How The Economy Affects Professional Sports

The field of sports has long been considered an agent to augment nationalism, to provide health benefits, and for social and economic development. Thus, the governments have adopted a more interventionist approach by enacting policies and legislation to support, monitor and regulate the activities of sport organisations, particularly in countries with a community sports club-type systems such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (Maguire, 79).

Most governments support the elite educational institutions to promote the development of athletes for national and international competition, to provide funding for national sport organisations (NSO), an organisation supporting sports bid for major events and assisting in the construction of the main stadiums. In exchange for this support, governments try to influence the sports organisations to recruit more participants at the local level, provide a variety of services and disadvantaged in society, or sporting adopt appropriate policies in the field of alcohol and drugs, gambling, and general health promotion messages (Dzharvi , 48). Governments also regulate the activities of sports organisations on the basis of legislation and licensing in such areas as labor relations and employment law, discrimination, taxation and corporate governance.

Influence of the public policy in the field of sports organisations primarily in the nonprofit sector of sport, which is usually referred to as community sport. NSO, are becoming more dependent on federal government funding, particularly in Olympic sports, as governments seek to increase the efficiency of national Olympic teams and athletes in other elite sports competitions. This increased funding has led to the most NSO using a specialised staff to manage high-performance programs, specialist trainers and other professionals in the field of sports nutrition, biomechanics, exercise physiology, sports psychology, and vocational training (Ingham, 62).

This emphasis on elite sport is often justified, because the elite element provides role models and market places for the population and, thus, control the level of mass participation in sport. Sports organisations, therefore, must strive to increase the number and variety of sporting events and formats of elite competition and created a very close of the market of elite sport for sponsors and consumers. Some critics argue that the increase in expenditure on elite sport was to the detriment and at the community level sport. Available data indicate that the system of the sporting community in many countries is under pressure due to insufficient investment in the creation and maintenance of community sports facilities, reducing the pool of committed volunteers to manage the delivery of sport, and the reluctance of individuals to undertake such roles as referees and managers voluntary sports organisations because of poor participant and spectator behavior and the threat of litigation from the parties (Giulianotti, 37).

Sports organisations are also subject to institutional pressures to regulate and manage themselves in accordance with guidelines developed by government agencies, such as the Australian Sports Commission (ASC), Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) and Sport England. These guiding principles and specific rules for financing imposes certain restrictions on working in sports organisations, resulting in ...