Contemporary issues in the management of grassroots football

O'Gorman, Jimmy; Fitzpatrick, Daniel; Sibley, Jonathan; Hindmarsh, Matthew; Sasková, Zora; Parnell, Daniel

doi:10.4324/9781351262804-6

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The engagement of CSRsponsorship by businesses is further salient for the grassroots sports club in noting the work of Cuesta-Valiño et al, (2021) which proffers non-profit sport organisations lose members, in part, because of the service quality provided by the organisation that is affected by factors including income. Through sponsorship and giving back to the local community, small firms can thus advance their relational capital with key stakeholders and gain competitive advantage with enhanced company performance (White Gunby, 2009;O'Gorman et al, 2019).…”

Section: Sponsorship In Sport and Csrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassroots football club stakeholders' sponsorship: the role of happiness and shared values

Hindmarsh

Ikramullah

Ruiz-Alba

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThis research serves to determine causal configurations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) conditions that best influences grassroots football club stakeholders to meet a sponsor's goals through promotional activity.Design/methodology/approachThe research uses a case study of the Essex Alliance League, a local amateur football league in England. Firstly, semi-structured interviews were held with multiple stakeholders to understand the ecosystem of grassroots football. From here, further semi-structured interviews were held with club sponsors to identify the conditions of CSR. This allowed the research to then issue a survey from which results were analysed and discussed using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA).FindingsThe ecosystem of grassroots football is formed by a myriad of stakeholders operating at a national level, all the way to more local governance structures within which the business-club relationship exists. Sponsors identified three main conditions of CSR: shared values, self-congruity, and happiness. However, following fsQCA, two pathways were found: (1) presence of shared values, and (2) presence of happiness with the absence of self-congruity.Practical implicationsFor practitioners, adaptations can be made for clubs to attract and maintain sponsorship as businesses seek to use grassroots sport as a channel for their own CSR objectives. To attract long term sponsorship, club managers are recommended to maintain long-term relationships with business owners especially in relation to personal values, fit, and happiness. As such, the responsibility of the club to ensure its stakeholders engage in promotional activity on behalf of their sponsor will help in maximising the financial value over multiple seasons.Originality/valueWhere fertile ground for academic analysis in grassroots football is present, this research investigates CSR activity at this level of football, where most research is more concerned with professional levels of the game. Furthermore, this research reaches into the sport ecosystem through an understanding of co-created values between organisations in this exchange of shared values to meet common objectives.

show abstract

Section: Sponsorship In Sport and Csrmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassroots football club stakeholders' sponsorship: the role of happiness and shared values

Hindmarsh

Ikramullah

Ruiz-Alba

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Undergirding familial bonds, childhoods and social kinships, the simple practice of kicking a tattered ball around an invented pitch with a group of friends, a game of five-a-side after work, or a formal league or cup match on a Sunday morning, the grassroots game continues to provide the basis of an identityshaping series of rituals, social exchanges, and life stories (Reckwitz 2002). Today, nonelite and non-professional football includes schools and youth football, women's football, five-a-side, futsal, disability football, football for veterans, and walking football (O'Gorman et al 2018).…”

Section: Footballmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Efforts to boost participation have undoubtedly been stymied by the economic state of the grassroots game (O'Gorman et al 2018, Parnell et al 2019) and, specifically, the austerity first enacted by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010 (King 2014, Widdop et al 2018. The attempts made by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to 'balance the books' of the nation through a series of swingeing cuts and welfare reforms have forced local government authorities to shuffle their spending priorities (Streeck and Mertens 2013, Donald et al 2014, Hastings et al 2017.…”

Section: Footballmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards an ‘Everyday’ Cultural Political Economy of English Football: Conceptualising the Futures of Wembley Stadium and the Grassroots Game

Webber

2021

New Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

UK). His principal research interest lies in the political economy of football and he has published a growing number of books and journal articles in the oftenintersecting fields of football fan culture, governance, globalisation, finance, British politics, and international development. Towards an 'everyday' cultural political economy of English football: conceptualising the futures of Wembley Stadium and the grassroots gameThe proposed sale of Wembley Stadium in 2018 raised the possibility of a windfall that could be reinvested into the grassroots tier of English football. This bid was ultimately withdrawn but, as this article demonstrates, the episode highlighted the co-constitutive relationship between the everyday cultural base of English football, and those political and economic discourses, strategies, and trajectories that have been pursued within the sport and wider society. Developing a theoretical approach conceptualised here as 'everyday' cultural political economy, this article considers the cultural histories, objects, spaces and practices whose futures were both at stake in this transactionnamely, Wembley and the grassroots gameand the material effects that austerity and a skewed distribution of wealth have had upon the everyday cultural production of English football. The proposed sale of Wembley, it is argued here, failed to sufficiently account for and mitigate the impact that these political and economic effects have had upon the 'everyday culture' of grassroots football. The concluding remarks of this article call for a strategy that foregrounds the cultural base of English football and those quotidian practices that have come to be recast by the unequal power relations extant to the contemporary game.

show abstract

Contemporary issues in the management of grassroots football

Cited by 2 publications

References 1 publication

Grassroots football club stakeholders' sponsorship: the role of happiness and shared values

Grassroots football club stakeholders' sponsorship: the role of happiness and shared values

Towards an ‘Everyday’ Cultural Political Economy of English Football: Conceptualising the Futures of Wembley Stadium and the Grassroots Game

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About