Using sporting migrants to build secondary sport: a 12 year case study of Czech basketball

Abstract

This study examines the effects of the sport migration that occurred over a 12 year period in the secondary sport of basketball in the Czech Republic, in terms of its effect on the popularity of the sport within the culture. The factors of fan attendance and youth membership are isolated and measured quantitatively, using multi-level analysis within teams, between teams and at a federation level. The study was carried out in order to measure the effect of the use of immigrant athletes from an individual team management perspective and from a league growth perspective. It was found that while foreigners displace national athletes, fans were attracted to the use of foreigners and youth were attracted to play the game. The use of foreigners had the most significant correlations at the between team level to home attendance and final placement in the league. Multi-level analysis was used to show that the use of foreigners can be a facilitator for federations and team management to build the popularity of secondary sports in a culture, with certain limitations. This quantitative study of a secondary sport is an addition to the majority of the literature on sport migration, which has been largely conducted on primary sports from a qualitative, sociological perspective.

A Systematic Review of Research on Sport Migration

“…Therefore, we could find studies with variated migrant origins and destinations, for example, Chinese athletes migrating to Australia (Hibbins, 2005), Lithuania to England (Evans & Piggott, 2016), and players from Taiwan moving to China (Jiang & Lee, 2016). This phenomenon occurs both in relation to athletes who leave countries such as Japan, Israel, Czech Republic, England, among others (Maguire, 1994;Falcous & Maguire, 2005;Shor & Galily, 2012;Chiba, 2013;Crossan, 2016) and those who enter the North American country (Chiba, 2012;Ryba et al, 2015;. From the data we present, we can indicate that the various migratory flux between different regions of the planet, even if starting from a limited cut of the analyzed research, shows that basketball is a global sport.…”

“…Regarding the impacts of migration, studies on sports focus on investigating the social changes in the migrant's country of destiny. As an example, we can highlight the studies that address how the incensement of foreigners influences the development of new talents in the receiving country, and the consequences reflected in the teams representing nations, as well as in the level of local competition (Crossan & Pecha, 2016;Travlos et al, 2017). The consequences on the migrant's own life were also classified in this topic, as is the case of studies by Njororai (2012) and Weedon (2012).…”