Introduction

The sport industry in growing economies: critical issues and challenges

“…In the twenty-first century, sport is an integral part of an increasingly global sport-media-tourism complex that is vastly uneven within and between societies (Nauright, 2015). While resistance to the global expansion and consolidation of media and event driven sport is possible, and indeed at times successful, it is clear that the international organization and presentation of sport serves the interests of global, national, and local elites – the cosmopolitans – while sport spectators are increasingly removed from the sporting product whether that is caused by spatial relocation driven by the need for newly constructed sporting spaces for major events, relocation of teams to larger cities, increasing continentalization of competitions, or new mediated sport forms (Nauright, 2015; Zhang, Huang and Wang, 2017).…”

“…wealth, status, and stardom). They are in particular facing challenges and dilemmas in protecting local and national sport interests vs generating consumer sport interests through imported sport products, investment in exporting vs investment in inventing and developing sport products, balancing between importing talents (athletes and coach) vs developing talents, balancing between supporting commercial sports vs developing Olympic sports with medal potentials, and dealing with anxieties and struggles between local administrative control vs the sense of loss of control (Zhang, Huang and Wang, 2017; Zhang, Pitts and Kim, 2017).…”

Challenges and opportunities of contemporary sport marketing

“…Researchers have suggested that the sport industry is different from mainstream business sectors and that sport managers and marketers need to have an understanding of the unique dimensions when developing and implementing marketing plans (Mullin et al, 2014;Zhang, 2015;Zhang et al 2017). Andrew et al (2021) highlighted the need for researchers to identify and challenge theoretical concepts and how they need to be modified for the sport context.…”