Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Supporter Ownership As Entrepreneurship In American Soccer, Zachary T. Smith, R. Ethan Smith

Journal of Applied Sport Management

Entrepreneurship has been touted as a crucial lens for the future of sports management scholarship (Hardy, 1996; Ratten, 2011). Ratten (2011a) specifically proposed sport entrepreneurship “as a category of entrepreneurship that fosters economic development in the sports management field” (p. 60). Yet, to date, no scholarly literature has applied the sports-entrepreneurship lens to local football (soccer) clubs in the United States. Thus, the purpose of this article is to use the lens of sport entrepreneurship to introduce the phenomenon of supporter owned football clubs in the United States (U.S.). Through the course of this article, sport entrepreneurship will be used …