Successful Clubs Research Articles

Financing SportssOrganisations in New Zealand: TheeImpact of Governorss Choices. A Report Prepared forrSport New Zealandd

Funding and financial management are critical issues for the not-for-profit sector. Funding is limited, competitively sought, and differences in funders’ and organisations’ expectations and needs can cause dysfunction. Sport is an important segment of the not-for-profit sector in New Zealand society. Sports clubs develop infrastructure to provide formal opportunities for teams, pairs or other groupings to play indoor and/or outdoor sport. These clubs offer opportunities for exercise and the building of social capital for healthy and vibrant communities. However, there is a lack of local and current research about the manner in which not-for-profit sports organisations finance the infrastructure (and particularly assets) which are necessary for their operation. The objective of this research was to assess the impact of governors’ financing choices on the sustainability of New Zealand’s sports organisations through empirical research into funding practices. This research was also undertaken in an economic downturn heightening awareness of organisational liabilities and the need for ongoing income to meet those liabilities. Six sporting codes were chosen from which thirty organisations’ annual reports were analysed in terms of income sources, expenditure categories and the composition of liabilities. In addition, twenty interviews were conducted with selected organisations to inform the preliminary findings of the quantitative analysis. Findings. This research found that: 1. Financial health in sports clubs has reduced over the two year period analysed; 2. Expenditure on property and players consume the majority of sports clubs’ incomes, yet members do not always appreciate the costs of the sports they enjoy; 3. Gaming and philanthropic trusts are a major source of funding for team sports clubs. However, successful clubs work hard at developing alternative sources of income; and 4. More than 40% of sports clubs have non-current (i.e. long­-term) debt. Generally, smaller clubs have higher ratios of total liabilities: total assets. These debts pose a risk to the clubs’ financial sustainability. Four other reports pertaining to financial sustainability for football and golf amateur sports clubs are part of this project, and may be retrieved from the Sport New Zealand website.

Assessing Financial Vulnerability in Nonprofit Sports Organisations

Funding and financial management are critical issues for the not-for-profit sector. Funding is limited, competitively sought, and differences in funders’ and organisations’ expectations and needs can cause dysfunction. Sport is important in New Zealand society. Sports clubs provide formal opportunities to play indoor and outdoor sport. These clubs offer opportunities for exercise and the building of social capital for healthy and vibrant communities. However, there is a lack of local and current research about the manner in which not-for-profit sports organisations finance the assets which are necessary for their operation. The objective of this research was to assess the impact of governors’ financing choices on the sustainability of New Zealand’s sports organisations through empirical research into funding practices. This research was also undertaken in an economic downturn heightening awareness of organisational liabilities and the need for ongoing income to meet those liabilities. Six sporting codes were chosen from which thirty organisations’ annual reports were analysed. Income sources, expenditure categories and the composition of liabilities were the prime analyses undertaken. In addition, twenty interviews were conducted with selected organisations to elucidate the preliminary findings of the quantitative analysis. This research found that: 1. Financial health in sports clubs has reduced over the two year period analysed; 2. Gaming and philanthropic trusts are a major source of funding for team sports clubs. However, successful clubs work hard at developing alternative sources of income; 3. Property and players’ expenses consume the majority of sports clubs’ incomes, however members do not always appreciate the costs of the sports they enjoy; and 4. More than 40% of sports clubs have non-current (i.e. long-term) debt. Generally, smaller clubs have higher ratios of total liabilities: total assets. These debts pose a risk to their financial sustainability. Recommendations in this report include that sports organisations should be encouraged to: 1. work actively to bring in alternative funding. This is because of the relatively high levels of current dependence on grant funding and the levels of debt in sports clubs. 2. regularly review their membership fees to ensure they make an adequate contribution to the running of sport. 3. plan their property expenditure carefully to ensure cash is available to meet commitments 4. re-assess their financial risk in respect of long-term debt. While the findings of this report are context-specific, local organisations are encouraged to develop complementary income streams which will enable them to thrive, despite macro-economic events.

MAINTAINING MARKET POSITION: TEAM PERFORMANCE, REVENUE AND WAGE EXPENDITURE IN THE ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE

This paper investigates the relationship between playing success and commercial success in team sports. Utilizing a data set relating to the English Premier League that combines both financial measures and indicators of playing skills and performances, our empirical analysis is based on three behavioural equations. Our analysis indicates that on-field success can be directly related to players’ skills and abilities and that revenue is positively related to on-field success. Wage expenditure is also shown to systematically reflect player skills and performances. One interpretation of this evidence is that investment in players’ skills and ability buys on-field success, with richer teams becoming ever richer and able to maintain or even build upon success by spending more on players than less successful clubs. To the extent that richer clubs are successful in their objective there is a causal link between revenue earned and competitive imbalance via investments in players. The implications of this tendency within a league are discussed in our conclusion, which also considers the potentially wider implications of our study as they relate to the evolution of firm size and issues of market share.

Soul Buddyz Clubs: A social development innovation

Soul Buddyz Clubs, centered on social mobilization and children’s rights, offer a model for developmental child welfare both in South Africa and further afield. Features of successful clubs and the way in which these enhance the lives of children, particularly in under-resourced areas, are highlighted.

The Attractiveness of National and International Football Leagues: Perspectives of Fans of “Star Clubs” and “Underdogs”

The goal of this study is to determine what factors affect the attractiveness of both national football leagues and the Champions League from the perspective of fans, and how these factors are perceived by fans of clubs at the top and bottom of the league standing. This is of interest as there are differences between the financial resources available to the clubs and leagues. Based on a review of sport consumer behaviour literature, we propose that four determinants are relevant to a league's attractiveness: stadium atmosphere, international success of the clubs, uniqueness of dominating clubs and perceived competitive balance. A total of 1,404 committed fans of 12 selected football teams from the English Premier League and German Bundesliga participated in the study. The research model was tested using partial least squares. The results show that the determinants significantly predict perceived attractiveness, and that even fans of financially privileged and successful clubs concede that perceived competitive balance is necessary for attractiveness to be maintained.

The survival of the fittest: intensification, totalization and homogenization in Swedish competitive sport

The prestige words of the Swedish sport movement have with a long tradition been ‘sport for all’. The extensive funding from the Swedish government to organized sport through the Swedish Sports Confederation originates from that same ideal, but with the results presented in this text we argue that the inherent logic in competitive sport hampers the pronounced ambition to offer sport for all regardless of age, sex, social class, cultural origin and level of ambition. The results were based on an analysis of both elite and broad sports activities and show how the processes of Sportification, Intensification, Totalization and Homogenization combine in creating a standardized array of clubs, where the space for different ideas about activities, principles for organization and ideals for success shrinks along with the norms being set by the most successful clubs regarding competition and expansion. The main conclusion is that the ‘sport for all’-logic predominant in Swedish competitive sport since the beginning of the twentieth century has in recent decades been challenged by a competition- and expansion-logic which seems more rewarding in terms of ability to attract resources.

Café Society: The Wrong Place For The Right People (review)

Reviewed by: Café Society: The Wrong Place For The Right People Monica Hairston Café Society: The Wrong Place For The Right People. By Barney Josephson with Terry Trilling-Josephson. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2009. In the postlude of Café Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People, Art D'Lugoff, owner of the Village Gate, offers a tribute to Barney Josephson at his 1988 memorial service: I think Barney and his story should be made into a movie … I think Café Society should be the story that is told about our century" (338). Josephson's career as a nightclub impresario—which is the subject of this book—spanned from 1938-1984 and indeed featured the kind of dramatic contours that make great movies. Josephson opened his first nightclub, Café Society, in Greenwich Village in 1938 and the swankier Uptown branch shortly thereafter. It was the first club in which complete integration—both onstage and off—was official policy. Black and white cultural figures, politicians, celebrities, jazz fans and the simply curious flocked to both locations to see a legendary roster of artists. Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Mary Lou Williams, Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, and Frankie Newton were among the numerous, great jazz, blues, and gospel musicians who performed there along with equally talented comics and [End Page 219] dancers. Because of this talent and Josephson's forward-looking policies, the club went down in jazz history and in the history of American race relations. When his communist brother Leon found himself on the House Committee on Un-American Activities blacklist, Barney and those associated with his clubs were fingered as well. Josephson was forced out of the business by McCarthy but returned in the 1950s with his Cookery restaurants. The location in the Village spearheaded a jazz and blues renaissance by providing a venue for classic performers like Mary Lou Williams, Alberta Hunter, Ruth Brown, and Marion McPartland. Josephson was indeed an innovative and savvy businessman. He ran celebrated, successful clubs though the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and McCarthyism while contributing to the careers of countless artists. Café Society, part posthumous personal memoir and part cultural history, will be of value to students and scholars of U.S. jazz, and of American cultural and political history. Josephson's widow, Terry Trilling-Josephson captures his story by piecing together passages from his notes and tapes along with well-researched primary and secondary sources (press clippings, oral histories, letters, photographs, etc). The personal narrative she creates is richly augmented and highly entertaining if at times off-balance. Josephson too often comes off as larger than life—he "discovers" the talent, he teaches the talent how to dress, how to walk, how to sing and perform, his politics and morals are beyond reproach. This unidimensional treatment of Josephson's professional approach insults the agency and talent of featured artists. The narrative can miss the point about what made Café Society and even the Cookery so historically significant and special: the art and the artists—especially the music and the musicians—with their overlapping but varied political and aesthetic motivations not only reflected the cultural currents of their time but shaped them as well. The Café Society "movie" would not be a biopic, but would instead be driven by a talented and outspoken ensemble cast. Monica Hairston Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago Copyright © 2010 Mid-America American Studies Association

From Conservation to Environment: The Sierra Club and the Organizational Politics of Change

In the 1950s, the Sierra Club emerged as a leader of the nascent environmental movement. In challenging a proposal to build two dams within the boundaries of Dinosaur National Monument, the Club found its voice as a public advocate for the preservation of wilderness and in the process introduced a new type of politics to old conflicts over conservation. Born out of the Dinosaur dam conflict was a new environmentalism characterized by confrontation with state authorities and emotion-laden appeals to the public for political support. The Sierra Club's success in pioneering these strategies launched it to the forefront of the new movement, elevated its executive director David Brower to icon status among environmentalists, and affirmed the philosophy of Aldo Leopold as the moral compass of the movement. In this essay, I argue that interest group entrepreneurs ought to be considered alongside institutional actors as agents of change within processes of political development. As the case of the Sierra Club demonstrates, the internal organizational politics of a group can be just as important in establishing a trajectory of political development as are processes of policy feedback.

How to make journal clubs interesting

Almost all psychiatric training programmes include a journal club. These clubs are experiencing a revival as a result of the introduction of a critical review paper into Part II of the MRCPsych examinations. Successful clubs are generally those with a single designated leader and mandatory attendance; provision of food is also helpful. A number of possible formats are discussed, designed to make the club an entertaining and stimulating experience.

The Southern Football Hero and the Shaping of Local and Regional Identity in the South of England

This article explores aspects of southern regional football identity through a case study of Portsmouth Football Club in the late 1940s and 1950s. Collectively, and as individuals, players from the Portsmouth teams of 1948-49 and 1949-50 clearly embodied the qualities of Holt's composite Northern Hero. The Portsmouth case suggests that distinctions between northern and southern football identities may be overstated. Important traits commonly associated with northern football teams and individual footballers were also in evidence in the Portsmouth sides of this period. Indeed the northern qualities appear to have been central to the club's success at that time and to have helped define local identity in relation to London and possibly the rest of the country. Moreover, as an example of a Southern Hero, Jimmy Dickinson embodied many northern as well as southern traits.

International Expansion of the American‐Style Service Club

Prior to the era of jet aircraft travel, multinational corporations, or instant telecommunications, and long before icons of cultural synchronization such as McDonalds or Nike, service clubs were spreading Western culture, social norms, and participatory self governance. The concept of a small group dedicated to community service is not uniquely American. Nonaffiliated service organizations have operated for hundreds of years in nearly every populous area of the world. However, only within the past 80 years have a few large service clubs expanded to become globe-spanning organizations. Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions International, referred to in this paper as American-style international service clubs (ISCs), differ from other organizations in fundamental ways. For example, while multinational corporations have hierarchical structures, ISCs operate horizontally without a central core or periphery. Members of local clubs attend meetings, projects, and other activities, making their focus different from mailing list groups and charities that concentrate on contributions. American-style service clubs evolved in the United States from religious, social, and civic-minded organizations initiated during the colonial era (Sieder). Precursors to service clubs included merchant and commercial clubs, established in the 1800s to increase business profits by heading off unhealthy competition (Charles). Merchant clubs were dominated by growth-oriented small business owners whose interests were often allied with the local chamber of commerce. Other forerunners of service clubs included fraternal organizations such as the Masons or Fraternal Order of Eagles that focused on social and religious needs of their members. Although open to a wider range of occupations, membership in these groups was often exclusive. As suggested by Art Gallaher and C. Putney, increasing leisure opportunities that came as a result of the availability of movies and the automobile, together with changes in the workplace and social attitudes, caused a general decline in the membership of fraternal organizations in the 1920s. At this same time interest in community service was gaining popularity as a means for middleclass men to develop business contacts and to reassert influence during a time of labor unrest and rising corporate power (Charles).1 The first American-style service club was established by Chicago attorney Paul Harris in 1905 to bring local businessmen together once a week over lunch for the purpose of socializing and strengthening business contacts. The name came from the idea that the location for meetings would rotate among the offices of members (Rotary International 1995). Each meeting served as a forum for interaction within an environment of camaraderie and informality exemplified through first name familiarity, handshakes, and backslapping. A typical meeting featured presentations or activities ranging from a guest speaker to a discussion of an upcoming philanthropic program or service project.2 Early projects of the Chicago club included the construction of comfort stations near city hall and contributions to relief funds for flooding victims (Rotary International 1998). As the Chicago club grew, a plan was implemented to maintain diversity through a classification system that limited membership to one man from each occupation. This procedure was intended to diversify membership by drawing from a wide variety of occupations including the retailer, lawyer, doctor, insurance salesman, small manufacturer, and educator. The Chicago club's success led to the charter of other Rotary clubs and within four years there were nearly a dozen clubs were operating in cities throughout the United States (Newton 5). As the size of clubs grew, meetings shifted to hotels, restaurants, and other public locations. Hierarchical diffusion brought clubs to other large urban areas such as San Francisco and Philadelphia and later to smaller cities such as Rockford, Joliet, and Springfield. …

Why is Manchester United So Successful?

Football is now a big industry worth studying in its own right: but it is also an excellent laboratory for studying success. The author argues that this is partly because, in contrast to say, American Football, there is less equalisation of resources between the clubs and English football is a highly competitive market. This article discusses one of the most successful clubs ever and argues that the reasons behind its success do not characterise football generally. It discusses how the different kinds of success in the English football industry are related to business success generally.

A review of journal clubs in postgraduate medical education.

To review the goals, organization, and teaching methods of journal clubs, summarize elements of successful clubs, and evaluate their effect on reading habits, and effectiveness in meeting teaching goals. Examples of clubs that utilize principles of adult learning are reviewed. English language articles identified through a MEDLINE search (1966-1997) using the MeSH terms "internship" and "residency," and text words "journal club" and "critical appraisal." Articles on learning goals and organization were included if they represented national or regional surveys with a response rate of 65% or greater. Articles that evaluated teaching effectiveness were included if they used a controlled, educational design, or if they exemplified important adult learning principles. Data were manually extracted from selected studies and reviews. A major goal for most clubs is to teach critical appraisal skills. Clubs with high attendance and longevity are characterized by mandatory attendance, availability of food, and perceived importance by the program director. Residents who are taught critical appraisal report paying more attention to the methods and are more skeptical of the conclusions, and have increased knowledge of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, but studies have failed to demonstrate that these residents read more, or read more critically. Reading guidelines may be useful for teaching critical appraisal skills, and may be associated with increased resident satisfaction. Journal club formats are educationally diverse, can incorporate adult learning principles, and are an adaptable format for teaching the "new basic sciences."

Wealth and Poverty in the English Football League

Abstract Member clubs in professional sporting leagues can increase joint incomes by adopting measures that equalise playing performance. In the English Football League some degree of performance equalisation has traditionally been achieved by restricting financial competition and through income sharing arrangements. Elite clubs in the League have recently secured changes in these arrangements which will increase their dominance in the industry. This paper analyses the affects of these changes and of shifts in market demand on the recent financial positions and cash flows of ten of the most and ten of the least successful clubs, and concludes that collective management policies in the League are contrary to the normal economic objectives of a sporting league.

Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers 1971/2 to 1981/2: A Study of Finance Policies in the Football Industry

The football industry is a most unusual one. Football clubs, unlike most other organisations, need to cooperate in order to provide a saleable product, a game. Companies can only enter the industry with the specific approval of those already within, and this approval is rarely given since it leads to the expulsion of existing members. The industry requires that less successful clubs be cross‐subsidised and restricts the payment of directors' fees and dividends. Until 1981/2 a minimum admission price was also stipulated. Such supportive measures contrast sharply with the nature of competition on the field of play in which there can be ‘only one winner’. The pursuit of playing success as a dominant objective means that few can ‘succeed’ in any one season, whereas in industries in which orthodox financial objectives are important several firms may succeed simultaneously.