A framework for diversification decisions in professional football

The deployment of professional football clubs’ eSports strategies: a dynamic capabilities approach

“…Nevertheless, a number of implications can be drawn from these findings. Regarding professional football club literature, a first observation is that, while eSports has been described as a burgeoning topic in terms of clubs' growth strategies (Schmidt & Holzmayer, 2018a), our results tend to relativize its importance, since monetization possibilities are still untried and remain of a very modest scale compared to the revenues generated by their core business activities. However, given the progressive replacement of current customers by Millennials and the growing interest in eSports by an ever increasing number of economic actors, this topic could most likely gain in importance in the longer term.…”

“…This may explain why they track all possible trends; e.g. escape games, AirPrint, hackathons, and YouTube challenges (Schmidt & Holzmayer, 2018a). This responsiveness to trends is well illustrated by LAMBDA1's manager:…”

“…This spectacularly growing phenomenon has left little time for researchers to understand the rationale of such involvement. Schmidt and Holzmayer (2018a) positioned eSports as one of the hottest topics for football clubs in terms of growth strategy. Scholz (2019) noted that sport organizations could follow seven different strategic patterns to enter the eSports market, from recruiting a single player to creating an entire eSports league.…”

Stadium Attendance Demand Research: A Scoping Review

“…Further, off the field, an underutilized stadium might not only lead to inefficient staffing but also to lower merchandising sales. As football clubs are increasingly interested in diversifying their income sources (cf., Schmidt & Holzmayer, 2018), some clubs might also benefit from auxiliary revenues generated through, for example, hotel stays, museum visits, and stadium tour bookings if attendance demand increases. Therefore, it is not surprising that information on stadium attendance demand is considered an approximation for a sporting club's reputation by investors, thus influencing the club's stock market price (e.g., Gimet & Montchaud, 2016).…”

Stadium Attendance Demand During the Covid-19 Crisis: Early Empirical Evidence from Belarus

“…In line with most stadium attendance studies (cf., Tainsky and Winfree, 2010), we cannot control for either the number of season ticket holders or the 5 According to the CNN, in mid-April 2020, only five out of FIFA's 211 national associations were still running a football competition: Belarus, Burundi, Nicaragua, Tajikistan, and Taiwan (CNN, 2020). 6 As European football leagues are increasingly seeking international broadcasting presence to diversify their income mix (e.g., Schmidt and Holzmayer, 2018), the sale of additional international media rights marks a significant, though probably temporary, competitive advantage for the BPL. Although we are not aware of the generated income, such additional revenue, as one reviewer has rightly pointed out, is likely to have a significant effect on the league's development.…”