Mapping the strategic factor market for sport entrepreneurship

Previous scholarship in entrepreneurship and sport management has highlighted their symbiotic nature. The degree to which sport is embedded in society makes it an ideal platform from which to launch economically-motivated entrepreneurial endeavors that may also be leveraged to generate socially transformative causes. Despite this important realization, efforts to understand sport entrepreneurship have been limited in their ability to describe the broad trends affecting sport entrepreneurs. This study uses a sample of 967 sport-related transactions by private equity and venture capital firms between 1988 and 2016 to chart some of these trends. In doing so, we hope to provide a solid foundation on which future sport entrepreneurship research can build. The results accentuate some interesting paradoxes in how private equity and venture capitalist firms invest in and divest from sport-related entrepreneurial ventures.