Modeling to Identify Factors Affecting the Development of Sports Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Field of Sports Education and Research

Today, the discussion about development of entrepreneurial opportunities is emphasized in all fields, including sports. Therefore, the purpose of this study was modeling to identifying factors affecting the development of sports entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of sports education and research.

The research method was exploratory-sequential concerning strategy and applied-developmental in terms of purpose. Using purposeful sampling, semi-structured interviews was used to reach theoretical saturation and consensus in the qualitative section with 40 academic experts, sports entrepreneurs and sport manager. Then, 164 people were selected from these people, using the random sampling method in the quantitative part. The instruments included semi-structured interviews and a researcher-made questionnaire based on a 5-point Likert scale to determine these categories and model fit. Data analysis was performed using the partial least squares method using variance-based statistical software Smart PLS 3.

The findings of the exploratory factor analysis showed that factors affecting the development of the sports entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of sports education and research had 52 items in 8 factors of entrepreneurial business environment, entrepreneurial awareness, entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurial research, entrepreneurial marketing, entrepreneurial educational and research infrastructure, individual factors and social networks, which factor loading, convergent validity by average variance extracted method and reliability for all of them was calculated above 0.70. Also, the model of identifying the factors affecting the development of sports entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of sports education and research had a good fit and the mentioned model had a positive and significant effect on each of the eight mentioned factors (P<0.001).

The results indicated eight important and effective factors for developing sports entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of sports education and research. Therefore, to improve sports entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of sports education and research, can be provided conditions to improve and promote the entrepreneurial business environment, entrepreneurial awareness, entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurial research, entrepreneurial marketing, entrepreneurial educational and research infrastructure, individual factors and social networks.