Sport Entrepreneurship: A Synthesis of Existing Literature and Future Perspectives

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