Our impact
The Birkbeck Sport Business Centre is widely recognised for its impact. Our network of partnerships and industry links ensures that our research and consultancy work is informed by the latest practice and also that the work we produce feeds back into the industry.
Members of the Centre have been involved in a number of funded projects and have produced a series of Research Excellence Framework (REF) Impact Cases. We have also been asked to give evidence to a number of government inquiries, in particular on the governance and regulation of football.
Impact projects
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Diversity in Sports Leadership
- Richard Tacon was recently part of a major £450,000 project to increase diversity in sport leadership. Commissioned by Sport England and UK Sport, and led by Perrett Laver, the project sought to identify candidates from Black, Asian and minority ethnic, disabled and LGBTQ+ backgrounds to offer training and development to prepare them for positions on boards of sport organisations.
- At the Centre, we developed online modules and research-led seminars for the candidates, covering topics including introduction to organisational governance, the UK sport sector and the role of the board.
- Although the project was limited to identifying and enabling candidates, rather than placing them in organisations, it has so far led to more than 50 appointments across the UK sport sector, with candidates from the programme joining boards of national governing bodies, Active Partnerships and other national sport organisations.
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Match-Fixing in English Football
- As a result of Birkbeck's strong research reputation in the area of sport governance and its relationships with professional footballing bodies, Sean Hamil and Dr Andy Harvey were approached by the European Division of the world football players' union, FIFPro, to conduct research into match-fixing in European professional football.
- The research project produced as its key outputs: a good practice guide, which FIFPro later disseminated to its member unions and in particular to football players' unions in Greece, Slovenia, Romania, Norway, Finland, Hungary, Scotland and England, and a code of conduct, 'Protect Our Game', to which all major European footballing stakeholders subscribed.
- The wider and longer-term impact of this work has been felt on the national level, as local footballing unions have been given a stronger voice in matters of governance, and in ongoing projects seeking to counter sport's corruption, not only within football but beyond.
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Board-level governance in the UK sport industry
- A long-running programme of research led by Richard Tacon and Geoff Walters has worked to understand and improve board-level governance in sport organisations throughout the UK.
- In 2011, we published the first independent UK survey into board-level governance at national governing bodies of sport and then worked with the Sport and Recreation Alliance to develop the Voluntary Code of Good Governance for the Sport and Recreation Sector.
- In 2014, we were commissioned to evaluate the impact of the Code on sport organisations. We found that more than 80 organisations had signed up to the Code and we explored how these organisations had implemented it, what challenges they had faced, and how they felt it could be improved. This fed directly into the redevelopment of the Code.
- In 2018, working with commercial partner, Moore Stephens, we conducted a further national survey of sport organisations in the UK and published The State of Sports Governance.
- Throughout this period and right up to the present day, we have worked closely with key organisations in the sector, including Sport England, UK Sport and the Sport and Recreation Alliance, while maintaining our academic independence, in order to offer impartial advice on improving governance and embedding good practice.
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Financial Regulation in Professional Football
- The Birkbeck Sport Business Centre has a long record of impactful research on financial regulation in football, dating back to our State of the Game project (2001-2006): a comprehensive annual report, based on a detailed survey of all professional football clubs in England and Scotland.
- As well as conducting academic research into financial regulation in football, we have contributed written and oral evidence to a number of UK parliamentary inquiries between 2008 and 2020 on 'English Football and its Governance', 'Football Governance' and 'Sport in our Communities'.
- We continue to foster debate on these important issues, with academic research on the implications of the Independent Football Regulator and a series of public seminars and roundtable discussions on, among other things, Major League Soccer, football contracts and transfers, the football governance landscape and the history of women's football.