Center for Sports and Business
Our research center aims to study overall global and commercialized sports trends and we aim to become a trusted partner to major sport leagues and clubs. We started 2015 and our main research question follows: how are tensions between commercial and non-for profit logics managed within sports? We operate within four different areas: Research, Teaching, Executive Education and Business Development Student Teams.
During the last 20 years, sports have become more global and commercialized. Today leagues such as the NHL, Manchester United and players likte Michael Jordan have become ”global brands” with TV and media rights worth billions of dollars. Even though sports management researchers have started to understand the implications and effects, much more remains to be done. We aim to study these trends collaboratively with the sports organizations below.
Figure 1. Center for Sports and Business with collaborating partners.
Our research has shown that sportfederations, leagues, clubs and players all have to make business decisions related to Talent Management, Sales & Marketing and Finance & Governance. The research we carry out tries to understand these three areas and how to align incentives among the three levels. Therefore we have developed the following practical framework. Within each cell, we first conduct research and then help our sports partners implement the relevant findings. In this way, the framework helps our sport partners professonalise their sport offices.

Figure 2. Center for Sports and Business and the practical framwork for professionalised sport offices.
Center for Sports and Business is a research center at SIR, Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research. SIR is a national research institute for the economic sciences, with a focus on Business Administration in the broadest sense.