Keywords

1 Introduction

Both at the national and international levels, there has been growing recognition from governments, NGOs and development organisations of the potential for sport to contribute to sustainable socio-economic development. Most significantly, the UN’s Agenda 2030 explicitly recognise the potential of sport to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (Wespi et al., 2015). This recognition comes from two fronts. First, there is an understanding that sport provides a practical, physical and interactive setting that allows for experiential learning and the development of knowledge, attitudes and skills. Indeed, due to its widespread appeal as a “shared cultural manifestation”, relatively low cost and interactive nature, sport has been presented as a vehicle to support development across a wide range of areas (Beutler, 2008; Cardenas, 2013). In particular, participation in sport-based social interventions or experience as an athlete has been connected to a wide range of attitudes or skills such as self-esteem, discipline, resilience, leadership, decision-making or teamwork (Moustakas & Kalina, 2021; Steinbrink et al., 2020; Weiss et al., 2013; Williams et al., 2022).

Second, the sport industry presents significant potential for economic growth and development. It is one of the fastest-growing industries globally, encompasses a broad range of sub-sectors and connects to several other industries (Ratten, 2018). Worldwide, the sport industry is valued at over 500 billion USD (The Business Research Company, 2020), and many countries, such as Indonesia or Botswana, have identified sport as a prime area for economic diversification and growth (Moustakas & Işık, 2020; Putri & Moustakas, 2022). As such, business literature highlights the need for entrepreneurship to support the overall growth and development of the sport sector itself (Ratten, 2018).

Likewise, entrepreneurship is widely considered an essential engine of societal and economic growth (Gries & Naudé, 2010; Weiss et al., 2013). The United Nations (UN) recognises that entrepreneurship can contribute by “creating jobs and driving economic growth and innovation, fostering local economic development, improving social conditions and contributing to addressing environmental challenges”. Given the importance of entrepreneurship as a vehicle for growth and the perceived developmental potential of sport, it is no surprise that a growing number of programmes have attempted to use sport as a vehicle to support entrepreneurial development and education in their communities. Numerous NGOs that work at the intersection of sport, social development and entrepreneurship have emerged. These include the likes of Sport dans la Ville, which combines practical sport activities, institutional networks and individual support to develop entrepreneurs across France (Entrepreneurs dans la ville, 2021). Elsewhere, the Yunus Sports Hub provides incubation, training and events to support socially oriented sport businesses (Yunus Sports Hub, 2021).

Correspondingly, numerous manuals and curricula have emerged to formalise the connections between sport and entrepreneurship and specifically outline how sport itself can be used as a driver of entrepreneurial education. These include manuals from business, civil society and governmental agencies alike, such as the Swiss Academy for Development (Wespi et al., 2015), Standard Chartered (Standard Chartered, 2020) or Kick for Life (Fleming & Braun, 2020). Broadly speaking, these manuals propose a variety of adapted games and sport activities that provide opportunities for experiential learning and support the development of several entrepreneurship-related life skills.

Yet, despite the growing connection between sport and entrepreneurship education, the nascent nature of this area leaves us with gaps in our knowledge and understanding, especially as it concerns the intersection between sport and entrepreneurship education outside of the higher education context. As other authors have noted, there is a need for more research around “how sport educators are effectively utilising entrepreneurship” (Ratten & Jones, 2018) and the “role sport entrepreneurship education plays in society” (Ratten & Thukral, 2020). In this chapter, we aim to contribute to these discussions by outlining three of the main approaches to entrepreneurship education in sport. In doing so, we hope to provide a basis for future research and development of approaches within sport entrepreneurship education.

The approaches we are documenting here are located outside the higher education sector and primarily engage youth as their primary target audience. As such, we are mapping a part of the widening “scope of entrepreneurship education” (Kuckertz, 2013). To do so, we will focus on the pedagogical and programmatic components of these approaches, their benefits and their challenges. In particular, we are informed by the teaching models presented by authors such as Fayolle and Gailly (Fayolle & Gailly, 2008) or, later, Maritz and Brown (Maritz & Brown, 2013), as well as the framework of entrepreneurship competencies developed by Lackeus (Lackéus, 2014) and the assessment types identified by Block and Stumpf (Block & Stumpf, 1990).

Though this chapter is discursive in nature, our findings and observations are supported by our extensive experience in the field, academic literature and programme materials. Moving forward, we will first present the three main approaches to entrepreneurship education in and through sport and briefly discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent to each. Afterwards, we will conclude by proposing some overarching recommendations regarding how practice and research can help maximise the potential of using sport for entrepreneurship education and development.

2 Approaches to Entrepreneurship Education in and Through Sport

There are subtle yet fundamental differences in terms of how organisations use sport to contribute to or promote entrepreneurship education. The following categorisation of approaches does not claim to be comprehensive, nor does it seek to promote one approach over the other. Rather, this categorisation aims to highlight the range of approaches that exist. The categories have been identified based on trends that we have observed through our involvement as researchers and practitioners in the field of sport for development (SFD). The first approach is attracting youth to entrepreneurial education through sport. The second is developing entrepreneurial skills through sport-based experiential learning activities. The third is providing specialised training for young people to become sport entrepreneurs. For each of the approaches, we provide an overview, including the context, objective(s), audience(s), assessment, content, pedagogies and outcomes, as well as the benefits and challenges of each approach.

2.1 Parallel Programming

Arguably the most intuitive and easy-to-understand approach, parallel programming uses sport’s appeal to attract young people to entrepreneurial education. In this approach, a sport programme is made available to young people alongside an entrepreneurship education programme. Here, sport is essentially used as a “hook” in order to “use the momentum in and around sport as a strategic vehicle to communicate, implement, and achieve nonsport development goals” (Schulenkorf et al., 2016). This approach is relatively easy to establish within organisations as the need for specialised training is relatively low compared to the second and third approaches. In short, access to sport is provided, ideally supervised or taught by someone with a background in sport or physical education, in addition to entrepreneurship education. Through this, young people gain access to both entrepreneurship education and sport programming, both of which can significantly contribute to the holistic development of young people. This approach is also intuitive and, therefore, easy for funders and programme evaluators to understand. Further, this approach can help increase the accessibility and attractiveness of entrepreneurship, which can be especially valuable in contexts where high youth unemployment makes entrepreneurship or self-employment a necessity. Table 1 provides an overview for the model of parallel programming approaches.

Table 1 Model for parallel programming approaches
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The French NGO Sport dans la Ville provides a good example of this approach through its Entrepreneurs dans la Ville programme. From a programmatic perspective, the sport and entrepreneurship programmes are separate, but the sport programme is used as a hook to attract youth towards the entrepreneurship programme. The entrepreneurship programme itself lasts for 5 months and supports disadvantaged young people in setting up their own companies. To enter into the programme, prospective participants must first pitch their business ideas to Sport dans la Ville, and only a limited number of applicants are selected (Entrepreneurs dans la ville, 2021; Forrest & González-Vallés, 2017). These pitches, however, do not need to be explicitly connected to sport. Once in the programme, participants are provided education on, amongst others, marketing, opportunity and resource skills such as financial management, communication and business planning.

Another example of this approach is the Agora Koumassi project where a multisport complex was built in a populated neighbourhood of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. NGOs and companies can rent out the sport facilities as well as indoor meeting spaces built out of old shipping containers, where they can host events or facilitate training opportunities for young people. One such opportunity is an entrepreneurial incubation programme offered through a collaboration between the NGOs MakeSense and the Yunus Sports Hub (Agora Koumassi, 2021; make sense, 2021; Yunus Sports Hub, 2021). Again here, the sport offer is used as a hook to raise awareness and participation in the entrepreneurship programme. Overall, within this approach, assessment takes place through a mix of methods, including examinations, projects or presentations. Longitudinal surveys may also be used to evaluate certain attitudes or overall entrepreneurial intentions.

Though the attractiveness and simplicity of this approach are appealing, organisations may find it challenging to make the programmatic connection between the entrepreneurship and sport programmes. What connects the two programmes in terms of learning objectives/outcomes? How does one contribute to the other? If these questions are not appropriately resolved, the programme may not be perceived as credible, and numerous opportunities for synergies may be missed. At a minimum, such programmes must actively engage with the local start-up and business communities to ensure that the local entrepreneurship community supports their programmes and participants. Relatedly, sport-focused programmes that aim to launch an entrepreneurship component may not always have the required know-how or experience to design, or deliver, an entrepreneurship programme. New or emerging programmes, especially, need substantial input from educators, entrepreneurs, industry leaders and sport personalities. Recruiting these resource persons could be time-consuming and difficult if access to the right networks is limited.

Finally, another challenge is ensuring that the sport programme maintains a development focus and not a “win-at-all-cost” mentality. Indeed, from an educational perspective, the added value of the sport programme would be diminished if it is used as a vector for unhealthy attitudes and behaviour.

2.2 Sport-Based Experiential Learning

This is one of the most widely used approaches in the field of sport for development. It focuses on integrating sport-based experiential learning activities designed to develop entrepreneurship skills. This approach reinforces the learning objectives of entrepreneurship education and can be easily integrated into an entrepreneurship education programme. It effectively develops transversal entrepreneurial skills and can help make the connection between those skills and entrepreneurship (i.e. during the discussion time of the activities). It also provides facilitators, teachers and social workers with a new and engaging teaching method.

This approach is used by many SFD NGOs and development organisations and agencies, such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Specific examples of sport for entrepreneurship curricula have been developed by the Swiss Academy for Development (Wespi et al., 2015), Kick for Trade (Fleming & Braun, 2020) or Standard Chartered (Standard Chartered, 2020). Thus, these activities often occur in humanitarian, development or NGO settings and actively seek to develop entrepreneurship-related attitudes and skills such as self-efficacy, ambiguity tolerance, proactiveness and interpersonal skills. These curricula generally rely on modified sport activities to deliver experiential learning through discussion, interactive or physical activities and reflection. For instance, the Kick for Trade manual divides each session into three parts. The first part features energisers to introduce the skill addressed by the session. The second part includes a football match that adopts specific rules or conditions that allow the development of the targeted skill (e.g. changing rules, number of players, size of the pitch, etc.). Finally, the last part is dedicated to reflections that allow participants to think about what was learned and how this connects to entrepreneurship in their communities (Fleming & Braun, 2020). Thus, these sport-based approaches provide the hands-on, group-oriented, reflection-driven learning approach often recommended in entrepreneurship education (Lackéus, 2014). As these programmes tend to focus primarily on attitudes and skills, however, assessment tends to be limited to longitudinal surveys or informal observations meant to measure changes in participants’ perceptions of their attitudes and skills.

As with the first approach, this approach is of particular interest to many organisations looking to complement existing methods and curricula. Indeed, this approach promises to prepare young people to integrate into the working world by developing their entrepreneurship attitudes and skills. This approach can also be implemented in collaboration with sport clubs and associations that are interested in promoting entrepreneurship skills and the employability of young people through sport. However, this requires a specialised curriculum as well as trained facilitators who are familiar with the SFD pedagogy and able to ensure that the activities make a meaningful contribution to developing entrepreneurial skills. This requires trained educators with an extensive repertoire of activities to ensure that the facilitators do not overuse the same activities.

Furthermore, many of these manuals or curricula emphasise a narrow set of attitudes, interpersonal and strategic skills like self-efficacy or perseverance (Fleming & Braun, 2020). Other core competencies associated with entrepreneurship education, such as marketing skills, resource skills or basic knowledge of accounting, finance and technology (i.e. declarative skills) (Kuckertz, 2013; Lackéus, 2014), are absent. As such, programmes delivering these sport-based learning approaches must also offer holistic entrepreneurial education opportunities that touch on the wide range of competencies required for successful entrepreneurship. Otherwise, the prospects of developing successful entrepreneurs will remain limited. Table 2 provides an overview of the model for sport-based experiential learning approaches.

Table 2 Model for sport-based experiential learning approaches
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2.3 Specialised Sport Entrepreneurship Education

The final approach seeks to provide specialised entrepreneurship training to future sport entrepreneurs. This approach targets youth, including NEETs or former sportspeople, who would like to seize the economic opportunities generated by the sport industry. Here, sport may be a hook insofar as the sport sector is attractive to many individuals, but unlike the first approach, the goal is to foster sector-specific entrepreneurship. For instance, entrepreneurs could initiate ventures around sport media, sport event management, personal training, talent identification and more.

The most significant benefit of this approach is that young people can seize the largely underexploited economic opportunities generated by the sport industry. This is especially relevant in the Global South, where the sport industry is undergoing massive transformation thanks to investments from governments, sport federations and former professional athletes. As noted above, many countries are increasingly focusing on sport as a vector for economic development (Moustakas & Işık, 2020; Putri & Moustakas, 2022). Likewise, many recent initiatives are attempting to capitalise on the entrepreneurship potential of athletes (FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences, 2017; International Olympic Committee, 2021; Tw1n, 2019). Tapping into this entrepreneurial potential may be especially important in countries with high youth unemployment and limited formal employment opportunities. However, to achieve this potential, sport entrepreneurship education programmes must help develop concrete business ideas and build a conducive environment to foster cooperation with and within the sport sector (Ratten & Jones, 2018).

A notable example of such a programme comes from TIBU in Morocco. Initially a basketball-focused NGO, the organisation has slowly integrated sport employability and entrepreneurship education into its programming over the last 5 years. Through a multifaceted programme that includes entrepreneurship workshops, practical sport experiences and networking with local sport sector actors, TIBU aims to (re)integrate Moroccan youth into the workforce via employment or entrepreneurial activities (TIBU, 2020; TIBU, 2021). Through this programme, participating youth obtain a 1-year scholarship to partake in courses on sport-specific topics such as coaching, sport business and sport policy and more general areas such as finance, communication and language. Prospective entrepreneurs emerging from this can then apply for the Sports Corners programme, whereby these young entrepreneurs can participate in a 6-month incubation programme and receive support from mentors (Orange Corners, 2022). Much like the first approach, assessments in this approach can take a variety of formats to match the individual content delivered.

However, offering relevant, specialised training for the sport sector can present significant challenges to organisations. In many emerging countries, the sport sector remains poorly mapped out, and many parts of the sector are underexploited. Thus, finding knowledge and relevant expertise in those areas may be challenging, and understanding market needs or gaps may be complex. Indeed, in countries such as Indonesia or Botswana, the sport industry remains poorly mapped out, and there is limited policy to support its growth (Moustakas & Işık, 2020; Putri & Moustakas, 2022). Interestingly, the European Commission is conducting a study of sectors connected to the sport industry in Senegal in the context of the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Dakar (2026). The objective of this study is to understand better the sectors that are connected to the sport industry in Senegal and to evaluate how a sporting event, such as the YOG, could be used to stimulate those sectors. Studies such as this should be conducted to provide vital information regarding the status of the sport sector and connected industries. Table 3 provides an overview of the model for specialised sport entrepreneurship approaches.

Table 3 Model for specialised sport entrepreneurship approaches
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3 Discussion and Future Directions

We have outlined what we see as the three main approaches for entrepreneurship education within sport. Sport is an attractive and growing sector that offers opportunities for both skill development and economic growth. As we have noted, there is a growing body of evidence that pedagogically adapted sport programmes can support the development of attitudes and skills related to success in entrepreneurial ventures (Lackéus, 2014; Williams et al., 2022). Likewise, we see that the sport industry is growing in many parts of the world and presents opportunities for economic diversification. Yet, these converging trends alone are not enough to guarantee the success of these entrepreneurship education approaches. Numerous areas require further development and research. Above, we have discussed the benefits and challenges associated with each approach. To conclude, we would like to offer three final recommendations for the development of sport entrepreneurship education as a whole.

First and foremost, there is a need to disentangle employability promotion and entrepreneurship education. Many of the programmes or curricula we have mentioned mix both, and there is a real risk that this sidelines entrepreneurship or conflates it with employability. Especially in countries with large informal sectors or high youth unemployment, such as Tunisia, Jordan or South Africa (World Bank, 2021), entrepreneurship education may be a much more relevant and attractive offer. Clearly focusing on entrepreneurship would also allow programmes, especially those using the experiential learning approach, to more finely address the attitudes, skills and knowledge required for successful entrepreneurship. Indeed, whereas employability programmes may focus on specific qualifications, tools or professional skills, entrepreneurship education must instead develop a range of flexible and suitable competencies (Kuckertz, 2013; et al., 2008).

Second, there remains a glaring lack of research and assessment of entrepreneurship education in and through sport. Though there is some work, it focuses on sport entrepreneurship education within higher education (Ansari et al., 2020; González-Serrano et al., 2017) or related to sport employability programmes within SFD (Coalter et al., 2020; Spaaij et al., 2013). There is a need to explore the intersection between sport and entrepreneurship education in more detail both within and, especially, beyond the higher education context. Researching the impact of individual programmes and the overall approaches described here is paramount to fully understand the potential and limitations of sport within entrepreneurship education. In particular, most research or assessment occurs during or shortly after the programmes, and there remain significant gaps in exploring the sustainability of programme outcomes.

Finally, there is a need for a thorough understanding of the status and needs of the sport sector as well as opportunities within connected sectors. As highlighted above, such sectoral mapping has been identified as a critical step for numerous countries, including Senegal and Indonesia, and is essential to target entrepreneurship education programmes and develop relevant business ideas effectively. However, the value of such mapping extends to all of the approaches presented here. For parallel programming and sport-focused programmes, a greater understanding of the sector would allow practitioners to establish partnerships with companies that could enhance the effectiveness of their sport and sport entrepreneurship activities.

In the end, though, no matter the approach or geographic context, we strongly encourage programmes, researchers and funders to support regular participant engagement, offer follow-up support services and avoid short or one-time events. Entrepreneurship, like the broader processes behind development, is, after all, a lifelong endeavour.