Sport and Leisure Management

Sport and leisure management encompasses the strategies, structures and processes by which organisations plan, deliver and evaluate both competitive sport and recreational activities. At its core lies the integration of commercial imperatives—such as revenue generation, brand development and digital engagement—with social objectives including public health, community cohesion and personal well-being. Effective management draws on interdisciplinary insights from business administration, public policy, sociology and kinesiology to balance the demands of diverse stakeholders: athletes seeking performance pathways, spectators pursuing entertainment and clubs or public bodies charged with equitable access to facilities. Key challenges include sustaining competitive balance in professional leagues, innovating service delivery for volunteer-led community programmes, harnessing data analytics to tailor participant experiences and designing governance frameworks that ensure transparency and accountability. Globalisation and technological advances have expanded opportunities for cross-border collaborations, virtual events and e-leisure, while demographic shifts and rising consumer expectations demand agile, user-centred approaches. By engaging spectators through immersive media, supporting talent development with digital coaching tools and forging partnerships across health, tourism and education sectors, sport and leisure management contributes to economic growth, social inclusion and lifelong participation in physical activity.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Building a prediction model of physical activity in young adults has demonstrated that simple statistical classifiers can rival complex algorithms when forecasting exercise behaviour. One study tested logistic regression, support vector machines and decision trees on combined measures of autonomy support and learning interest, finding that a linear model achieved the highest recall and F1 scores. This underlines the potential of interpretable models in identifying individuals at risk of reduced activity and tailoring motivational interventions. More recently, a qualitative inquiry into the rise of movement volunteering programmes has reframed fitness outings as “fitness philanthropy,” showing how organised running and cycling groups deliver public health benefits while forging dynamic “healthy publics.” Participants, passers-by and community partners co-produce these events, blending visible exercise, social interaction and purposeful civic action to generate shared well-being outside traditional leisure spaces. Grounded theory methods revealed that spectacle, mobility and sociality are central to constituting new forms of collective fitness philanthropy. Finally, an exploration of public intention to attend spectator sport events used procedural grounded theory to develop a model of internal drivers (personal perceptions, emotional engagement) and external moderators (urban context, social influence). Semi-structured interviews showed that deep individual perceptions and contextual incentives jointly shape consumption intentions, offering a framework for targeting marketing and urban policy to boost attendance.

Sport and Leisure Management publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in sport and leisure management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Autonomy support: Coaching or teaching behaviours that foster a sense of choice and personal endorsement in participants’ decision-making.

Sports learning interest: An individual’s intrinsic motivation to acquire knowledge and skills related to sports or physical activities.

Grounded theory: A qualitative research methodology that builds explanatory frameworks inductively from systematically gathered data.

References

1. Building a prediction model of college students’ sports behavior based on machine learning method: combining the characteristics of sports learning interest and sports autonomy. Scientific Reports (2023).
2. Doing more with movement: constituting healthy publics in movement volunteering programmes. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2020).
3. Exploring the factors influencing public intention for spectator sports consumption based on grounded theory. Scientific Reports (2024).
4. Knowledge, Competencies, and Skills for a Sustainable Sport Management Growth: A Systematic Review. Sustainability (2023).
5. Mass Diffusion of Modern Digital Technologies as the Main Driver of Change in Sports-Spectating Audiences. Frontiers in Psychology (2022).
6. Investigating ‘Fear of Missing Out’ (FOMO) as an extrinsic motive affecting sport event consumer’s behavioral intention and FOMO-driven consumption’s influence on intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and consumer satisfaction. PLOS ONE (2020).