Corporate social responsibility within professional football clubs: an international multiple case study.

Abstract

Professional football clubs are progressively increasing their level of complexity in terms of resources, organization and strategies. As a result football management has started to gain more attention by scholars. Particularly, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) strategies for professional football clubs, usually applied by standard enterprises, are now applied by professional football clubs as well. There is an ongoing discussion on how the CSR concept could be applied most efficiently by professional football clubs worldwide. By now, the CSR values and potential still need to be properly assessed in the football industry. The present study aims at investigating how ‘Corporate social responsibility’ is actually integrated within professional football clubs. Applying a multiple case study, five re-known European professional football clubs (such as FC Internazionale Milano, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, SL Benfica, IFK Göteborg, and Hapoel Tel-Aviv FC) have been included in the study. How is CSR integrated and what challenges are faced by professional football clubs when implementing CSR activities? By conducting an in-depth literature review and interviewing different managers of the selected clubs, the research questions have been assessed. The CSR concept seems to be strictly linked with other concepts such as sustainability, social awareness, but it could also have a strategic orientation towards the increase of benefits and revenues for professional football clubs. All the interviewees are aligned in recognizing the high educational value of their CSR strategies. In complete agreement with previous findings, the present study has identified two main drivers behind CSR engagement: external pressure and internal vision. By adopting CSR strategies, professional football clubs face implications such as the need of organizational adaptations. Existing theories for CSR development may need to be refined and questions regarding the risks linked with the establishment of a separate entity for delivering CSR activities remain still open.