Marketing and Managing Sport for a Resilient Society in a Turbulent Age

About this Research Topic

Background

Sport and related leisure, recreation, event, and tourism industry has experienced a significant booming along with the fast-economic growth rate in various economies such as Spain, New Zealand, and China in the last few decades. New sport phenomena and related topics have appeared, including sport fans sport themed travelling, overseas sport education, regional and local grass-root and social sport development, city/place branding via sports (e.g., marathon), mega sport event marketing and management (e.g., the Beijing Winter Olympic Games), e-sport consumption and sport e-consumption, etc. However, marketing and management of such sport-related causes have been significantly disrupted by various incidents including of natural disasters e.g. Christchurch earthquakes, political instability and wars, terrorism, pandemic e.g. the COVID pandemic, etc. The urgent question is how to market and manage sport in light of these challenges, fulfilling the societal function of sports for a resilient community and society.

The purpose of this special issue is to showcase cutting-edge, innovative, and forward-thinking exemplars of social, marketing, and management studies on innovations around (re)developing sport, in the context of addressing various challenges by natural disasters, political instability and wars, terrorism, pandemic, etc. The special issue will be focusing on innovations but also broadly positioned so as to attract a range of works related to sport marketing and management, and cover areas of grass-root sports, professional sports, not-for-profit sport organization, mega sport events, sport stakeholders, sport spectatorship and participation, e-sports, sport tourism, sport recreation, technological adoption in sports, etc. Related disciplines include social marketing, social media marketing, tourism marketing and management, big data analysis, project management, and green marketing through to public biosecurity issues such as COVID-19 pandemic. A specific sub-focus would be the relationship of sport with urban places and local communities, which may also cover relevant areas of leisure, recreation, and tourism. TThis special issue aims at gathering innovations in thoughts, strategies, and practices in the global sports industry, so as to contribute to the future development of sport toward a sustainable sport ecosystem globally.

This special issue calls for various forms of papers—empirical, theoretical, methodological, conceptual (e.g., potential new models), and review-based—on topics including but not limited to:
- Philosophical innovative (re)foundations and paradigms for sport marketing and management;
- Innovative marketing and management of grass-root sports in a post-COVID reality;
- Professional sports and its stakeholder management for a viable and sustainable framework;
- Innovative social marketing via sport spectatorship and participation;
- Mega-event hosting and impacts to local community;
- Social sport groups and activities for a mental and physical healthy lifestyle;
- Innovative interdisciplinary research where sports are integrated with, for example, leisure, recreation, tourism, and events;
- Sport tourism from the perspectives of physiology, geography, economics, and/or anthropology;
- Big data studies of sports.

Keywords: sport marketing, sport tourism, mega-sport events, sport education, sport fandom, e-sports, sport recreation, sport stakeholders, technological adoption

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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