Research
Our Profile
The overarching core topic of our research and teaching is sport governance. As we approach the subject, this involves incentive systems, monitoring systems, and enforcement systems in sports as social, economic, and political phenomena. In this context, our normative attitude is that we wish to make scientific contributions toward a positive development and balanced diversity of sports. The focus is on organizational and control problems in resource allocation in sport between the state, the market, and the non-profit third sector of so-called "organized sports" in sports clubs and associations. In the empirical applications, we address questions of sports organization, sports policy, along with strategic sport management from popular and leisure sports to high-performance and professional sports. Under "Research and Publications", you will find a list of our topics of investigation.
For us, one cross-cutting issue in sport governance is event management for sporting events. In the context of the so-called "eventization" of society, sporting events are both an instrument and the result of sport development, which is also linked to economic and political interests. Managing sporting events represents a challenge for the sport system and increasingly requires an academic qualification. For this reason, certain aspects of Bayreuth's Sport, Business & Law programme were enhanced accordingly. In research, the focus is on the recording and governing socio-economic effects of large sporting events.
Our Research Approach
Our research approach is rooted in basic theories of modern microeconomics (mainly institutional economics) and finance (state economics). Actual market imperfections that are characteristic of most sport markets and which require suitable regulation and governance systems to increase efficiency and distributive justice with regard to resource allocation always take centre stage in the study design. Depending on the object of investigation in sports, management, social, and political economics can be a useful analysis concept that also takes into account constructs from business administration and/or the social sciences. From these heterodox, theoretical relationships, we derive our problem-specific empirical modelling that is tested econometrically on survey data (often with a high data volume) or secondary data sets we create ourselves. Our approach includes mixed method design, in which expert interviews are combined with quantitative assessments, or simulation calculations for prognosis studies (e.g. cost-benefit analyses or financial risk analyses). Examples of applications of this approach and conceptual contributions or summaries that rest on it can be found under "Research Projects and Publications".