Sports and Entrepreneurship :The Role of Entrepreneurial Leadership

Assignment Task

1. This lecture will explore the role of leaders in large sports organisations and consider their propensity to be entrepreneurial themselves or have an ability to create structures that foster a culture of intrapreneurship. It will invite you to consider whether an entrepreneurially-minded person would be motivated to lead a non-profit sports organisation which by its nature is typically risk-adverse.

2. According to Winand and Hoeber, the process of innovation needs leadership commitment in order to help create an entrepreneurial atmosphere (alongside the support and attitude of employees and volunteers). “It is important in the sport context, no matter whether professional or amateur, to rely on someone advocating for the need to innovate all along the process.”

Not only does sport leadership pose distinctive challenges compared with other types of leadership in other sectors (and therefore require different skills and qualities), but there are differences between leadership challenges depending on where the sports organisation is within the sports ecosystem and whether it is non-profit or a wholly commercial enterprise.  For example, an international federation versus a sports clothing manufacturer or sports broadcaster.

3. Using international federations as an example of non-profit sports organisations, they usually have to factor in working with a wider range of stakeholders than organisations in other industries. A leader of a non-profit sports organisation therefore needs to be well-versed in diplomacy, stakeholder management and collaborative practices rather than a leader in another sector who might be more driven by sales targets or share prices and be more customer-focused.

4. Leaders of an organising committee of mega events, such as the Olympic Games, are tasked with turning the equivalent of a small start-up into a very large company within a matter of months and therefore would benefit from different skills to a leader of an international federation for example.

Leaders of organising committees need to be authoritative and make decisions quickly when needed. One could argue that an entrepreneurial mindset could perhaps be more suited to the leadership within an organising committee than in an international federation.

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