Sports Management Commons^™

What Do Publicly-Available Soccer Match Data Actually Tell Us?, Chester S. Labedz Jr., Robert Schumaker

Communications of the IIMA

Media analyses of soccer statistics and game play has accelerated in recent years. This is evident in visual displays of ball and player tracking, average player locations and distances they run. These media depictions aim to be attractive, entertaining and informative for viewers. But are such statistics predictive of goal scoring and match outcome? To answer this question we review the sixty-four matches of the 2014 World Cup and examine nine common match statistics, and others, to evaluate their predictive value for goal production and match outcome.

Wearable Gps Devices In A British Elite Soccer Academy Setting: A Foucauldian Disciplinary Analysis Of Player Development And Experience, Luke Jones

Journal of Athlete Development and Experience

Conventional wisdom dictates that the use of GPS surveillance technology in sport to assist athletic performance is an overwhelminglypositive phenomenon. Specifically, the health and performance benefits of the application of GPS and surveillance technologies have been well documented across a range of field sports. Previous research into the developmental implications of GPS surveillance in professional rugby league (Jones, Marshall, & Denison, 2016) has identified that there are some significant unintended consequencesof their use for elite athletes. We utilised the disciplinary analysis of Foucault to investigate the experiences of academy soccer playersin relation to wearable GPS technology. Five academy players took …

Confederation Of African Football, Michael Goldman, Mlondi Mashinini

Sport Management

Representatives of Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Africa officially established the Confederation of African Football (CAF, or the Confederation Africaine de Football) on February 8, 1957, in Khartoum, Sudan. During the subsequent 60-year development of Africa’s administrative and controlling body, CAF grew into the biggest of the six continental federations of FIFA. By 2018, CAF counted 56 associations as full or associate members, representing over 25% of FIFA’s 211 associations, although no African team had reached the semi-final stage of the men’s FIFA World Cup as yet.

This chapter documents the business and management research related to CAF, thereby providing …

Managing The Business Of Soccer: A Conceptual Framework, Sten Söderman, James Santomier

WCBT Faculty Publications

In recent years soccer (i.e., European football) has experienced rapid globalization, primarily due to increased integration of sponsorship agreements, foreign investment, private equity, digital media technologies and effective executive leadership. Manchester United, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, and other high-level European soccer clubs are now owned or managed by investors, with the ostensible objective of generating ancillary benefits or significant profits. Historically, however, the ownership of unprofitable and often relegated soccer clubs was overwhelmingly in the hands of wealthy sport enthusiasts as sole proprietors. Given the recent and often dramatic changes in the business of soccer, the primary purpose of this chapter …