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PurposeEuropean elite professional basketball clubs do not pursue economic profit maximization per se, but they also seek to create social value for stakeholders due to the community outreach and the emotional bonding that such organizations create. Here the purpose of this paper is to use an accounting system called social accounting to measure the social effects of an organization's activity in an effort to monetize and describe the holistic value created by these sports organizations for their stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThis study applies an adapted, redesigned social accounting using SPOLY methodology to two elite basketball clubs in the ACB League (Spanish First Division), in order to monetize their social value. This methodology integrates non-market social value (value created for stakeholders without a financial transaction) with market social value (value created for stakeholders through market transactions), by monetizing validated dimensions for non-market and market social value obtained via information provided by clubs and their financial statements.FindingsClubs create a quantifiable social value for stakeholders through non-market and market dimensions. Value creation is not merely restricted to securing financial profit for shareholders but rather takes on another dimension in which the various stakeholders receive a holistic value from clubs.Originality/valueThis study provides evidence that clubs generate a quantifiable social value for their stakeholders that complements their economic value. This can help clubs to set up their own narrative concerning value creation for stakeholders and enable them to convey and manage the overall distributed value for stakeholders.

In recent decades, sport has become one of the most important social activities in the Western world, showing an important capacity to attract people from different backgrounds. In this sense, basketball clubs do not pursue economic profit maximization, but instead they need to be analyzed according to their capacity of creating both social and economic value. In this regard, social accounting, as a tool that measures social effects, is also applicable to a basketball club. For that end, in this paper we have applied part of a social accounting methodology, the SPOLY Methodology (Retolaza, San-Jose, & Ruiz-Roqueni, 2015), to two elite basketball clubs of the ACB League (Spanish First Division), in order to make further steps towards the future monetization of social value. For that purpose, in this paper we will identify different outputs and proxy-s corresponding to a range of specific social value variables established in the interviews with the different stakeholders that were identified in a standard stakeholder map for elite basketball clubs (Mendizabal et al., 2020). Subsequently, 13 sports management experts, both lecturers and practitioners, have validated the list of specific social value outputs and proxy-s identified. The findings support the application of the SPOLY Methodology in basketball clubs, and the process of adaptation and validation carried out throughout the paper. The results also open a way towards the application of SPOLY Methodology in other top-flight sport organizations.