Our qualitative research, through a multiple case study, should provide some possible stimulating and interesting insights for the future, analysing one specific country, where football industry represents the most relevant sport setting with high relevance in terms of volume of affairs, also significantly affected from the digital technologies making them “smart”.

Highlights

In the last decades, due to changes derived from technology, individuals have been significantly changed their way to live and work
Starting from the different sub-organizational areas identified in the literature, this paper focuses on the sport management sub-field, evidencing the main effects derived from the digital technologies within sport organizations that make them “smart”
We propose to exam in which way digital technologies can affect the performance of the Italian football clubs with emphasis on three main sub-topics: training, management and technical-sport field

Summary

Introduction

Due to changes derived from technology, individuals have been significantly changed their way to live and work. Some businesses have been changed much more than others, increasingly adopting digital technologies in their different forms, like the sport industry. Sport setting, which traditionally was not recognized as a very relevant industry in terms of economic impact, recently plays a crucial role as significant business and it is characterized by a deep evolution, due to digital technologies (ICT, social media, AI, IoT, etc.). The sport field has been characterized from important changes because of technology arousing the increasing interest by scholars and practitioners, who are searching for more effective and efficient tools to manage this business. Technology has been changed different areas in the sport sector, with relevant social and economic effects

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