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10th EASM Congress was held in
the beautiful city of Jyväskyla during 5 days of glorious
sunshine. Over 430 delegates attended the Congress from 36 different
countries representing an interesting mix of practitioners from
the commercial and public sectors, policy makers as well as academics.
The conference theme was 'The Future of Sports Management.'
The keynote presentations were
informative and stimulated debate on their respective topics.
Chris Gratton (Professor, School of Sport and Leisure
Management, Sheffield Hallam University) outlined the potential
scenarios for the future of sport economics. The thrust of his
thought provoking presentation highlighted that whilst the income
generated via professional sport, international sporting events
and the television revenue is growing, it forms only a small
part of the total sports market. His key point was that the economic
value of the recreational base of sport far exceeds that of the
top of the sports hierarchy and that it is now possible to estimate
the 'money value' of the broad of resources in and out of sport
and the such estimates indicate that the economic value of the
recreational base of sport far exceeds that of the top of the
sports hierarchy.
Tarasti Lauri (Justice, Supreme Administrative Court,
Finland) has been involved in senior positions on international
committees discussing doping and sports policy for a number of
years and presented on 'Sport and Ethics in the Future.' He stressed
the differing values of differing sports and the need for sport
to maintain the values of: dignity of the individual, equity
policies, and anti-doping policies. Doping was the major threat
currently facing sports administrators and will soon be followed
by the new threat of genetic manipulation to improve performance.
Heather Gibson (Assistant Professor, Department of
recreation, Parks and Tourism, University of Florida, USA) discussed
the 'Global Connections of Future Sport Tourism.' The first theme
of the paper was the global nature of the sports tourism product
as exemplified by mega-events such the recent the World Cup in
Japan and Korea and the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The
second theme of research stressed the need for cross-cultural
studies in sports tourism domain. The final theme outlined the
growth in the sport tourism education and curricula programmes
around the world.
Vainikka Markku (Head of TV Sport, Finnish Broadcasting
Company) discussed the future of sport and the media and painted
a gloomy picture regarding the potential income revenue to sport
from TV. A major issue is that TV-rights are increasingly focusing
on premium events and only a few sports will benefit. This is
taking place at the same time as production costs are increasing
and a greater number of sports are trying to obtain a slice of
an increasingly diminishing pie.
Many delegates at the congress
agreed that the quality of research papers presented in the parallel
sessions had increased from previous years due to the EASM board
operating a triple blind review of abstracts and rejecting far
more than usual. The presentations were orgainsed into sub-themes
on management, marketing, professional papers, economics and
finance, human resource management and planning. This method
grouping of papers proved an effective way of assisting choices
of what to attend with over 120 papers to choose from.
Many delegates also commented
on how much they had enjoyed the inclusion of the professional
papers and how important it was to continue to have policy makers,
practitioners and academics together at future Congresses.
I chose to attend sessions which
stretched across most of the themes and discussed relevant contemporary
issues from a range of theoretical perspectives specifically:
Mike Weed from Loughborough on sports tourism and identity, Simon
Chadwick from Leeds on football sponsorship, Mike Collins from
Loughborough on planning and dangerous sports, Fiona Gossart
from Edinburgh on the future of recreation management, Chris
Hudson from Sheffield on benchmarking and sports development,
Paul Emery from Northumbria on success in sports events to name
a few.
My own research (John Deane)
on sports sponsorship and brand image was well received in the
marketing theme. This paper formed part of a thesis I completed
in 2001 for my MBA (Sport and Leisure) at Loughborough University.
I hope to present the paper for publication in the near future.
The second paper was a joint piece of work on volunteering and
sport jointly presented with Andy Adams from Southampton
Institute. This is part of an ongoing research area attempting
to look at the formal and informal support that exists for sports
volunteers from a range of agencies.
I was involved in a debate discussing
the future role of EASM in relation to the research issue, which
was chaired by Bill Gerrard from Leeds University. This discussion
addressed the following issues: how researchers interested in
a particular topic could collaborate with others across Europe,
how the congress could offer opportunities for developing the
research skills of contributors and the possibility of developing
a database for researchers. Bill Gerrard agreed to coordinate
the debate and draw up some discussion points via email.
Possibly just as significant
for me as the congress presentations was the opportunity to network
with colleagues in the field from both the UK and across Europe.
A number of potential developments from these meeting are as
follows: the chance to possibly contribute to a workshop on volunteering
at the National Sports Development Conference in April next year,
the development of a national survey of how local authorities
across England support the work of sports volunteers, joining
as an associate researcher a well established research team in
the UK that have won many Sport England contracts and the potential
for new curriculum developments in the field of sports management.
Across the Europe the opportunity to work with colleagues who
have a similar research area is a prospect I look forward to
developing.
The organisation of the four-day
event was excellent with our Finnish hosts ever willing to be
flexible to meet the demands of delegates. In particular, the
significant involvement of students in the organisation and management
of the congress is to be applauded. The students were well trained
and able to deal with most issues raised by delegates.
If I have a criticism it is that
some of the parallel papers, which would naturally have followed
each other, were not placed together so this led to a disjointed
feel to some sessions. Furthermore, a suggestion made by Sharon
Clough last year that a separate postgraduate seminar be held
would have improved the structuring of sessions.
The EASM General Assembly was
well attended and announced the need to set up a new EASM under
Belgium law to meet the changing issues facing the organisation.
This new structure should be in place by next year's congress
and the assembly committed itself to strive for equality of representation
on the new EASM board. The regular contributions were made by
concerning retention of members with a new strategy to be forthcoming;
EASM currently has 303 members form 36 different countries. Under
the Editorship of Trevor Slack the EASM journal, Sports
Management Quarterly goes from strength to strength and
all members are encouraged to order this journal for their libraries.
[see http://www.easm.org/ESMQ3_2001.htm]
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