While most sport administrators acknowledge the advantages of managing sport organisations as businesses, or at least the need to use good management practices, they are frequently unaware of the features that distinguish sport from other forms of business (Smith, 1998). This paper aims to review these distinct features which make sport a special enterprise. These features include an intense emotional relationship between members, fans and their clubs, and ongoing tension between the sometimes competing goals of on-field success and profitability. The other major features are the importance of a balanced competition, the difficulties in ensuring constant quality, the frequent need for collaboration between competing clubs, the desire of members and fans to publicly display their club and player affiliations, and the difficulty in meeting sharp increases in demand.
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Stewart et al. (1999) studied this question.