A Study on the Conceptual Structure for the Professional Sports Scope Rules

This study was conducted to more systematically establish the concept and scope of professional sports. Its primary objective was to propose a framework for determining the scope of professional sports by comparatively analyzing the institutional and industrial characteristics of professional sports in Korea and identifying common core factors. To achieve this goal, the study targeted 149 practitioners from a total of 11 organizations, including seven organizations from five professional sports disciplines under the Korea Professional Sports Association and four additional sports organizations seeking official recognition as professional sports. The exploratory procedure for defining the scope of professional sports was carried out in three stages. Data collected during this process were validated through expert panel discussions to ensure internal validity, followed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using SPSS and AMOS programs. As a result, the study proposed five key criteria for defining the actual scope of professional sports: human factors, physical (infrastructural) factors, financial factors, league operation factors, and societal base factors. These findings are meaningful in that they are based on practical criteria rather than merely declarative classifications of professional sports. In particular, the study is expected to serve as a foundational reference for establishing an integrated framework for professional sports and for creating institutional pathways for disciplines that have not yet achieved formal professionalization.