The thesis deals with the selfhoods of the economics of professional sports clubs. Theoretical part shows the transition from traditional to contemporary professional sports financing with focusing on differences between european and american model. European union's attitude towards the problematics of professional sport is presented as well. Practital part of the thesis looks over the economics of professional football clubs in Europe. Revenues, expenditures and financing of the clubs are all examined in this part. Finally, thesis analyzes the potential threats to football clubs and provides with suggested regulatory actions.

Thesis advisor: Andy Hargreaves / This dissertation examines the nature of the longstanding cross-sector relationship between an urban public school district and a corporate-owned team franchise in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The study found that while this collaboration is often talked about as a partnership, in practice, it advances a corporate philanthropic and promotional relationship that is characterized by mutual affinities but not mutually agreed upon goals. This philanthropic connection to a powerful national sporting institution provides benefits to local public schools through incentives for perfect student attendance, motivational assemblies with professional athletes, and periodic, one-time donations in much needed technology. However, this relationship also raises key questions related to the mechanisms for social accountability in leadership decision-making, the effective and equitable use of school and corporate resources, and the indirect and inadvertent consequences when schools rely on commercialism and sports stardom to sell the meritocratic value of getting an education to a generation of students. The dissertation addresses the implications of the rise of corporate philanthropy within the context of economic austerity in public education. A multi-disciplinary review of research, drawing on four bodies of literature, considers the assumptions underlying counter-related discourses about corporate involvement in the public sector: 1) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), 2) CSR as Greenwashing (i.e. disinformation disseminated by a firm to present misleading public images of corporate responsibility), 3) Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in education, and 4) PPPs as privatizations in education. The constant comparative method was used throughout to analyze multi-modal data from an ethnographic case study of one city's cross-sector collaboration with the NBA, including participant observations, review of news and media, and extended field interviews with thirty district leaders, school administrators, teachers, counselors, and coaches in three K-8 schools. The result is a critical examination of the confluence of altruism, elite professional sports, and the marketplace in urban public education. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The sports industry has been made distinct from traditional business for many reasons including its body of stakeholders and its position in popular media. For these reasons, corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts and the communication of them in professional sports is known to be addressed differently. The following research has been conducted in order to learn how well professional sports teams are doing to communicate CSR to the particular stakeholders who are also their social media followers. Sports teams' Twitter accounts were analyzed and tweets concerning CSR were identified. Findings suggested that only 3.94% of professional sports teams' tweets were related to CSR. It was also found that intrinsically, market size and on-field team performance do not affect CSR tweeting. When viewed together, however, it has been found that smaller market losing teams tweet more CSR than larger market losing teams while smaller market winning teams tweet less CSR than larger market winning teams. This finding lends insights into the strategic purposes of CSR in the professional sports industry. When small market sports teams do not have a successful season, they seem to restore their reputation via the CSR function more so than larger market teams in a similar situation do. Additionally, winning teams of the larger market tweet more CSR than smaller market winners. The conclusion is that, although relatively little CSR tweeting is done in professional sports, smaller market professional sports teams' CSR tweeting is spurred by poor performance, whereas larger market sports teams' CSR tweeting is spurred by winning.

I analyze the impact that a Major League Baseball (MLB) team’s ownership structure has on its financial and on-the-field efficiency. Previous work has shown that ownership structure does have an impact on firm efficiency. In MLB, a team under the management of a corporate owner could have access to potential cost and revenue synergies that would otherwise be unavailable to a team with a private owner. These synergies should increase the financial efficiencies of corporately owned teams, which should translate to success on the field, as measured by on-the-field efficiency.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2000. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-274). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Orientador: Roberto Rodrigues Paes / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação Fisica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-13T08:41:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silva_YlanePinheiroGoncalvesda_M.pdf: 627513 bytes, checksum: e66e0bc685a04a5529ff781e21912d65 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Partindo da concepção de Esporte como um fenômeno de múltiplos significados e manifestações, esse estudo tem o intuito de contribuir para a compreensão do fenômeno, mais especificamente na modalidade basquetebol feminino, tendo como foco a iniciação esportiva e o esporte profissional e as relações de interdependência que podem se estabelecer entre ambos. Para tanto, a presente dissertação foi organizada em 2 momentos principais: 1) Elaboração de um referencial teórico que pudesse contribuir para a compreensão do fenômeno estudado. 2) Realização de uma pesquisa de campo, através de entrevista semi-estruturada com técnicos da modalidade, selecionados a partir dos critérios de inclusão dos sujeitos da pesquisa. As entrevistas mostraram que, na visão dos técnicos, atletas profissionais podem exercer influência positiva sobre aprendizes da modalidade estudada, inclusive incentivando-as ao ingresso na prática esportiva. Diante disso, a procura pela iniciação em basquetebol feminino foi relevante em municípios que sediam equipes profissionais no período estudado. / Abstract: Considering Sport a phenomenon of multiple meanings, our goal is to contribute for the comprehension of its complexity, specifically in female basketball, focusing youth sports and professional athletes and the relationships that may be established between them. This study was organized in 2 different moments: 1) We collected information from scientific literature to help us comprehend the phenomenon Sport. 2) We interviewed basketball coaches who met the criteria established previously within the methods of the study. The interviews showed that coaches believe that professional athletes are able to influence basketball learners positively, also motivating them to start the practice of the specific sport. They also believe that cities and regions that host professional teams have more girls interested in playing basketball. / Mestrado / Ciencias do Desporto / Mestre em Educação Física

in English A Comparison of the Legal Status of Professional Football Players in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic The thesis is, above all, a response to the still largely unresolved situation regarding the Czech legal regulation of the activities performed by professional sportspeople practising the so-called team sports. According to many opinions, it appears highly likely that professional sporting activity fully meets the legal definition of "dependent labour" which should be performed solely within labour relationships in accordance with the labour code; however, the contemporary practice is vastly different. The overwhelming majority of professional sportspeople and their clubs enter into so-called innominate contracts governed by the civil code; this approach has been explicitly found permissible by the Supreme Administrative Court within its stable case-law. On the one hand, such practice provides the flexibility that is much needed in professional sports and is also financially beneficial for both sides. On the other hand, however, it denies sportspeople of the legal protection they would enjoy as employees. This is why there have recently been gradually intensifying calls suggesting that the status quo is unsatisfactory and unsustainable; this conclusion seems to...

This study employs qualitative research methods to identify crisis communication strategies utilized by Tom Brady and the New England Patriots during the cheating scandal, Deflategate. Informed by Benoit’s image repair theory, this case study analyzes 14 statements made or released in response to developments throughout the scandal. The findings support the theory of image repair in that transparency in communication and public relations are important aspects in the world of professional sports as offenders work to deter or repair any damage to their reputation in the midst of a scandal. In addition to providing a unique perspective on image repair strategies, this study also offers a foundation for additional research.

Title of the thesis: Labour law issues in the area of professional sports Abstract This thesis concerns the relationship between labour law and the specifics of sports and sports activities as a mass society-wide phenomenon with a significant overlap into law. Legislation in the Czech Republic still does not follow the global trend in the area of status of professional sportsmen, which is oriented towards the explicit recognition of sportsmen as employees so the sportsmen are provided with the highest amount of rights possible as the weaker parties in relation to sports clubs. On the contrary, the position of the Czech sportsmen within the legal system is still unclear and the desired clarification is not provided even by the relatively extensive case law of the Supreme Administrative Court. In the vast majority of cases, the Czech sportsmen use the status of self-employment. In general, this thesis will focus on professional team sports, especially the football environment, whose legal framework provides the most suitable sample to demonstrate theoretical conclusions contained herein. For the purposes of comparison, the practice of Great Britain and its legal structure of sports environment will be analysed. The first part of this work will focus generally on sports and its specifics, mainly its separation...

This exploratory case study positions the 2004-05 National Hockey League (NHL) lockout as an organizational crisis, studying it within a Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) frame. A mixed methodology approach used qualitative and quantitative content analyses and a survey of NHL fans to gauge the NHL's reputation five years after the lockout. For the content analyses, 282 newspaper articles from 7 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada were coded for SCCT variables and presentation of the lockout by news writers. NHL fans (n = 140) were surveyed with the goal of assessing SCCT variables as predictors of attitude. Results confirmed previous SCCT findings and showed links between SCCT variables and fan attitudes toward the NHL and the sport of hockey.