Sport entrepreneurship: A synthesis of existing literature and future perspectives

Sport entrepreneurship is progressively emerging as an extremely significant stream of research. Accordingly, scholars are increasingly assessing how sportspeople tend to have higher entrepreneurial orientation and intentions than the average. In a similar fashion, scholars have also observed how sport-related entrepreneurial ventures can have a positive effect on community development. Nonetheless, this literature stream is still fragmented, lacks a proper systematization, and needs an identification of its intellectual structure and research themes. Hereby, we performed a bibliometric analysis of 86 papers and a systematic literature review on the most influential papers belonging to the pertinent literature. Results show that a 4-cluster structure exists for sport entrepreneurship: its theoretical definitions and internal factors fostering it (cluster 1), environmental factors may foster it (cluster 2), pedagogical approaches and education (cluster 3), and finally its impacts, especially in terms of community development and social benefits (cluster 4). From these findings, a framework to help both scholars and practitioners approaching the topic was developed.