Dr Alexander Bond

AIM The sport of rugby league in the UK underwent a Policy Review in 2013 that saw the sport move from a licensing system which was first introduced in 2009 to restore a promotion and relegation league system to be implemented in 2015 (RFL, 2015). In its 2015-2021 strategic plan, the Rugby Football League (RFL) outlined its rationale and vision to increase the visibility and profile of the sport in the UK (RFL, 2015). The resulting 2015 season new competition format included a 12 team elite Super League, a 12 team Championship, and a new 14 team League One. The integration of all league competitions through promotion and relegation presented a particular opportunity to increase the interest and attractiveness for rugby league as a sport product in the Championship division. The aim was to explore the impact of the new league structure on the Championship clubs marketing activities to reinvigorate fan interest ahead of the 2015 season.

Purpose This study examines the networks and strategy of Manchester City Football Club and City Football Group, central to the group's emergence as a global entertainment organisation with a network of franchises worldwide. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a case study design to examine both Manchester City Football Club and City Football Group (CFG)'s strategy. Drawing upon an extensive review of documentation pertaining to CFG's strategic vision and approach, a network analysis of the brand's constituent clubs, partners and state- and corporate-investors was conducted, providing a macro-level view of CFG's use of global franchising, media partnerships and commercial agreements to extend CFG and the City brand internationally. Findings The study's findings afford a unique insight into CFG's efforts to monetise and globalise through franchising, which provides insights into the convergence in sport of politics, entertainment and business. Namely, how the global strategy enacted by CFG and the Abu Dhabi government (its owner) has leveraged sporting properties successfully. In turn, it extends their geopolitical and economic networks and grows the parent City brand as a global entity. Research limitations/implications The study's findings afford a unique insight into CFG's efforts to monetise and globalise through franchising. Namely, the global strategy enacted by CFG and the Abu Dhabi royal family (its owner) has leveraged sporting properties successfully. In turn, it extends their geopolitical and economic networks and grows the parent City brand as a global entity. Originality/value The research represents an important step in examining the strategy of football club ownership and global club networks within sport. In this respect, the present research provides a new way to understand sport in a globalised, digitised and geopoliticised operating environment.

This article investigates the impact of the competitive intensity on the stadium attendance for Italian soccer in three Serie A seasons (2012-13 to 2014-15). The central element of novelty concerning the existing literature is that fans expectations are also included among the explanatory variables of the Tobit model. Our results show that competitive intensity has a significant impact on match-day attendance in relation to all the sporting prizes but Europa League qualification. Moreover, we find evidence supporting the existence of reference- dependent preferences, where the attendance increases when the home team rank is higher than the pre-season expectations.

Prosumption capital is underexplored within social media sites, especially within sports. This article explores how the Covid-19 disruptions were used to extract prosumption capital from Twitter. Adopting an economic sociology perspective to measure prosumption capital, 2.3 million tweets were analyzed across the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer sports properties. This article applies social network analysis measures, indegree, domain, and proximity prestige to measure prosumption capital and shows how media organizations and other public figures capitalized on the Covid-19 disruptions. It also shows how the structure and those capitalizing through prosumption on Twitter are similar across the sports properties.

The postponement of events is an ever-present and often unavoidable risk for event managers and stakeholders. Any event postponement will also have a series of profound consequences. Indeed, this was confirmed by the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in a number of postponed events around the globe throughout 2020 and 2021. As such, this chapter examines the postponement of sporting events and its impacts. In doing so, the chapter will first discuss the manifold of possible factors that can lead to event postponement. Then, it will zoom in on the COVID-19 related postponement of the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship ('Euro 2020') for which the event's hosting rights were shared by 12 European countries. Here, specific attention is paid to the balance between health and safety risks and economic returns. Lastly, the chapter offers some intriguing and interdisciplinary avenues for future research related to stakeholders and decision-making, spectators' willingness to attend postponed sports events and new risk, safety and security management strategies in light of COVID-19.

The Sporting Director is one strategy football clubs have adopted to protect their financial sustainability. Little to no research has been undertaken on the Sporting Director role in football. This article draws upon a qualitative methodology to examine perceptions and practices related to the role and its potential implications in football’s growing global business. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with senior stakeholders in football (N = 21). The data was thematically analysed. Findings indicate that the Sporting Director role would be a strategic benefit for football clubs, however several issues related to role ambiguity. The novel empirical insight surrounds three key themes, notably the perception of the role, job description clarity and communication. The study provides novel insights into the elite football stakeholder perceptions of the Sporting Directors. This research offers decision-makers considerations for developing the Sporting Director role in football and recommendations for future research.

We use European football performance data to select teams to form the proposed European football Super League, using only unsupervised techniques. We first used random forest regression to select important variables predicting goal difference, which we used to calculate the Euclidian distances between teams. Creating a Laplacian eigenmap, we bisected the Fielder vector to identify the five major European football leagues' natural clusters. Our results showed how an unsupervised approach could successfully identify four clusters based on five basic performance metrics: shots, shots on target, shots conceded, possession, and pass success. The top two clusters identify those teams who dominate their respective leagues and are the best candidates to create the most competitive elite super league.

This study was aimed at assessing the effects of a 6‐week intervention within a training environment that uses special lighting conditions targeted to slow down the visual processing speed of visual and visuomotor performance in professional soccer players. Twenty‐four soccer players (age = 21.8 ± 4.8 years, 50% women) from the under 18 and under 23 men's teams, and 1st Women's team of the Sunderland Association Football Club participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups, with the intervention group performing 2‐weekly 30‐min sessions of specific soccer tasks with specific lighting conditions using the Okkulo system (Okkulo™, okkulo.com), whereas the control group performed the same training under normal lighting conditions. The intervention group showed significant improvements in dynamic visual acuity (p < 0.001), recognition time (p = 0.002), sensory reaction time (p < 0.001), motor reaction time (p = 0.002) and peripheral identification accuracy (p < 0.001), whereas no significant effects were obtained for stereopsis (p = 0.05), peripheral identification speed (p = 0.17) and anticipation (p = 0.22). In conclusion, a 6‐week training intervention using the Okkulo system improved several visual and visuomotor skills in professional soccer players. Future studies will assess the transfer effects of using this technology to on‐field performance.

Scholars often overlook leisure gambling perspectives and focus on more health-related mechanisms, such as compulsive gambling behaviours. Consequently, understanding gambling as leisure is under-explored, especially in an economic sociological context. We begin to address this gap by identifying whether (1) leisure gambling is stratified across gambling activities and society, (2) social capital and (3) diverse networks are essential in leisure gambling consumption. Using 12,991 respondents to the 2007–2008 Taking Part Survey, we apply latent class analysis to identify different typologies of leisure gamblers, modelling the influence of socio-cultural characteristics and network resources and diversity. We identify five leisure gambling typologies, with social capital and network diversity playing an important role in their formation. Generally, leisure gambling consumption depends on more social capital and diverse networks.

Ranking sports teams generally relies on supervised techniques, requiring either prior knowledge or arbitrary metrics. In this paper, we offer a purely unsupervised technique. We apply this to operational decision-making, specifically, the controversial European Super League for associa-tion football, demonstrating how this approach can select dominant teams to form the new league. We first use random forest regression to select important variables predicting goal difference, which we use to calculate the Euclidian distances between teams. Creating a Laplacian eigenmap, we bisect the Fiedler vector to identify the natural clusters in five major European football leagues. Our results show how an unsupervised approach could identify four clusters based on five basic performance metrics: shots, shots on target, shots conceded, possession, and pass success. The top two clusters identify teams that dominate their respective leagues and are the best candidates to create the most competitive elite super league.

Purpose: Professional sports teams and leagues operate in a crowded market, thus, occasionally change league structures to remain competitive in the marketplace. However, the implications of such changes on strategic marketing planning is seldom explored. Design: Semi-structured interviews with 11 second-tier Rugby Football League (RFL) club executives and 1 national governing body executive. Findings: Very few clubs had a marketing strategy, therefore, engaged in very little strategic marketing planning. Furthermore, the main barriers were resource and skills, and, organisation and leadership. Practical Implications: The RFL need to concentrate on making sustainable shared resources which develop capabilities. For example, developing a standardised yet mouldable strategic marketing package would reduce the financial and knowledge resource barriers. Research Contribution: d This paper makes theoretical contribution to sport management, specifically barriers to strategic marketing practices within professional sports organisations. It also brings lower-tier professional sport clubs into focus, which are often overlooked.

This commentary serves to provide a rapid analysis of the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on sporting mass gatherings. The focus of this commentary surrounds sporting mass gatherings and strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, with a particular focus on the UEFA EURO 2020 competition. Further references to the 2020 Olympic Games, and community recreational football are made. The intention is to stimulate discussion, analysis, interest and research on what the initial impact of COVID-19 has on sport. COVID-19 could fundamentally change the way sport operates in the future and requires further analysis. We hope this commentary provides an interesting record and reference point for future research and practice of those operating in sporting organisations. Learning lesson from this crisis, must ensure sport managers and practitioners are better prepared in sport and society for similar events in the future.

Purpose: Value within prosumption systems such as Twitter is underexplored. We adopt an economic sociology perspective to measure prosumption value, using the #ProjectRestart campaign as football looked to resume following COVID-19. Design: We use social network analysis to analyse 21,000 tweets involving 10,810 Twitter users using the #ProjectRestart hashtag. Specifically, we apply network theory measures, community clustering, betweenness, domain prestige and proximity prestige to explore how prosumption value can be measured. Findings: Our empirical findings demonstrate how value can be perceived within prosumption systems. Specifically, it shows how developing cohesive prosumer networks is vital in exploiting prosumer capital, creating value in the virtual space, which is imperative in negotiating through times of uncertainty, like COVID-19. Practical Implications: The practical implications encourage the industry to think of value in the virtual space differently, embedding this into future management strategies. Research Contribution: This research provides a theoretical contribution of prosumer value, blending prosumption and economic sociology theories. Empirically, it demonstrates how actors in the football world used prosumer networks to create value during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article aims to analyse the impact of the main determinants of match-day stadium attendance for seven seasons—2012–13 to 2018–19—of the Italian football Serie A. The main element of novelty is that the dataset is split into three sub-categories based on the pre-season fans’ expectations to verify whether the impact of attendance determinants varies depending on teams’ expected performance. Our results—based on Tobit model regressions—identify some significant differences across the three subsets. However, the difference that seems to be the most significant revealed a common preference of Italian fans towards higher quality opponents.

This article investigates the determinants of television audience for Italian Serie A football matches between 2012/13 - 2014/15 seasons (n=1079) using the AUDIBALL dataset. Specifically, we investigate the role of competitive intensity (CI) on TV demand by adapting a measure to incorporate both home and away teams competing for different prizes. Although we find significant positive impacts for all our CI indicators, our conclusion differs from previous work as the coefficients are small. Additionally, our results indicate a significant negative impact of uncertainty-of-outcome, supporting the “David vs Goliath” effect. Finally, our results show a significant positive impact from star quality suggesting Serie A should focus on star quality rather than competitive intensity.

The football transfer market is a billion-pound industry, traditionally dominated by the European market. This has been challenged by the rise of relatively new markets emerging from China, Brazil, Turkey and Russia. Important countries within the market, they also challenge the traditional status order. While classical international trade theorists suggest that capital or resource advantage predicts trade, economic sociologists argue that a world-systems perspective economic relationships are a core component. Therefore, we analyse the football trade network of these emerging markets to understand the structure, specifically in relation to the world-systems perspective. Using social network analysis, we identify the network is structured analogously to a world-systems perspective with a core of European countries, a semi-periphery of developing countries and a periphery containing countries where football is less developed. Furthermore, Turkey and Brazil occupy structural holes acting as brokers between the core, semi-periphery and periphery positions which can be advantageous.

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. COVID-19 has sent a shockwave into society and sport. As result of this, sport and football resuming without spectators - fans or supporters, has brought a number of financial issues that has threatened the sustainability and future of many clubs. This commentary unpicks what has happened and some of the tensions, decision-making and consequences surrounding the return of spectators. The commentary presents the case that spectators are key to the survival of football clubs and that the United Kingdom Government must reverse their decision to not let spectators return. Now more than ever, these words hold substance, meaning and truly matter to clubs and their networked communities, “Football without fans is nothing”.

Purpose Despite being a widely used management technique, cumulative sum (CUSUM) analysis remains almost unheard of in professional sport. To address this, CUSUM analysis of soccer match data from the English Premier League (EPL) was performed. The primary objective of the study was to evaluate CUSUM as a tool for assessing ‘on-field’ team performance. As a secondary objective, the association between managerial change and team performance was evaluated. Design/methodology/approach CUSUM was applied retrospectively to goal difference data for six EPL teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham) over 23 consecutive seasons from 1995-2018. This was supplemented with change point analysis to identify structural changes in mean goal difference. Succession was evaluated by mapping historical managerial changes onto the CUSUM plots for the respective clubs. Findings CUSUM analysis revealed the presence of structural changes in four clubs. Two structural change points were identified for both Chelsea and Everton, one for Manchester United and Tottenham, and none for Arsenal and Liverpool. Relatively few managerial changes coincided temporally with structural changes in ‘on-field’ performance, with most appointments having minimal impact on long-term team performance. Other factors (e.g. changes in ownership) appear to have been influential. Research limitations/implications The study was limited by the fact that only successful teams were investigated. Practical implications CUSUM analysis appears to have potential as a tool for executive decision-makers to evaluate performance outcomes in professional soccer. Originality/value The study is the first of its kind to use CUSUM analysis to evaluate team performance in professional soccer.

Research Question: Following a network perspective, we present footballs European loan system as an economic network and aim to answer the following questions; (i) what is the structure of the network? and, (ii) what are the topological properties of the network? Research Methods: Using data on the top-5 European leagues in European football 8139 loan transactions between 31/12/2009 – 22/12/2017 were analysed using social network analysis. Results and Findings: The results show that the loan system is embedded in ongoing structural relationships across Europe, more so in the Italian Serie A than other European leagues investigated. Additionally, our findings indicate that several elite clubs are extracting value from the loan system, while others are value creators. Implications: The implications of this research are fourfold: recommendations for executivelevel professionals in the football industry and how to maximise the structure of the system; considerations for UEFA and FIFA policy around regulations applied to loan systems; application of economic network theory to the trading (loan) system in European football; and recommendations for future academic research.

This article investigates the impact of the competitive intensity on the stadium attendance for Italian soccer in three Serie A seasons (2012-13 to 2014-15). The central element of novelty concerning the existing literature is that fans expectations are also included among the explanatory variables of the Tobit model. Our results show that competitive intensity has a significant impact on match-day attendance in relation to all the sporting prizes but Europa League qualification. Moreover, we find evidence supporting the existence of reference- dependent preferences, where the attendance increases when the home team rank is higher than the pre-season expectations.

Following advances in information technology and the rise of social media, prosumption – a model of simultaneous production and consumption of the commodity – has become a significant focus in many industries and for academic study. Prosumption represents a new message creation and delivery paradigm, where anyone can seamlessly shift from consumer to contributor, to creator. Central to this is the idea of creating 'use-value' and re-orientating 'exchange value'. Perhaps an overlooked facet, but one deeply engrained in its manifestation is that prosumption is inherently relational, involving micro-interaction between consumer and producer. The recent global COVID-19 pandemic, it too being relational in its transmission, has had a paralysing effect on global leisure activities with households and sports organisations experiencing some form of state-enforced residential lockdown. Using social network analysis, this commentary examines the network structure of a prosumed leisure activity during societal lockdown and its implications for the leisure industries.

The structure of football can also be conceived as a form of ecosystem, or even a social world, constructed through a network of individuals, within a division of labour, that interact under a set of specific conventions. In this commentary we describe that socially constructed world – Football World. The nature of this structural world makes network theory an appealing framework to explore processes of the football ecosystem during COVID-19. While we focus on the English Premier League, notably this league is embedded within a European and international marketplace it offer relevance for the broader global football ecosystem. We proceed to explore this dynamic Football World by considering how the different collectives forms – specifically fans, players and clubs – have been affected by COVID-19. We comment on the potential implications for the connective fabric of the broader network and what these observations mean for potential future research.

This article analyzes the impact of the main determinants of stadium crowds in seven seasons of Italian Serie A football – from 2012-13 to 2018-19. The new element compared to the previous literature is given by the fact that the dataset has been divided into three subgroups on the basis of the pre-season expectations relating to the final position of the individual teams, in order to verify whether the impact of these determinants varies depending on the expected performance of a team. The results – obtained through a regression analysis based on the Tobit model – identify some significant differences between the three subgroups. However, the differentiating factor that is apparently more significant actually reveals a common preference of Italian fans towards matches in which the visiting team is of a higher level. LANGUAGE: Italian

Research Question: Contemporary football (soccer) is a competitive industry. Some football clubs have enacted new roles, such as the Sporting Director, to gain a competitive advantage through effective recruitment of non-playing staff. This qualitative research examines the recruitment strategies of Sporting Directors through the lens of network theory. Research Methods: An empirical qualitative study was conducted, involving semi-structured interviews with 25 Sporting Directors in football clubs in England (English Premier League n=12; English Championship, n=13). The qualitative data was thematically analysed. Results and Findings: The study contributes novel evidence on recruitment in elite-level football, revealing the theoretical underpinnings and practical nature of this marketplace unique to the football industry. The evidence shows that whilst normally in recruitment weak ties are essential for getting a job, in football, trust and knowing people is the most critical aspect in recruitment, and recruiters rely on strong ties. This homophily creates several unintended implications for business and performance. Conclusions: This study responds to a gap in our theoretical and practical understanding of recruitment in elite-level football. The findings raise important questions for those managers and leaders involved in securing talent, as the over-reliance on closed networks may constrain the flow of information and innovation and ultimately limit the potential performance of the organisation. Homophily in recruitment processes may have unintended consequences that require further research, notably for player welfare, inequalities and performance.

Purpose/Rationale The purpose of this exploratory paper is to critically explore the liability underwriting landscape for insuring concussion risks in rugby league in the UK. Design/Methodology/Approach The authors approached this study using a qualitative methodology via exploratory expert interviews with four experienced liability underwriters and interpreted the data using thematic analysis. Findings The issues of causation and volatility are of immediate concern for underwriters causing systemic uncertainty. The inherent risk relating to the game of rugby league, physiology of participants and degenerative diseases such as CTE are identified as significant risk factors when evaluating concussion liability risks in rugby league. Practical Implications The findings of this study have implications for rugby league stakeholders including the RFL leadership, scientists, doctors, lawyers, insurance brokers and risk managers, to produce scientific data for the underwriting community to greater understand the concussion exposure. Research Contribution Sports concussion research concerning the liability insurance market is drastically underexplored. This study is at the beginning of researching this specific field. These novel findings provide insights to help explain the current state of underwriting concussion liability in rugby league. Originality/Value The authors understand that this study is the first to be conducted with underwriters regarding the issue of concussion in rugby league. It is important to change the direction of travel between underwriters and rugby league.

#RLNEWERA: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY INTO THE MARKETING PLANNING ACTIVITIES OF RUGBY LEAGUE CLUBS IN THE UK Mackreth, K ¹, Bond, A¹, O’Keeffe, L¹ ¹ Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK. k.mackreth@leedsbeckett.ac.uk AIM: The sport of rugby league in the UK has embraced a new ‘whole game’ philosophy following the 2013 Policy Review that restored promotion and relegation (RFL, 2015). The resulting 2015 season competition format included a 12 team elite Super League, a 12 team Championship, and a new 14 team League One. In its 2015-2021 strategic plan, the Rugby Football League (RFL) outlined its vision to increase the visibility and profile of the sport in the UK, through an integrated marketing and communication plan (RFL, 2015). The integration of all league competitions through promotion and relegation facilitates an opportunity to increase the the visibility and profile of Championship teams. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate the marketing activities that Championship teams have implemented to take advantage of the RFL’s new era. LITERATURE REVIEW: The sport marketplace in the UK is currently saturated, with consumers having a wide choice of sport and leisure offerings to engage with. This competitive environment requires sport industry managers to realise the contribution that marketing in general, and strategic marketing in particular, can make to the success of their organisation (Brooksbank, Garland & Werder, 2012). Strategic marketing planning has been stated as an appropriate policy for a wide range of organisations, from large multi-nationals to not-for-profit and small to medium sized enterprises (Harris & Jenkins, 2001). Regardless of size, many sporting organisations now employ marketing specialists to manage the contribution of marketing in the planning process. Despite this, it has been suggested that the sports industry is guilty of complacency in relation to marketing and promotion of their product (Shilbury, Westerbeek, Quick & Funk, 2009). Unfortunately there is currently a limited understanding of the marketing activities that have been utilised within rugby football league. METHODOLOGY: A qualitative research design was employed to investigate the RFL’s marketing strategy and the marketing planning activities of Championship RFL clubs. A purposive sampling technique was used, with semi-structured interviews carried out between July 2014 and January 2015 with appropriate representatives who had responsibility for marketing activity within their organisation. The sample included 12 participants, comprising of 1 RFL Executive Officer, ten Championship Club representatives, and 1 League One club representative, who had been relegated from the Championship. An interview guide was developed in line with a strategic sport marketing planning framework (Shilbury et al, 2009). The interview guide facilitated the data collection of key areas including: identification of marketing opportunities, strategy determination, strategy implementation, evaluation, and the exploration of barriers and facilitators to planning activities. All interviews lasted between 35 minutes to 65 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were then analysed using MAXQDA11 qualitative software package. RESULTS/DISCUSSION: The RFL had a marketing strategy with clear objectives of how to grow interest in the sport. Despite this, results indicate that 7 out of 11 Championship League clubs did not have a formalised strategic marketing plan in place. Instead, there was a reliance on a range of reactive and short-term marketing tactics to engage fans and increase attendances. Primary barriers recognised as impacting a club’s ability to develop and execute a coordinated strategic marketing plan were organisational structure, limited staffing resource, limited expertise and limited finance. All 11 clubs welcomed the restructuring of the league as they believe promotion and relegation would reinvigorate interest amongst their supporters and present an opportunity to broaden their fan base. Clubs felt they would benefit from a more formalised approach to strategic marketing planning to maximise engagement and take advantage of the change in league structure. IMPLICATIONS/CONCLUSIONS: Due to the limited staffing resource, finance and expertise acknowledged within clubs, it is essential to develop shared expertise and resource across the sport. Without the development of shared resource there will continue to be a gap between the leagues and clubs off field performance. The findings support that greater commercial development is needed in Championship clubs to address the aforementioned barriers in the strategic marketing planning process. This will allow clubs to efficiently and effectively allocate marketing resources to engage supporters and generate a new fan base, especially within the restructured league format. REFERENCES: Brooksbank, R., Garland, R., & Werder, W. (2012). Strategic marketing practices as drivers of successful business performance in British, Australian and New Zealand golf clubs. European Sport Management Quarterly, 12(5), 457-475. Harris, L.C. & Jenkins, H, (2001) Planning the future of rugby union: a study of the planning activities of UK rugby clubs, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 19 Iss: 2, pp.112 – 124. RFL. (2015). Strategic and Operational Plans 2015 – 2021. Retrieved from http://www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/about_the_rfl/annual_report__governance. Shilbury, D.,Westerbeek, H., Quick, S. & Funk, D. (2009). Strategic sport marketing,3rd ed. Crows Nest, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin.

There is an increasing demand for sport and leisure programmes to demonstrate their contribution to broader social outcomes. However, demonstrating social impact is a challenging endeavour in both theory and practice. There is a need for measures that sufficiently capture the complexity of participant experience whilst being practicable for those engaged in the delivery and management of sport and leisure activities. Through the adaptation of a Sense of Community (SoC) scale, this research note presents one such measure in the context of a community Walking for Health group. With further validation, the measure presented here may provide a reliable social impact assessment instrument to capture participants’ relationship to, and strength of feelings about, being part of a community. This exploration will be of interest to those seeking to understand and rigourise the social value of sport and physical activity provision.

The commodified and highly competitive nature of professional football (soccer) has increased the professionalisation of organisational structures and management practices within clubs that enhance their competitive advantages within the labour market. This is a direct result of the financial rewards for success, and the potential cost of failure is significant. The utilisation of the Sporting Director position represents one strategy for organisations to improve both on and off-field performance success through maintaining organisational influence and control. Yet, the role is accompanied by a range of conceptual and operational misunderstandings. This commentary aims to examine the emergence of the Sporting Director and to offer some guidance on potential avenues for future research. Specifically, we consider, how social network theory might provide a theoretical framework to understand the role of the Sporting Director in practice better. To achieve this, this commentary is structured into five sections. First, we outline the role of corporate governance, senior executives and board membership, within organisational studies and the applicability of this for professional football. Second, we offer a contextual analysis of the business of professional football in Europe, and in particular its move towards globalisation and commodification. Third, we provide a current review of the Sporting Director role in professional football. Fourth, we explain the value of thinking relationally, using a social network approach, to better understanding the role of the Sporting Director within the global context. Finally, we offer some concluding thoughts and considerations surrounding the adoption of the Sporting Director role in England, and outline some potential research agendas concerning social network theory, and related concepts such as embeddedness, structural holes and the strength of weak ties.

Objectives Soccer leagues reflect the partial standings of the teams involved after each round of competition. However, the ability of partial league standings to predict end-of-season position has largely been ignored. Here we analyze historical partial standings from English soccer to understand the mathematics underpinning league performance and evaluate the predictive ‘power’ of partial standings. Methods Match data (1995-2017) from the four senior English leagues was analyzed, together with random match scores generated for hypothetical leagues of equivalent size. For each season the partial standings were computed and Kendall’s normalized tau-distance and Spearman r-values determined. Best-fit power-law and logarithmic functions were applied to the respective tau-distance and Spearman curves, with the ‘goodness-of-fit’ assessed using the R2 value. The predictive ability of the partial standings was evaluated by computing the transition probabilities between the standings at rounds 10, 20 and 30 and the final end-of-season standings for the 22 seasons. The impact of reordering match fixtures was also evaluated. Results All four English leagues behaved similarly, irrespective of the teams involved, with the tau-distance conforming closely to a power law (R2>0.80) and the Spearman r-value obeying a logarithmic function (R2>0.87). The randomized leagues also conformed to a power-law, but had a different shape. In the English leagues, team position relative to end-of-season standing became ‘fixed’ much earlier in the season than was the case with the randomized leagues. In the Premier League, 76.9% of the variance in the final standings was explained by round-10, 87.0% by round-20, and 93.9% by round-30. Reordering of match fixtures appeared to alter the shape of the tau-distance curves. Conclusions All soccer leagues appear to conform to mathematical laws, which constrain the league standings as the season progresses. This means that partial standings can be used to predict end-of-season league position with reasonable accuracy.

Though still of concern, racist abuse within the UK’s football (soccer) stadiums has declined. However, with the increasing significance of digital leisure in people’s lives, there is now a large amount of abuse related to football that is expressed through social media. Digital communities provide both the means of consuming leisure (watching football) and ‘talking’ about it with whoever will ‘listen’. Here we examine the social architecture of networks on Twitter as they emerged in response to two incidents in 2020. To do this, we adopt Social Network Analysis to reveal the prosumption networks that form around key ‘users’. Our article offers empirical insights into racial digital leisure, addresses what action is needed from sporting organisations and media platforms, and suggests avenues for future research.

This paper draws on original research from a larger study of racism and Islamophobia online around football, particularly a set of interviews with staff at English football clubs whose responsibility is to manage social media. We use that information alongside our reflections on “platformed racism” to appraise how expressions of racism on social media differ from those in and around the grounds, and how clubs and others in football contest them. This involves a consideration of three themes commonly identified by those speaking on behalf of the clubs: The triggers that ignite racist posts; the partnerships necessary to counter them; and their proposed solutions. Hence this is not just a cue for a collective wringing of hands, but an effort to point the way forward.

This article used a critical sampling approach to investigate a series of football forums which respond to and discuss racism and Islamophobia. A thematic analysis of 1,064 forum posts identified 19 themes which led to the construction of five overarching themes which are: i) racism has decreased; ii) denying and downplaying racism and Islamophobia; iii) racism has increased; iv) victims and perpetrators; and, v) the action that should be taken. Our qualitative analysis illustrates that most of the football fans ascribe to a narrow understanding of racism in that it is perceived as overt. Very few forum participants offered a nuanced understanding of racism meaning that implicit racism, and how it can be challenged, was overlooked. While overt racism and Islamophobia was infrequently observed across the forums, fans’ tendency to downplay racism, and distance themselves from it, was noteworthy as this acts as a barrier to the anti-racist action.

Research Overview: This research project, commissioned by BUCS and undertaken by the Centre for Social Justice in Sport and Society at Leeds Beckett University, was designed to respond to the recognition that volunteers from diverse ethnic backgrounds are underrepresented within university football, and as participants in BUCS football leadership programmes. The project sought to understand how football clubs, universities, and BUCS can contribute to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in volunteering by producing insight to: • Understand who is engaged and not engaged in university football volunteering. • Gain insight into the football volunteer experience. • Identify the contextual conditions that enable or constrain volunteer engagement.