Guest editorial: SBM Special Issue EURAM 2021 Conference – reshaping capitalism for a sustainable world – best papers from the Managing Sport SIG

Abstract

The 2021 edition of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) conference has been once more marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. For a second time, the conference was organised as a 100% online format due to the resurgence of infections in many countries during 2021. Despite a decrease in conference contributions mostly likely due to illness and lower attractivity of the online version of the conference, the Managing Sport SIG organised six sessions, including four full-paper sessions, one kick-off event and a plenary session. I would like to thank all contributors as authors, reviewers, guest speakers, SIG members, conference participants and especially the SIG office team for making this possible.Thanks to the voluntary work of reviewers, we had on average 2.6 reviews per submissions, a total of 37 reviews. In terms of topics and themes, contributions were quite equally distributed across the topics sport governance, managing sport events and participation, sport and sustainability and papers for the general track. Within these submissions, we selected four papers for this Special Issue based on their originality, methodological rigour and their practical and theoretical contributions. The four articles are quite different, but they all carry some links to innovation in sport management research. The first three are empirical articles, and the Special Issue closes with a conceptual article.The first article deals with innovation concerning new ways of accounting for the value created by professional basketball clubs. It applies a redesigned accounting method for nonmarket and market social value created by two Spanish elite basketball clubs. The findings of the study suggest a new way of measuring the holistic value created by elite sport organisations. The second article examines the concept of competitive intensity in two differently regulated sport contextsthe Premier League and the Bundesliga. It makes a methodological contribution through application and generalisation of the recent Competitive Intensity Index Mode. Furthermore, it contributes to the debate around the attractivity of leagues and, hence, informs the recent debate on UEFA's plans of a new European "elite" league. The third article investigates sport sponsorship and its effects in the context of sport event participants. It empirically investigates antecedents of sponsor awareness and consequences for attitudinal aims in the context of Taekwondo competitors. The fourth and final article of this Special Issue is a conceptual article. It suggests a definition for sport event innovation and a research agenda for scholars in the domain of sport event innovation.The first article in this Special Issue, entitled "Monetising social value in sports clubs", is authored by Mendizabal Leiñena et al. (2022). It provides an interesting example on how market and non-market social value can be accounted for in the context of elite sport organisations. This clarifies the contribution of sport organisations to society and, hence, helps sport organisations to sho...