Identifying the Barriers of Electronic Marketing Development in Sport Industry

The purpose of this study was to identify barriers to the development of the electronic-marketing in the sports industry. The present study is a correlational and applied one. The statistical population consisted of 203 individuals including university faculty members, experts, managers of sport federations, members of sport federations board, and experts in e-marketing. The available non-random sampling method is also used in this research. Moreover, data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire that was extracted from two external articles. Besides, ten experts in sport management confirmed the validity of the questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was likewise calculated using Cronbach alphas test. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the questionnaire data. The results showed that sports marketing barriers were cultural and social, technical, legal and organizational, high cost, limitation of government support, lack of information, low skills of staff and finally security threats. It is suggested that the policy makers of the country's sports industry consider these barriers before developing strategies for developing e-marketing capabilities.