Tag: sports club

A sport club is not only a sporting institution. It is a dense accumulation of founding myths, statues, museums, official histories, hall-of-fame portraits, anniversaries and commemorative rituals through which a collectivity tells itself who it is. In Pierre Nora’s terms, the club operates as a lieux de mémoire: a site where a chosen past is consecrated, made visible and put to work in the present. This special issue takes that proposition seriously and asks a single guiding question across different national settings: how does a club’s manufactured heritage actively shape its present.

Our aim is to study the origins and evolution of professional football clubs from a management and organizational history approach. Studying the football industry from a business history perspective is not just relevant and important, but also allows participation in several of the debates open in business and economics fields, including the role played by consumers in the shaping and evolution of an industry; the evolution of an industry toward a structure with an ‘economics of superstars’ character and its consequences, and more.

The International Journal of the History of Sport is an international, ranked, peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research contributions to scientific knowledge. All manuscript submissions are subject to initial appraisal by the Editor, and, if found suitable for further consideration, to peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees.