Presenting a Development Model of Sport Entrepreneurship in the Professional Clubs of Premier Football League: A Mixed Approach

Sport Entrepreneurship is one of the types of entrepreneurship which will directly or indirectly have great economic impacts. In the recent past years, the world of sports has witnessed changes in the sport economic policies which has made the need of sport industry towards reduction of dependence on the government budget more significant. In this regard, the present research has been conducted with the aim of presenting a development model of sport entrepreneurship in the professional clubs of premier football league. The research is practical in terms of purpose and exploratory mix in terms of research nature whereby in its qualitative section, it has presented a qualitative model by using thematic analysis techniques and based on the semi-structured interviews with 20 experts. In the quantitative section, the confirmatory-factor analysis was used by reliance on a questionnaire containing 40 realized questions to examine the validity of the  proposed qualitative model. Based on the thematic analysis, 40 basic themes, 10 organizing themes and 3 Overarching theme were identified by using the capacity of virtual media and having regard to the club departments and the trend of commercialization activity. Accordingly, the result of confirmatory-factor analysis techniques confirmed the bit of the three proposed models (overarching themes). By preparing the grounds for entrepreneurship development among the premier football league clubs, the research finding may, in addition to presenting diverse solutions for entrepreneurship creation, help the director of premier football league clubs in Iran to find solutions for their economic problem.