Management of cooperative activities in sporting organizations within alliance networks

Abstract

Sports in smaller countries are highly dependent on both the economy and the social circumstances of the population, and sporting organizations are under great pressure mainly in terms of finance, due mainly to a lack of management and marketing abilities and activities. Cooperation with various partners, both internal and external, is one of the possible options to overcome these problems. Common problems are, however, the selection of correct partners, understanding the relevance of cooperation and having an accurate vision of such cooperation. Based on this, the main goal of this paper is to analyze how managers of sporting organizations understand cooperative opportunities, what kind of cooperation they prefer, and problems they encounter, as well as how to solve them. Data was mainly collected in the form of a questionnaire which was distributed to 2,160 primary schools and 200 tennis clubs in Slovakia within the scope of the “Tennis to schools” project run by the Slovak Tennis Association. At the end of this paper, recommendations for improvements to the current situation are included, which may be used in the implementation and management of similar projects.