The Role of Organizational Resources on the Profitability of Iranian Professional Football Clubs by Competitive Advantage Mediation

The aim of the present research was to investigate the role of organizational resources on the profitability of Iranian professional football clubs by competitive advantage mediation. The present research was descriptive-correlational and was conducted using mixed method. The statistical population in both qualitative and quantitative study included all the informant elites in football industry. In the qualitative phase, the data was saturated with 14 interviews and the samples were selected using stratified purposive sampling. For the quantitative phase purposive sampling was also used which contained 100 football experts and university professors of sport management. The data collection instrument in the quantitative phase was a researcher-made questionnaire whose content validity was confirmed by eight sport management experts. Also, Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability were used to determine the reliability of variables. Content analysis was used to analyze the interviews with experts and structural equation modeling using Smart PLS was applied to evaluate the model. The results showed that within the research framework, the organizational resources and competitive advantage had significant influence on the profitability of professional football clubs. The results also showed that the competitive advantage in this regard has the role of a minor mediator. It is then recommended that Iranian football clubs develop the status of the organizational resources and competitive advantage to reach profitability.