Research and consultancy
Members of the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre have been undertaking research and consultancy in the sport industry since 1999. Our programme of research began with a focus on the governance and regulation of football and has since expanded to the wider sport industry, including the governance of sport federations, sport policy and politics, the economics and design of sport competitions, sport labour markets and the wider socio-economic aspects of sport.
Members of the Centre regularly publish in leading international journals, as well as in books, industry reports, newspapers, magazines and blogs.
Research themes
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Sport Governance and Policy
- Our research on governance began with a focus on football. In 1998 and 1999, Birkbeck hosted two major international conferences on football, which led to two edited collections, A Game of Two Halves? and Football in the Digital Age. We subsequently produced a highly influential annual report on governance and regulation in football, entitled State of the Game, which ran from 2001 to 2006. We have continued to publish widely on football right up to the present day, looking at, among other things, governance at FC Barcelona, a history of regulation in English football, sustainable governance in Italian football and football club owner ambitions in the English Premier League.
- Since the early 2000s, we have also looked at governance and policy across the sport sector, producing influential industry reports in 2010, 2011 and 2018. We have conducted in-depth case study research with boards of sport organisations, publishing articles on board roles, accountability and codification, as well as other aspects of sport policy and politics, such as stadium-led regeneration, athlete activism and corruption in Italian football. We continue to research actively in this area and our research has been recognised for its impact.
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Sport Economics and Competition Design
- We have a long history of conducting high-level research on sport economics and competition design. We have published a number of edited book collections, as well as a series of articles and working papers on, for example, financial performance in English football, financial doping and financial fair play in European football and contractual issues in the National Hockey League.
- In examining these topics, we have focused particularly on issues of competitive balance, fairness and ethics, looking at, among other things, gambling in professional sport and football club ownership and sporting ambition. Recently, members of the Centre have also examined the interests of television viewers and match-going fans around the men’s UEFA Champions League and the role of media exposure on prioritising revenue vs. on-field performance.
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Sport Labour Markets
- In May 2008, the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre hosted the Feet-Drain Conference to discuss the key issues and challenges of labour migration in European football. Members of the Centre have since published a series of articles on this topic, looking at, among other things, remuneration of football players, the impact of their performance and the cultural diversity of teams.
- Birkbeck was the first institution to run a course on sport labour markets, which has run since 2015. We published a major book on football agents, Sports Agents and Labour Markets: Evidence from World Football, examining the main features of the profession, and we continue to conduct high-level, impactful research on this topic, including publications on the nationality wage premium in European football and the hiring of talent for sporting success and media exposure.
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Sport and Wider Society
- The Birkbeck Sport Business Centre has a rich history of examining sport in its wider social context. For example, members have published influential books on sport and social capital and sport and corporate social responsibility and a series of articles on voluntary sports clubs, sport volunteers, stakeholder management in the UK football industry and the accessibility of sport stadia for people with disabilities.
- This research is multi-stranded and covers a wide range of topics, from how best to evaluate sport-based social programmes to gentrification around stadium-led regeneration projects and from fantasy sport to female youth sport participation and gender role beliefs. We continue to be active in this area and see our role as setting the business of sport in its wider socio-economic context.
Research Publications
Access a full list of the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre's publications. These are held in Birkbeck’s online repository and arranged by year of publication.