Where sports meets business: discover the Center for Sports and Business at SSE

The Center for Sports and Business (CSB) is an interdisciplinary research center at the Stockholm School of Economics. Its mission is to make the world of sport more research-driven by connecting academic knowledge with real challenges facing clubs, leagues, federations, athletes, and businesses. 

Established in 2015, with roots in an athlete education program launched in 2011, CSB has grown into an international community of more than 40 researchers from 12 countries. Its expertise spans management, strategy, marketing, innovation, international business, accounting, finance, and economics. 

Sport is an unusually rich environment for studying business. Organizations must baalnce commercial performance with sporting success, tradition, community identity, and social responsibility. The same tensions appear far beyond sport, making the sector a valuable setting for understanding leadership, value creation, and organizational change. 

For new bachelor's and master's students, this means opportunities both inside and outside the classroom. 

Take a course where theory meets practice

CSB offers dedicated electives at both BSc and MSc level, led by Professor Martin Carlsson-Wall. 

The BSc elective Hybrid Organizations - Value Creation & Strategy examines organizations that combine different goals and ways of working. These include sports clubs, social enterrpises, cultural institutions, family firms, and state-owned companies. Through lectures, guest speakers, and project work, students explore accounting, management control, and the strategic choices involved in creating value across the private, public, and civil-society sectors. The insights are relevant not only to sport, but also to careers in consulting, social enterprise, and public-sector organizations. 

At MSc level, Investments and Value Creation in Global Sports explores how value is created through media rights, ticket sales, sponsorships, merchandise, and player transactions. Students examine the growing influence of financial investors and consider how clubs, leagues, and events can balance financial returns with the passionate interests of supporters and other stakeholders. The course combines SSE expertise in accounting and finance with perspectives from international sports executives and industry leaders. 

Turn your thesis or student project into real-world impact

Thinking about writing a sports-related bachelor's or master's thesis? CSB can provide academic guidance and help connect students with organization's interested in research-based projects. 

The center's online collection of BSc and MSc theses shows just how broad the possibilities are. Previous work covers football, ice hockey, esports, golf, skiing, sports governance, gender equality, sponsorship, mental health, physical activity, organizational culture, and strategy. 

Master's students may also encounter CSB through CEMS Business Projects, the Executive Trainee Module, and MBI Live Projects. These consultancy-like assignments give students an opportunity to apply academic frameworks to concrete challenges together with sports organizations. 

CSB's partner network creates a strong link to practice. It includes organizations such as the Swedish Hockey League, Swedish Elite Football, the Swedish Football Association, the Swedish Olympic Committee, the Swedish Golf Association, the Swedish Ski Association, Swedish Parasport and several other major actors in Swedish sport. Partners contribute to research and teaching through guest lectures, thesis supervision, and student projects. 

Join the SSE Sport Initiative

You do not need to take a CSB course - or plan a career in sport - to become involved. Powered by CSB and collaborating with the Student Association's Sports Committee, the SSE Sport Initiative brings sports into everyday life at the School. 

Its activities are organized around four areas:

• Activate: recurring opportunities for physcial activity that support wellbeing and community, including student-led practices in sports such as basketball, cheerleading, football, tennis, and volleyball
• Field Trips: behind-the-scenes visits to clubs, federations, leagues, and venues
• Speaker Series: lunch lectures, breakfast seminars, and evening events with athletes, researchers, and sports-industry leaders
• Forums: conferences, panel discussions, and networking events, including a career forum during the annual Sports and Business Week

Together, these activitis offer a way to meet students across programs, understand how the sports industry works and build relationships with researchers and professionals. They also create a space in which leadership, teamwork, discipline, and collaboration can be developed through action as well as academic study. 

Explore the bigger questions shaping sport

CSB's work reaches beyond courses and campus activities. CSB Outlook, organized with the Swedish Sports Confederation, offers four digital seminars each year on developments such as commercialization, digitalization, sustainability, and innovation. The seminars are open to a broad audience and combine research, expert perspectives, and practical examples. 

Through the Swedish Olympic Academy, CSB also works alongside the Swedsih Olympic Committee, Karolinska Institutet, and KTH. The academy connects expetise in economics, medicine technology and elite sport, addressing areas including sustainable performance, mental resilience, sport technology, and dual careers. 

Another initiative, Collective Visibility, is run in collaboration with Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Its global directory helps event organizers, journalists and researchers find women experts in sport, strengthening representation in sports business, academia and public debate.

CSB also offers executive and transition programs, including the Management Diploma for Athletes and the European Sports Business Program. Although these programs serve different audiences, they bring experienced athletes and decision-makers into the center’s wider community - adding perspectives that can enrich teaching, research and events at SSE.

Make CSB part of your SSE experience

For students, CSB can be a course, a thesis topic, a live project, a field trip, a workout, an inspiring lecture or the beginning of a professional network. Most importantly, it is a place to explore sport not simply as competition or entertainment, but as a field in which business, culture and society meet.

Visit the CSB website to explore current courses, research, news and events. You can also follow the SSE Sport Initiative on Instagram at @ssesportinitiative and the Center for Sports & Business at the Stockholm School of Economics on LinkedIn.