The Economic Parameters of Professional Sport in Australia: Lessons for Sport Administrators

While most sport administrators acknowledge the advantages of managing sporting organisations as businesses, many sporting officials lack an awareness of the features of sport that make it unique. These features include an interdependency between competing clubs, the importance of an uncertain outcome in attracting crowds, a high supporter tolerance for variable team performance; a high degree of team loyalty and personal identification; a structure in which additional matches cannot be readily fix- tured to meet an increase in demand, and frequent fan resistance to product innovation. Without a clear understanding of these features, sports administrators will fail to capture the subtle workings of sporting organisations and consequently fail to optimise their operations.