Tacit knowledge is considered a source of competitive advantage for organizations. The present paper used an international esports competition—the Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS)—to determine the contexts in which shared tacit knowledge aids performance. We used censored-panel-data tobit models to analyze a sample of 4277 observations relating to teams that qualified for the European final of the 2022 FNCS Duo tournament. The tournament format allowed us to determine whether the nature (degree of coordination required) and context (pressure on the teams, strength of the competition) of a task modify the effect of tacit knowledge on team performance. Shared tacit knowledge had a positive effect on overall team performance but a negative effect on individual tasks such as kills. In addition, the positive link between shared tacit knowledge and team performance became weaker as the pressure and stakes of the competition increased. Variables such as player talent were more important than tacit knowledge in high-pressure, high-stakes situations. Results showed that several factors impact tacit knowledge’s effect on organizational performance. These factors include the pressure and stakes of the context in which a task is carried out and the degree of coordination a task requires. Esports is a valuable new setting in which to test hypotheses relating to organizational performance, as it provides new and precise ways of controlling for the effects of variables such as individual talent.

Several bankruptcies have occurred in sports media related to overinvestment in football. This research aims to contribute to the extension of the literature on such failures through a further study of business models. This article consists of a case study about Mediapro's arrival in the French sports broadcasting rights market and its rapid downfall. The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of winner's curse and business model, and a detailed review of cases of bankruptcy in sports media. The results of this study demonstrate that the winner's curse is not only the result of the auction process but also the consequence of an unsustainable business model.

Research Question Esports are drawing more and more interest from the public and are thus raising new economic stakes. This paper aims to characterize the current economic situation of the French professional esports industry (clubs’ economic models and leagues’ regulation mechanisms). The findings pave the way for further discussion regarding potential ways for leagues to regulate competition.Research Methods The methodology is based on a qualitative approach and involves nine semi-structured interviews with major stakeholders in the professional French esports ecosystem: five clubs, two leagues, and two player agents. Financial data from two further club is also analysed.Results and Findings The results identify two economic models for French esports clubs. These models are mainly based on ‘irrelevant’ revenues, and the French clubs are not profitable due to the rat race in the labor market. Club owners are oriented towards maximizing wins. The regulation mechanisms currently used in the leagues do not seem able to change the teams’ behavior.Implications : The discussion, based on the traditional literature, suggests regulation tools that could guide the behaviors of the clubs to help them to achieve better financial stability and perhaps optimize the competitive balance of the competition. However, more research is needed to define the aims of the regulation of esports leagues.

Research question:The research aims to identify the determinants of 'coopetitive' strategies compared to more competitive or cooperative ones, while examining the contingency of strategic choices to strategic groups. The focus is on French professional football over the 2006-2017 period. The contribution to the literature comes from using strategic groups and breaking down specific characteristics of player transactions in this industry. Research methods:The methodology is based on an exploratory statistical analysis composed by cluster analysis. First, a Pearson's principal component analysis (PCA) is conducted, before using K-means classification. Results and Findings:Results provide empirical evidence for a high contingency of strategic choices. The taxonomy found is closely related to the economic, financial and sporting characteristics of a club. Belonging to a specific class highly influences the strategy a club can implement. In addition, the diversity of club behaviours in the league are highlighted. Implications:Our findings bring relevant information for practitioners about their strategies and the managerial implications of a potential reform of player transactions between teams. Indeed, FIFA is working on a reform to limit the number of outgoing loans that a team can use and better control the transfer system.

Abstract This paper presents the results of a statistical analysis of the violence and incivility of professional football players on and around the field and how the disciplinary bodies manage these phenomena. The sanctions issued by the disciplinary committees were examined with the objectives of (i) empirically determining the distribution of sanctioned behaviours and their evolution, and (ii) evaluating how these infringements on sporting ethics were handled. The 6027 observations collected from professional football competitions in France over ten seasons (2007–2008 to 2016–2017) highlight contrasting changes in sanctioned violence and incivilities and show that the disciplinary code was not fully applied in certain subcategories.

Cette contribution évalue les résultats du programme de construction de 13 stades français mené conjointement entre le secteur public et privé entre 2008 et 2016. L’objectif visé par le programme était notamment de permettre le développement économique du football professionnel, à l’instar de ce qui a été observé en Allemagne à la suite d’un programme similaire entre 2001 et 2006. Les indicateurs utilisés pour effectuer une analyse comparée France-Allemagne, montrent que les résultats attendus ne sont pas atteints. Des propositions d’explications sont présentées permettant de conclure sur la nécessité d’une co-construction des programmes de rénovation des équipements sportifs français.

The winner-take-all and Superstars theories are complementary here within an approach which favours the concentration of revenues by dominant actors. The cases studied men's tennis and golf, highlight that tennis players' revenues are less balanced. This imbalance is not explained by the prize distribution structure in the tournaments of both sports but by the turnover lower in tennis than in golf. It establishes the existence of a specific labour market in tennis characterised by a concentration of revenues by a few players, including over time.

The winner's curse is a well-known phenomenon in the auction theory. The main aim of this article is to verify its existence in football broadcasting rights. The underlying objective is to assess whether some indices of this situation are verified and can cause a winner's curse. The methodology is based on the application of Andreff (2014)'s six indices and a seventh index (disappointment) to the domestic markets for broadcasting rights of the French and English football leagues. These two markets have seen an increase in the number of packages offered to broadcasters, with the possibility of several 'winners'. The article shows that the winner of the major packages in the auction is not cursed. The curse is more likely to happen for the second mover. As such, the article suggests a practical recommendation for broadcasters interested in football rights: win the best package or keep away.

Cette contribution questionne l’adaptation du concept d’éthique sportive dans le cas spécifique du sport professionnel, et plus particulièrement à partir d’un focus sur le football professionnel français. L’éthique sportive est en effet un concept polysémique largement traité dans la littérature en philosophie et en sociologie du sport. De plus, la diversité des modes de pratique questionne quant à cette adaptation du concept aux spécificités des différentes façons de faire du sport. Pour la recherche en management portant sur le sport professionnel, il semblerait alors nécessaire de définir l’éthique sportive de manière pragmatique en raison du caractère non-opérationnel engendré par son héritage philosophique. Evaluer positivement son efficacité, ainsi que celle de la régulation opérée autour de l’éthique sportive, nécessite alors de caractériser le concept de manière explicite. Dans cette optique, il est proposé d’explorer les principaux travaux issus de la littérature abordant « éthique » et « sport » afin de préciser notre objet et le contexte dans lequel s’inscrit notre recherche. De même, à partir d’un corpus documentaire (n=95), une déclinaison de la grille d’analyse de Mercier (2014) portant sur la formalisation de l’éthique dans les organisations est effectuée. Les résultats laissent alors entrevoir l’explicitation croissante d’un grand nombre de principes éthiques sous forme de règlementations dans le cas d’une pratique professionnelle du football. Un glissement vers une normalisation déontologique de l’éthique sportive est donc observé. Le concept devient alors un outil de gestion et de contrôle des comportements des acteurs, s’éloignant ainsi des préceptes philosophiques sur lesquels il était fondé.

Les théories du winner-take-all et des Superstars sont ici complémentaires dans une approche qui privilégie la concentration des revenus par les acteurs dominants. Les cas étudiés, tennis et golf masculins, rendent compte d’un déséquilibre plus fort en tennis des revenus entre joueurs. Ce déséquilibre ne s’explique pas par la structure de distribution des prix dans les tournois des deux sports mais par le turnover du rang sportif moins élevé en tennis qu’en golf. Il révèle la présence d’un marché du travail spécifique en tennis marqué par une concentration des gains sur un nombre de joueurs réduit, qui s’établit sur plusieurs saisons.

The aim of this article is to investigate the explanatory variables of the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers for professional sports clubs based on the financial value literature. Such explanatory variables are related to local market conditions and on-field and off-field performance. Based upon a sample of North American major league clubs and the most valuable European soccer clubs as evaluated by Forbes over the 2011–2013 period (423 observations), our results indicate a range of variables with a significant positive impact on the number of social media fans: population, no competing team in the market, current sports performance, historical sports performance, facility age, attendance, operating income, expenses/league mean, and being an English football club. An improved understanding of the effectiveness of clubs’ social media presence is important for contemporary sport managers in terms of enhancing supporter communication, involvement, and accountability, as well as maximizing clubs’ revenue generation possibilities. Our findings could help sport managers to realize their clubs’ social media potential in pursuit of these objectives, specifically to understand which variables are under-exploited and why some clubs over-perform, which will allow managers to prioritize decisions to increase their number of social media fans and financial value.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to highlight the heterogeneity of the organizational aims within the professional football teams in Ligue 1. Second, to understand why some teams swing from a win orientation towards a soft budget constraint from year to year, and vice versa.Design/methodology/approach - Financial data from annual reports for the period 2005/2015 was collected for the 35 Ligue 1 clubs. To define the degree of compliance with the intended strategy for those clubs, an efficiency analysis was conducted thanks to the data envelopment analysis method. This measure of performance was supplemented with the identification of productivity and demand shocks to identify whether clubs suffered from such shock or changed their strategy. It enables to precise the nature of the evolution in the utility function, with regards to the gap between expectation and actual performance.Findings - The paper suggests that a team can switch from one orientation to another from year to year due to the uncertain nature of the sports industry. The club director's utility function could also be maximized under inter temporal budget function in order to adjust the weight between win and profit according to the opportunities in the environment.Originality/value - The paper sheds new light on the win/profit maximization. The theoretical model provides an assessment of the weight between win and profit in Ligue 1 and then identifies a new explanation for persistent losses in the sports industry.

Les pratiques corporelles participent à des assignations et prescriptions aux normes d’appartenance à un sexe. De plus aujourd’hui, le corps est un objet de consommation qui façonne notre quotidien. La presse féminine en jouant sur les stéréotypes du masculin/féminin influence les mécanismes de construction de soi. Le marché du bien-être en plein essor est un moyen de modéliser les corporéités d’atteindre ces stéréotypes. Ainsi nous tentons de comprendre comment la pratique du fitness gère, entretient et influence quelque chose qui appartient au féminin. Les salles de remise en forme proposent des activités variées s’adaptant à tous les âges et répondant à une demande accrue. Le soucis du « bien vieillir » (Feillet, R. (2012). « Le corps dans l’avance en âge. Une trajectoire de recherche sur le rôle des APS dans le « bien vieillir ». Entre résistance physique et reconnaissance de soi », Habilitation à diriger des recherches en 74ème section soutenue le 3 octobre 2012 à l’Université européenne de Bretagne sous la direction du Professeur Dominique Bodin ; Feillet, R. (2012). Corps, vieillissement et identité : entre préservation et présentation de soi. Place des activités physiques et sportives. Toulouse : Erès, Coll. Pratiques gérontologiques.) le désir de préservation de son image (et de son corps) pour soi et aux yeux des autres (Corbin, A., Courtine, J-J., & Vigarello, G. (2006). Histoire du corps : Les mutations du regard. Le XXème siècle. Paris : Seuil, Coll. L’univers historique. Vol. 3), la nécessité du paraître « toujours jeune » (Amadieu, J-F. (1990). Le poids des apparences. Beauté, amour et gloire. Odile Jacob, Coll. Poches Odile Jacob, édition 2005), le poids du jeunisme dans les médias (Kaufmann, J-C. (2004). L’invention de soi. Une théorie de l’identité. Paris : Armand Colin, Coll. Individu et société) ont engendré une ouverture des âges de la pratique du fitness. « Outil » de lutte contre le vieillissement ou de prévention de celui-ci pour des femmes qui souhaitent répondre aux normes sociales prescrites et/ou préserver leur santé, le fitness un moyen d’accéder et de participer à une « quête de jeunesse ».

'Keep fit' gyms have gradually evolved into fitness centers which offer new, diversified, and fashionable activities which are, above all, adapted for all ages. The clients have also evolved, with 'older' women being attracted. Healthy life expectancy has, in fact, grown considerably over the last 20years. The concern to age well, the desire to preserve one's image (and one's body) for oneself and for others, the need to appear 'forever young,' the weight of youthism in the media, just to cite a few factors among others, have engendered a democratization of the ages at which people practice fitness activities in order to respond to their concerns about their bodies and how they present themselves to society. Fitness training has thus become, also in a few years, a 'tool' to fight against or prevent aging for women who wish to conform with the prescribed social norms.