Sports Business Journal
Volume:3 Issue: 3, Summer 2023

The study aimed to estimate the price of Iranian professional football league players.

The research method was mixed exploratory designs, qualitative and quantitative methods. The research participants in the qualitative section included managers, club coaches, and experts familiar with the football players' market. Therefore, fourteen participants were selected by snowball until we reached saturation. The research tool in the qualitative section included in-depth interviews, so the reliability of which the re-test method was 81%. In the quantitative section, the statistical population had all the football players in the Iranian Football Professional League during 2016-2020, and random sampling was done. So, 863 players were selected to use their data for analysis. The quantitative methods were also collected from valid sites and the Iranian Football League Organization. The model was also designed through radial neural networks using software SPSS and R.

Qualitative section showed that the player's performance, personal characteristics and abilities, club characteristics, and bubble-creating factors are influential in determining the price of football players. In the quantitative section, a model with three hidden layers was designed, which had a nominal error rate in predicting the price of players.

Originality: 

Today, one of the main problems in the field of transfer in football leagues is the small number of appropriate criteria for pricing players. This study aims to estimate the price of professional football players using artificial neural networks.

Regarding the restrictions of football clubs and insufficient income sources on the one hand and the revenue gained through television broadcasting rights, environmental advertising, and ticket sales, financial support from football clubs by sponsors should be mounted. Unfortunately, some issues have caused private companies to be disinclined in providing capital for football. Therefore, the present research was carried out to identify the factors influencing private companies' motivation for sponsorship.

The present research was conducted via a qualitative method based on the phenomenological approach. Predominantly, the phenomenological approach reveals the nature of meaning concealed in experiences and aims to comprehend the experience concept in the same way the person did. The Participants into semi-structured interviews included sport management faculty members, senior managers of the football federation, football clubs, managers, senior managers of private companies, and sports instructors. The validity and reliability of the findings were applied.

The factors impact the private companies, motivation to support football clubs. They include 52 sub-contents from 8 main contents: Adherence to Behavioral Norms, Financial Growth, Government Support, Development of Refereeing, Media Promotion, Managerial Development, Club Brand Enhancement, and supporting companies’ development.

Originality: 

We found new concepts to increase private companies’ motivation in football club sponsorship.

This research aims to identify and validate Iranian sports entrepreneurs' optimal use of crowdfunding.

The research method is mixed. In the qualitative section, the participants included 16 sports management professors, entrepreneurship management, sports entrepreneurs, and sports business people in the interview, and the data were analyzed by Maxqda version—2020 software. Furthermore, 360 participants participated in the survey during the quantitative section, and the data was analyzed with Smart PLS software.

The findings showed casual elements, including entrepreneurial attitude, human capital, and policies. The background conditions include the institutionalization of entrepreneurship, business management transparency and improvement, a customer-oriented culture, and cultural and social factors. Also, the intervening factors comprised laws and regulations, financial and economic elements, protective laws, and information technology factors. The practical strategies also included expert forces, trust building, creating supportive and monetary policies, and communicating with entrepreneurs. Finally, the results showed the growth of sports businesses, distribution of justice in financial resources, economic productivity, and positive attitude toward sports entrepreneurs as social capital. According to the results, the identified factors can provide the necessary ground for collective financing by sports business entrepreneurs.

Originality: 

Funding has always been one of the main challenges of entrepreneurs, and crowdfunding can be an effective way to provide the capital a start-up company needs. The purpose of this study is to optimize collective capital by sports entrepreneurs by a quantitative study.

Destination image marketing is a crucial starting point for successful tourism marketing, as visitors' images and expectations of their travel experiences can significantly shape their attitudes towards a particular destination. This study aimed to identify the influential factors forming the sports tourism destination image in Ardabil Province.

The study is an applied and descriptive research. The Statistical population of this study consisted of sport management experts, tourism managers and experts of cultural heritage & tourism departments, managers and experts of Sport & youth, tourism agency managers, and visitors of sport tourism. The research questionnaire was a researcher-made that was used after confirmation of its validity and reliability (α:0.81). Data from 362 questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS V.26 and Amos V.24 software. Also, the Bartlett test, KMO index, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used.

The results showed that eight latent factors, including tourism and public infrastructure, local customs and traditions, local attractions, service quality, entertainment and sports events, natural and environmental factors, information and advertising, and social and security factors, are the influenced factors.

Originality: 

Destination image is one of the most essential variables influencing a tourist's decision to choose a destination. By identifying the factors that affect the formation of the image of sports tourism destinations and using these factors to present a positive image, tourism destination managers and officials can attract more sports tourists and develop their goals.

This research aims to identify and investigate the relationship between demographic characteristics and entrepreneurial intention of physical education and sports science students.

391 participants from the students of the sports science faculty of the selected universities participated in the study were randomly selected. The quantitative method was used, and the six experts confirmed the validity of the questionnaire, And the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.910. SPSS software was used to analyze the data.

The study identified some main factors that increase people's willingness to be entrepreneurs. This study showed a significant relationship between the university of study, elite sports background, level of education, gender, parents' occupation, age, experience living abroad, and entrepreneurial intention. On the other hand, there is no relationship between marital status and having specialized skills concerning entrepreneurship intention, which indicates that just marital status and having technical skills cannot improve students' entrepreneurial intention.

Originality: 

The entrepreneur is a combination of risk and willingness to succeed, but it is not easy to achieve due to the influence of the internal and external business environment. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the main factors influencing people's willingness.

This study aimed to investigate the sustainable revenue of private sports clubs in Iran.

The research method was qualitative, and we used Strass and Corbin approach. The participants were specialists in sports management and activists in clubs’ sports, marketing, and economics issues; then, by theoretical and snowball methods, 16 participants were considered. The research sampling method was theoretical and continued until the saturation. We used depth and exploratory interviews to collect the data, and the validity of the findings was determined by member matching, peer review, and pilot interviews. Open, axial, and selective coding was used to analyze the data.

The findings showed 15 components include organizational attitudes, technical aspects, budgeting, financial support, value issues, human aspects, scientific procedure, professional behaviors, customer orientation, Organizational structure, outsourcing, information aspects, interdepartmental cooperation, media activities, and equitable distribution have an influential role in sports club fundraising of Iran.

Originality: 

Since private sports clubs do not have governmental financial support, this study provides a sustainable fundraising concept.