The Analysis of the Components Affecting Privatization of Iran Professional Soccer Clubs

In this article, those factors influencing the privatization of professional soccer clubs in Iran were analyzed. The method was qualitative and its data were obtained by interviews and using the grounded theory. The population consisted of 15 experts. After conducting interviews and implementing the texts of the interviews related to the field of effective components, 186 open codes were detected at the initial stage of open coding, and at the second stage, 93 secondary codes were obtained. Subsequently, firstly the secondary codes with semantic and thematic affinity around a subset were collected, and a total of 63 subsets were obtained in order to form subsets in this domain. At the next stage of axial coding, the subsets related to the components influencing the privatization of football clubs were classified according to the semantic and conceptual affinity to 20 groups. Finally, the economic evolution in the club structure in line with the privatization, strengthening, liberalization and expansion of the capital market for soccer, comprehensive monitoring of all affairs, and support for sport and football, and the combined selling, testing and support methods were recognized as strategies which could direct the flow of privatization to a positive position.