Modeling Solutions for the Development of Sports Entrepreneurship Opportunities at the Micro Level

Considering the importance of sports entrepreneurship opportunities, the present study was conducted with the aim of modeling strategies for the development of sports entrepreneurship opportunities at the Micro level.

The current research was applied-developmental in terms of its purpose and exploratory-quantitative in terms of implementation method. The research community was sports entrepreneurs and postgraduate students of sports management in Mazandaran province, 164 of whom were selected as a sample based on Cochran's formula and random sampling method. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire on strategies for developing sports entrepreneurship opportunities (81 items), whose face validity was confirmed by the opinion of experts, and its reliability was calculated using Cronbach's alpha method of 0.74. Data were analyzed with exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling methods in SmartPLS-3 software.

The findings of the exploratory factor analysis showed that the solutions for the development of sports entrepreneurship opportunities at the intermediate level had 74 items in 7 situational and regional factors, market and business environment, media, education, support, management and technological infrastructure, which factor loading, convergent validity with The method of average variance extracted and reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha method for all of them above 0.70. Also, the model of strategies for developing sports entrepreneurship opportunities had a good fit at the intermediate level and the said model had a significant effect on each of the seven factors (P<0.001).

According to the factors identified for the model of strategies for the development of sports entrepreneurship opportunities at the intermediate level and the effect of the model on each of the factors to improve the development of sports entrepreneurship opportunities, the conditions can be provided for the improvement of each of the factors.