Getting a Grip on the Private Sport Sector in Europe

Abstract

Contemporary sport is organized and developed around public, voluntary and private sectors. Especially public and voluntary sport sectors have been approached in recent publications in Europe, where sport has traditionally been formed around state involvement and non-profit sport clubs. Private sport sector has received less attention in research because the field is multidimensional, fragment and difficult to define. Private sport sector comprises all profit making, commercial companies and other organisations and events that produce and sell sport goods and services with the aim of making monetary profit. The demand for sport-related products and services has been growing for many years. In addition, the public sector is at least partially withdrawing from sport service supply in many European countries. For these reasons, it is important to outline the private sport sector in Europe. This book covers detailed information about altogether 18 European countries’ (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and United Kingdom) private sport sectors. The book looks into the private sport sector’s position among the three sport sectors and outlines the structures, characteristics, most significant sport business fields, largest companies and major changes during the 2000’s. Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev. 2, 2008) is used as a basic statistical framework of this book and also other country-specific databases are utilized.