Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports entrepreneurship

Abstract

Sports entrepreneurship has been considered an important part of sports organisations when overcoming crisis situations. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of the crisis derived from COVID-19 on sports entrepreneurship and whether there are differences in the prediction of entrepreneurship on service quality in non-profit sports clubs. To this end, 145 sports clubs were analysed before and after the outbreak of the virus in society. Paired sample-t tests were carried out to determine the differences in variables studied before (Time I) and after (Time II) the COVID-19 outbreak, and correlations and hierarchical linear regressions were used to analyse the relationship between the variables studied in the two different stages. The results obtained show that risk-taking and innovation are significantly higher after the appearance of COVID-19, while proactivity has not undergone significant changes. Finally, the relationship between sports entrepreneurship and service quality is positive and significant in both stages but stronger before the crisis.