Volume 6, Issue 2

This article presents empirical findings on fifteen-year-old adolescent migrants’ involvement in sports clubs. Gender differences in sports club participation rates are analysed in detail and are linked to acculturation and structural integration patterns of the family. Results show that adolescent migrants constitute a very heterogeneous group: some are heavily involved in club-organised sports, while others typically remain very distant from sports clubs. In particular, girls’ access to sports clubs is strongly defined by their socio-economic living conditions as well as by their familial patterns of cultural adaptation.

Sports federations are regularly compelled to adapt their structures to new challenges. In a first step, the article presents sports federations as recursive interconnections of decisions. Taking organisational learning as a theoretical foundation, the article then discusses organisational change as a steering problem. Based on the results of an empirical case study, the analysis shows how sports federations cope with demands from their environment for organisational change. Further, change-oriented decisionmaking and steering processes are illustrated, and the relevant structural conditions and mechanisms are identified. The article closes with a reflexion on possible structural alternatives.

Collective emotions are a crucial tool used in sports-related event marketing to present brands, product lines, or even companies to prospective customers in an exciting, experiential way. However, there is a dearth of research in event marketing on how such collective emotions are generated in the context of sports marketing events. In this article, the phenomenon is analyzed from a system theoretical perspective. The different means of generating collective emotions are discussed with reference to processes of emotional communication. The analysis shows that event participants assume their own emotional states to exist for the other participants as well, and that a similarly perceived reality is imputed to the group considered as the community. The case study “Red Bull District Ride” subjects these theoretical considerations to empirical analysis.