From Homophonic to Polyphonic Organization: European Team Sports Clubs in Transformation

Abstract

Several European sports - especially association football - have rapidly evolved from amateur status into high-income professional sports in the last two decades or so. During this development the scope and objectives of the clubs have been broadened as the clubs to a growing degree serve several concurrent goals such as striving for profit maximization, a high winning percent, fan loyalty, spectator attendance and TV viewers, coupled with satisfying demands from the environment for various kinds of community engagement and sometimes even social or cultural aspects. Taking this development as its point of departure, this paper aims at deploying a theoretical framework capable of better understanding the objectives of European football clubs as they have developed into a complex situation of professionalism. This is done by deploying a systems theoretical approach, thus regarding the clubs as evolving from homophonic towards polyphonic organization.