Rethinking Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in Sport: A New Frontier for Entrepreneurial Behaviour Research
Despite its growing social, cultural and economic significance, sport remains comparatively underexplored within mainstream enterprise, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviour research (Ratten, 2011; Ratten, 2018; Ratten & Ferreira, 2017). Existing scholarship has largely approached sport through lenses of management, performance and governance, with limited sustained theoretical attention paid to sport as a context in which entrepreneurial behaviours emerge, evolve and are enacted.
Entrepreneurial activity in sport is shaped by a distinctive constellation of conditions, including high public visibility, identity-driven and often precarious careers, complex governance arrangements and increasing commercialisation (Slack et al., 2006; Sotiriadou, 2015; Fletcher et al., 2012; Aquilina, 2013; Stambulova & Wylleman, 2014; Naraine & Parent, 2017). Athletes, coaches, sport organisations and sport-adjacent industries operate within environments marked by short career horizons, institutional pressures and rapid technological change. These conditions simultaneously create opportunities for entrepreneurial action while exposing tensions and constraints that challenge entrepreneurship theories developed in more traditional organisational settings.
Recent years have seen growing scholarly interest in sport entrepreneurship, with studies examining entrepreneurial intentions, orientations and behaviours at the individual and organisational level (González-Serrano et al., 2020; Pellegrini et al., 2020), alongside emerging work on digital transformation, entrepreneurial mindsets, institutional influences and athlete capability development (Bouaita & Bouaita, 2025; McSweeney et al., 2025; Vidal-Vilaplana et al., 2025). However, this body of work remains fragmented across disciplinary silos and methodological approaches, limiting its cumulative theoretical contribution and its ability to meaningfully inform broader debates within entrepreneurial behaviour research (Hammerschmidt et al., 2022).
Taken together, these developments suggest that sport entrepreneurship research has reached a point of growing empirical richness, but has yet to achieve comparable conceptual integration. This special issue responds directly to long-standing calls for deeper theoretical and empirical development in the field (Ratten, 2011, 2018) by foregrounding sport as a site of entrepreneurial behaviour. It invites contributions that extend, challenge and refine existing theories of entrepreneurial behaviour, identity, opportunity recognition, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. In doing so, the issue seeks to move beyond predominantly descriptive accounts towards more integrated and theoretically informed explanations of entrepreneurship in complex, non-traditional contexts.
The special issue also speaks to pressing societal concerns. Sport intersects with health, education, employment, inclusion and social value creation, positioning entrepreneurship in sport as a domain with clear relevance for policy, practice and education. Research in this area has the potential to contribute to multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals, while informing the design of more inclusive, sustainable and impactful entrepreneurial interventions.
Through global and interdisciplinary contributions, this special issue aims to consolidate emerging scholarship, establish a coherent research agenda, and position sport as a meaningful and generative frontier for entrepreneurial behaviour research.
List of Topic Areas
- Entrepreneurial behaviour, identity and mindset in sport contexts
- Athlete entrepreneurship and post-sport career transitions
- Opportunity recognition and venture creation in sport ecosystems
- Digital entrepreneurship, sport technology and data-driven innovation
- Entrepreneurial orientation and intrapreneurship within sport organisations
- Sport entrepreneurship ecosystems, institutions and governance
- Social entrepreneurship, hybrid organisations and Sport for Development initiatives
- Innovation, resilience and adaptation in professional and grassroots sport
- Gender, inclusion and inequality in sport-based entrepreneurship
- Policy, education and support mechanisms for sport entrepreneurship.
Submission Information
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Key Dates
Closing date for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2026
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