Abstract:

The paper titled “The What, Why and How of Performance-Driven Funding in Sports Industry – Economics and Management of Sports Industry’s Competitive Strategy” focuses on the economic and managerial opportunities, challenges and future perspectives of the spectacular ascension of the sports industry. First of all, the work focuses on emphasising three key elements, the “what”, “why” and “how” that defines and supports this industry’s role, with a clear focus on performance-driven and performance-enhancing factors that arise in today’s society. Second of all, the work relies on the sports industry’s economic and managerial attributes capable to generate competition, and to enable and enhance its benefits on the long run. Third of all, the work bases its structure on the idea that the sports industry focuses itself, like any other type of industry, on key triggers such as profit, net worth, growth, market quota, investments, recent results and potential opportunities, importance of brand, fierce fully competition, and sports marketing, being in essence a segmented market largely based on enhanced revenues, strongly dependent on governmental and investors’ money infusions, eager to attract new customers and willing to attract more and more attention, even though its major trends and challenges come from the fact that it is an industry “full of passion”. In addition, the research paper stresses the connections that exist between elements such as, for example, gross domestic product (G.D.P.) and sports’ investments, governmental influence and policy in sports, advertising and media and sports’ investments, health and tourism sectors and sports industry. However, specialists believe that particularly due to the sports industry’s diversity and segmentation, it was not sufficiently enough explored and not profoundly enough valued at its true capacity and potential in numerous countries, such as India, China and Turkey, for example, where the sports market represents a huge untapped opportunity. In general lines, the sports industry confronts itself with numerous moral and ethical issues, mainly because it is not an independent sector; on the contrary, being a mass market, the activities that take place in this industry closely affect other sectors of the society, such as marketing, health and tourism, being interesting and aggressive enough to constantly attract customers and investors.