Identifying and Prioritizing Barriers to the Privatization of Soccer Industry in Iran Using Multi-Criteria Analysis and Copland's Approach

This study aims to recognize and ultimately prioritize barriers to the privatization of soccer industry in Iran using the integrated approach of multi-criteria analysis and Coplands; this investigation is also based on the opinions of experts and informing sport policy makers about strengths and weaknesses of the privatization of soccer industry in Iran as well as the barriers to do so. This research is a survey-based study and it follows a practical application. The data was quantitatively collected using a research-made questionnaire. After confirming the content validity of the questionnaire by the opinions of 10 experts in the field of sport management. Both descriptive and inferential data analyses were conducted. In this study, barriers to the privatization of soccer industry in Iran were initially identified and then ranked using various models of multi-attribute decision making (MADM). As the results obtained from the above-mentioned models did not conform to each other in some cases, an integrated model called Copland approach was used to reach a general consensus in ranking obstacles to the privatization of soccer clubs in Iran. Ranking results obtained from Copland technique revealed that the three main barriers to the privatization of soccer industry in Iran are lack of proper planning for privatization, lack of television broadcasting right for soccer industry in Iran and lack of appropriate infrastructure for privatization of soccer industry in this country, respectively. Therefore, paying attention to the existing obstacles can be very useful in the realization of soccer industry privatization in Iran.