The thesis deals with investments in professional sports clubs. It analyses contributions and impacts of foreign investors' approach on professional football clubs' operations and economy. It also examines motives that give foreign investors reason for buying top European football clubs. The main part of the thesis provides an analysis of six selected football teams from English Premier League to discover common features and differences in modern owners' approaches to their sports clubs. Investments on players' transfer markets and into sports facilities are being discussed as well.

The introduction of my diploma work concentrates on historical development of audit, especially that one in Great Britain.It depicts the legislative adjusting the audit and the novelties of the new Law about auditors which started to be in force in April 2009. The theoretial part captures the account specificities of sport clubs and their occurrence in the world.The auditor's attitude is indicated in the next part focused on speicific problems.The practical part presents the audit of a sport club. A special attention is drawn on a variety of specificities and the auditor's attitude. My diploma work should help the auditor's assistants get familiar with the problems of sport clubs as this topic has seldom beeen published.

The goal of this work is to acquaint with the current situation of information system for sportclubs. To get a comprehensive overview of their species, the suitability of some of them just for these organizations. Specific target group is university sports clubs. This work shows for their needs with regard to the size of the club and its activities, obtained through the survey. The practical part is presented in detail, information system made-to-measure USK FM Jindrichuv Hradec and is compared with offerings of software companies in its development.

The thesis deals with the influence of European cup competitions on competitive balance within national leagues. The importance of competitive balance in sports leagues is highlighted and its vulnerability to the growing differences in revenues between the clubs I discussed. The main part of the thesis provides an analysis of specifics of English, German and Spanish football league. It focuses on the differences in revenue structure and revenue level between clubs within the league, as well as between the leagues. The paper analyzes the influence of participating in European cups on club revenues and the connection between growing revenues with the development of competitive balance.

Previous research shows that people with disabilities have less opportunities to participate and exercise in physical activities than the rest of the population. The purpose of this study has therefore been to investigate experiences of opportunities for exercising physical activities within sports associations, among members in sport clubs that are aimed towards people with disabilities. The purpose has also been to investigate how these members perceive the importance of the physical activities in the sports association. In this study, a qualitative approach has been selected and it has been done semi-structured interviews with eight members from two different sport clubs in Southern Sweden. The analysis has been done using content analysis. The analysis of the results showed that there are various factors that affect the members' ability to exercise physical activities in sports clubs. In the analysis, it emerged that these factors could both facilitate or complicate the opportunities for participation. For this reason, the majority of interviewees appreciated their opportunities as both good and bad. Finally, the analysis of the results showed that all interviewees felt that participation in the physical activities had positive effects on their physical and mental health, but also that it increased their social network.

Sports clubs are a program ran through Pacific Recreation at the University of the Pacific. This study determines whether using services and facilities that Pacific Recreation offers has a statistically significant relationship with students joining or participating in sports clubs. METHOD: When a student comes into the Baun Fitness Center to work out, participate in a class, take part of personal training, or climb the rock tower, that student has to swipe into the facility and service of choice. The same process occurs for when a student wants to use external services like Intramural Sports and Informal Recreation. Quantitative data were pulled from Innosoft Fusion, software that Pacific Recreation utilizes to manage and track their facilities, programs, and services. 2,332 individual student datum were analyzed from the information received from Innosoft Fusion to measure student engagement from the Fall 2017 semester. RESULTS: The Baun Fitness Center and other external services were found to play a significant role with association with participation in sports clubs. Participation in Baun Fitness Center workouts, rock tower, informal recreation, tiger training, and intramural sports associates with participation in sports clubs. It was determined that for each additional individual that participates in these services or programs, there would be an increased chance of individuals to also participate in sports clubs. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that there are additional ways for sports clubs to advertise and promote their clubs for recruitment. Pacific Recreation’ marketing department can use the results from this study to analyze and plan additional marketing strategies that can use cross-promotion from the programs, services, and facilities Pacific Recreation has to offer. This study recommends multiple future research ideas for Pacific Recreation to take apart in to gain new insights on participation and marketing ideas from all of their programs.

Democracy is a central part of the governance system for Swedish sport organisations, including sportsclubs. Sport clubs are non-profit and membership-based organisations where everyone must be allowedmembership and all members must be allowed to participate and have democratic influence. The board,chosen by the members, must protect the interests of the members. Also, sports clubs should begoverned according to good governance to be efficient, sustainable and to create democratic decisionmaking processes and thus considered legitimate by society. The board chair has the primaryresponsibility for the governing of the clubs where 3 million swedes are members. Even so, there is alack of research on board chairs in local sport organisations. Therefore, the aim of this study is toexamine how sports clubs' internal governance and democracy processes work from the perspective ofboard chairs. The data was generated through interviews by eight board chairs from various sports clubs.The results showed that the board chairs try to listen to members but lacks strategies. It also shows thatmembers do not fully use their power to influence the governance of their clubs. One conclusion is thatmany democratic processes were handled in the clubs, but it is sometimes difficult for the board chairsto explain what democracy really means or entails. Another conclusion is that the board chairs have alot of power, but within certain limits due to formal governing mechanisms. Their views on power andinfluences varies but nonetheless seems to have great influences the club. To some extent the clubsshowed good example of democratic governance, but further research is needed to examine the overallstatus on good democratic governance of sport clubs.

The purpose of this study is to examine if the experiences of volunteers within women s rugby at both rugby clubs and at the 2010 Women s Rugby World Cup (WRWC) in England provide the basis for the continuation of such activities as well as the transfer of volunteer effort to event-based or club-based activity within the specific sports concerned or across sports to contribute towards society s broader sporting needs. Sport volunteering in the UK accounts for 26% of the total formal voluntary activity, and largely takes place within the Voluntary Sport Club (VSC) system (Sport England, 2003). It provides the basis for the development of grassroots sports. Sport volunteering also takes place at sport events which provide the foundation for elite level sport development. It is known, however, that if the volunteering experience is satisfying then this may lead to higher levels of commitment with the sports organization, the event or the voluntary cause, which may affect volunteers longevity and intentions to continue volunteering (Doherty, 2009). Women s rugby was selected as a case study, as the 2010 Women s Rugby World Cup was held in England. This facilitated comparisons between club and event volunteers. With the cooperation of the Rugby Football Union for Women (RFUW), research participants were identified and recruited via an email invitation including a link to an internet-administered questionnaire. A total of 70 individuals that volunteered for the 2010 WRWC and 168 volunteers involved in the women s rugby clubs completed the online survey. The results indicated that overall and despite some variation in the emphasis of the findings there is evidence in support of the relevance of the widely known determinants of volunteering such as motivation to volunteer, socio-demographic characteristics, satisfaction with the volunteering experience, engagement to sport and volunteering at to the continuation of future club or event volunteering as well as its transfer to other rugby and other sport events. Consequently, event organisers should work closely with club authorities to help volunteers to make a better connection from their club to the sport more widely and with the role of clubs and events to support the sport generally, to develop a shared identity in both clubs and events, that is across the whole sporting experience and to increase volunteers development opportunities through deploying their efforts in more than one setting which may then lead to the development of social capital.

Student affairs personnel are often charged with the task of creating a strong sense of community (SOC) on university campuses. Sport is among one of the many extracurricular activities that historically has been used to meet this need for community among students. Yet, how and when a sense of community is created within a sport context has not been appropriately addressed in literature. Utilizing a symbolic interactionalist theoretical framework, this study employed a grounded theory approach and uncovered the necessary factors for creating a sense of community within two intercollegiate sport settings. First, 21 former university sport club participants were interviewed regarding their experiences. The results revealed that Common Interest, Leadership Opportunities, Amateurism/ Voluntary Activity, and Competition were the most critical components to creating a sense of community. These results along with the results of Warner and Dixon’s (in review; see Appendix F) sense of community study among varsity athletes, which concluded that Administrative Consideration, Leadership Opportunities, Equity in Administrative Decisions, Competition, and Social Spaces were the key factors to foster a sense of community, were then used to guide focus groups. Eight focus groups consisting of 39 current varsity and sport club athletes were then conducted to further examine and explain the differences and similarities that emerged between the two sense of community in sport models. The results propose a broad based sense of community within sport theory that considers the contextual contingencies surrounding an athlete-driven versus a professionally-administered sport model. The results contribute to community building and sport management theory, and provide practical solutions for enhancing the intercollegiate sport experience. The implications and philosophical differences between an athlete-directed sport experiences versus a more formalized and structured sport model are also discussed. / text

This diploma thesis compiles available sources regarding the historical development of chess in Jičín area, and compares it with Czech lands (in different historical eras). At the beginning there is an explanation of chess terms that are necessary for further understanding. In the main body of the thesis there is chronological description of history, which starts with the origins of chess in our region and formation of first sport organizations, as well as regional clubs, and ends with the setting of contemporary competitions and achievements of the club. In the conclusion there is stated information about chess personalities from the Jičín region and significant simultaneous games. Techniques used for the thesis compilation were: the method of historical research, content analysis of information resources and interviews. KEYWORDS sport, chess, sports history, chess clubs, sports clubs, chess players, Jičín, Jičínsko