Identifying Entrepreneurial Business Opportunities in Sports Industry with an IT Approach

In the present-day world، sports activities and events are not to be considered solely for the purpose of entertainment or recreation. The result of this research has shown that sports businesses have entered a wide domain of activities like management، new technologies، marketing، advertisement and the like. In this area، the number of businesses which are connected to the world by information technology is rapidly growing. This growth necessitates sports businesses to enter this arena and guarantee their survival، growth and competitiveness by identifying and exploiting opportunities in IT sector. In this study، aided and supported by a sample of 86 owner-managers and experts of sports businesses in IT sector، opportunities are identified and categorized into three underlying groups. These groups are labeled as service، production، sale and Marketing opportunities. The results show the highest priority for service and the lowest for production and sale opportunities. Moreover، the priority of these opportunities within each group is presented in components of this study as well.