Social value measurement in basketball clubs: is it possible?

Abstract

In recent decades, sport has become one of the most important social activities in the Western world, showing an important capacity to attract people from different backgrounds. In this sense, basketball clubs do not pursue economic profit maximization, but instead they need to be analyzed according to their capacity of creating both social and economic value. In this regard, social accounting, as a tool that measures social effects, is also applicable to a basketball club.For that end, in this paper we have applied part of a social accounting methodology, the SPOLY Methodology (Retolaza, San-Jose, & Ruíz-Roqueñi, 2015), to two elite basketball clubs of the ACB League (Spanish First Division), in order to make further steps towards the future monetization of social value. For that purpose, in this paper we will identify different outputs and proxy-s corresponding to a range of specific social value variables established in the interviews with the different stakeholders that were identified in a standard stakeholder map for elite basketball clubs (Mendizabal et al., 2020).Subsequently, 13 sports management experts, both lecturers and practitioners, have validated the list of specific social value outputs and proxy-s identified. The findings support the application of the SPOLY Methodology in basketball clubs, and the process of adaptation and validation carried out throughout the paper. The results also open a way towards the application of SPOLY Methodology in other top-flight sport organizations.

Monetizing social value in sports clubs

“…It is important to identify the different activities by the club that create non-market social value for stakeholders. Mendizabal and García (2021) identify the following valuable activities on the basis of the data of interviews with stakeholders from the previous phase: Activities with Associations dedicated to Social Causes. Activities carried out with Social Associations where clubs launch initiatives such as giving children from poor backgrounds the opportunity to play for free in the basketball academy or giving away tickets to matches for free to people from disadvantaged communities so that they can make social bonds with other people and have fun. Funds given to Social Causes.…”

“…The outputs and proxies associated with the specific or non-market social value variables for each club were identified through a brainstorming process after the authors SBM 12,5 contacted the clubs and checked other relevant documentation (official club and league websites, documents, press, etc.). Those dimensions were then validated by seven expert scholars and six practitioners from sports management (Mendizabal and Garc ıa, 2021).…”

“…The criteria employed to consider an output or proxy as directly valid was that the combined mean of all answers should at least give a result of 3.50 or higher, whereas a result between 3.00 and 3.49 was subject to a revision and finally a mean below 3.00 meant that the output or proxy was eliminated. It should be mentioned that all the outputs and proxies identified have been validated by the 13 sports management experts (Mendizabal and Garc ıa, 2021).…”

Is It Possible to Monetarily Quantify the Emotional Value Transferred by Companies and Organizations? An Emotional Accounting Proposal

“…In the first case, there is a great deal of research that suggests that people are not symmetrical in their utility assessment (Kahneman and Tversky, 1972 ) and express asymmetrical expectations regarding the assumed risk, as in the case of wishful thinking (Babad and Katz, 1991 ), which would mean that the (+) and the (–) would be asymmetrical. In contrast, we came across value variables that would clearly exceed ±50%, e.g., in the world of sport (Mendizabal and Garcia-Merino, 2021 ), where the emotional value may be much greater than the economic value per se generated using transfer mechanisms, regardless of whether they are market or non-market.…”

“…Although the work is theoretical, it is underpinned by a large number of cases analyzed in recent years by the social accounting for sustainability (SAS) research group, recognized by International Centre of Research and Information on the Public, Social and Cooperative Economy (CIRIEC), some of which are published in leading journals, general papers (Retolaza et al, 2016 ; Retolaza and San-Jose, 2021 ), on its application in the social economy in general (Lazcano et al, 2019 ; Lazkano and Beraza, 2019 ; Etxanobe, 2020 ; Lazkano et al, 2020 ), on its usefulness to measure hospital efficiency (San-Jose et al, 2019 ), about sport clubs (Mendizabal et al, 2020 ; Mendizabal and Garcia-Merino, 2021 ), applied to ecclesiastical organizations (Retolaza et al, 2020 ), to universities and education (Ayuso et al, 2020 ; Arimany-Serrat and Tarrats-Pons, 2021 ; Barba-Sánchez et al, 2021a ), its benefit for technology parks (Blázquez et al, 2020 ; Torres-Pruñonosa et al, 2020 ), associations of fishers (Guzmán-Pérez et al, 2018 ), tourism (Guzmán-Pérez et al, 2021 ), public tenders (Bernal et al, 2019 ), and agri-food companies (Barba-Sánchez et al, 2021b ). These studies identify the importance of emotional value and propose its inclusion in social accounting, which has so far been partially addressed by few studies (Ruiz-Roqueñi, 2020 ; Tirado-Valencia et al, 2021 ).…”