Vol 9, No 1-2 (2015)
Issue Description
In our consumer society sports have gained a lot of public and private attention. This holds both for the active as the passive form of this kind of consumption. Nowadays, the promotion of health enhancing activities, are seen as a key to the maintenance of good health of the people or the improvement of it. Doing sports is a prominent part of the leisure enhancing physical activities. Especially, higher educated are keen to extend their healthy life years by practising sports. And many elder citizens are convinced that one hour of tennis a day implies an extra day of life. The more physically active perform better at work and work more efficiently. Of course, this has all kind of positive externalities to society.
When we look at sports as a passive form of recreation, we see that sports have become business and sometimes big business in our market societies. For instance, the European Champions league is dominated by a few teams that have huge resources and are, sometimes, highly indebted.. Television rights of broadcasting certain sports activities or games have become very expensive. It is estimated that in the EU about 4 per cent of GDP is spent on sp. . .
In our consumer society sports have gained a lot of public and private attention. This holds both for the active as the passive form of this kind of consumption. Nowadays, the promotion of health enhancing activities, are seen as a key to the maintenance of good health of the people or the improvement of it. Doing sports is a prominent part of the leisure enhancing physical activities. Especially, higher educated are keen to extend their healthy life years by practising sports. And many elder citizens are convinced that one hour of tennis a day implies an extra day of life. The more physically active perform better at work and work more efficiently. Of course, this has all kind of positive externalities to society.
When we look at sports as a passive form of recreation, we see that sports have become business and sometimes big business in our market societies. For instance, the European Champions league is dominated by a few teams that have huge resources and are, sometimes, highly indebted.. Television rights of broadcasting certain sports activities or games have become very expensive. It is estimated that in the EU about 4 per cent of GDP is spent on sports. Sports has become a very important and interesting kind of economic and social activity that entails may aspects and issues.
Several sports issues are addressed in this Apstract issue ranging from macro to micro studies, and, from economics , sociology to business studies. Below, we will give a short thematic guide to the issue.In several papers the issue of financing sports is analysed for a particular country or region in Europe, e.g. Hungary and Croatia. One of the aspects that is important for a region is the sports infrastructure. This is the topic of two papers. One states that sports infra structure is of vital importance in the supply of all kind of sports to the people and to the consumers of various sports. It has long tem effects on the health of people in a certain region. Whereas the second one points at the desired , regional sustainability of sports infrastructure.
In an interesting essay the social historical narratives about modernity are linked with cultural and social functions of sports in a highly technologized capitalist world. Sports has also the power of integration or the inclusion of minorities in society.
This is analysed for sports and Roma in Hungary. Sports is gendered to a certain degree as can be seen in the contribution on masculine brave and feminine winter sports and, in two micro studies attention is paid the leisure sport activities and rewarding of very good sports students at the University of Debrecen.
More business studies oriented contributions deal with communication in fitness clubs, the environmental management tools of sporting goods manufacturers; and, the corporate tax in connection with sports organizations Various aspects of football are discussed in this issue: Borussia Dortmund as an association and as football enterprise; the rights of players ; and, new business strategies of football clubs. Two contributions discuss issues with respect to the users of sports: students and sport festivals;, and, athletes as an invisible source of sports organizations.
The great importance of broadcasting rights and the corresponding effects are analysed in the paper that deals with changes in IOC broadcasting rights.There is also a role for higher education to play in the sports area: one paper is a plea for more sports studies in higher education , whereas another contribution discusses the topic of educating sports coaches in higher education curricula.
We wish you the same intellectual pleasure in reading the contributions as we had.