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Byline: Carlos Pestana Barros, John Douvis This paper estimates changes in total productivity, breaking this down into technically efficient change and technological change by means of data envelopment analysis (DEA) applied to a representative sample of football clubs operating in the two small European countries: Portugal and Greece. The aim of this procedure is to seek out those best practices that will lead to improved performance in the market. The authors rank the football clubs according to their change in total productivity for the period 1999-2000 to 2002-2003, concluding that some clubs experienced productivity growth while others experienced a decrease in productivity. The implications arising from the study are considered in terms of managerial policy.

Streaming rights, both visual and audio, is the new hot product in the world's major sporting events organizers portfolio. Rapidly outplacing the traditional television broadcasters, global technology giants enter the live games and highlights streaming rights auctions and easily prevail against the sporting leagues long standing media partners. In close to 100 million populated and football passionate Germany, it was almost certain that global on line titans would bid for those rights. After decades of holding the domestic and international rights, television broadcasters found themselves out of the deal in certain packages. The trend is growing and for sure Amazon and Tencent are not going the last global tech conglomerates to acquire those rights in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indicative of those rights increasing use was that for the 2004-2007 period Premier League games, 3/Vodafone bought the rights for 11,5 million euro, while for the 2007-2010 period, BSkyB bought the rights for 12,4 million euro. In 2010, the Walt Disney Co's sports TV network ESPN has acquired the rights to screen Premier League highlights on UK mobile phones. The rights to all 380 Barclays Premier League matches were previously held by pay-TV rival British Sky Broadcasting. In 2013, News International, owned by the pay-TV broadcaster's controlling shareholder News Corporation, prevailed against BSkyB in the battle to acquire the Premier League exclusive rights to internet and mobile highlights for 30 million pounds, for three years. Sun, Times and Sunday Times publisher shut out fellow News Corp division as well as Yahoo, O2 and Perform Group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last years football clubs games broadcasting rights selling process, internet and mobile phone packages are included too. Internet is a widely accepted and useful mean of communication, something that was immediately recognized by the football authorities and clubs in all countries. Same ways, the gradually increased use of smart phones led to the inclusion of the mobile broadcasting rights in the total selling rights packages. The latest rights auction is of paramount importance, not only because the rights value will break a new record, but also because among the interested parties and bidders are some of the world's tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Netflix. Live streaming Premier League matches looks to be the next frontier and PL hope tech giants like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix will enter the auction and push the price of the UK package above its current standing of £5.14billion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined CSR evaluation issues regarding the effectiveness of CSR activities in Greek professional sport organizations. The initial results illustrated a general absence of CSR effectiveness evaluation. The findings of the study revealed that the majority of respondents have reported that in fact CSR performance is not measured mainly because of a lack of a methodology or a common framework. A major barrier to CSR assessment and evaluation practices is represented by the respondents' perceptions with respect to the nature of CSR. However, executives and managers mentioned a range of estimations to assess the impacts of their CSR actions, thus CSR effectiveness underlies subjective assessments of positive effect observations. Based on the results and the literature, the present study discusses the implications regarding the issue of CSR measurement and evaluation in Greek professional sport organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing financial value of sport sponsorship, the selection of a sponsorship partner and the development of the sponsorship deal are crucial issues for sports businesses. This study examines the sponsorship selection and development process between football teams and their sponsors. This study is exploratory. Nine case studies were conducted involving three professional, premier league football clubs and six sponsoring organizations, two major sponsors of each club. Results were analysed with content analysis. Findings indicate that the most important selection criteria used from both sides are fit in corporate values of the two partners; revenue opportunities, and possible image enhancement from the deal. Also, results show that both sides use a structured process for developing the sponsorship deal that includes 3 major stages, information collection; preparation and presentation of proposal, and negotiations and contract sign. Also, we find that the sport property only sends proposals whereas the sponsor only receives; the actors in each stage of the process vary, and the extent of the process is affected by the duration and quality of the relationship between the two partners. The study involves nine cases and has limited generalizability. Future research should substantiate results in other settings and using quantitative methods. The findings of this study help sport managers to structure and formalize their sport sponsorship selection and development process. This way sport entities will be able to select the best possible partners for sponsorship and exploit to the fullest extent the money involved from both sides of the partnership (sponsors and sponsees). For the first time a structured process for development of new sponsorship deals is designed. This can help sport managers in managing sponsorships effectively and fast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]