- Professor Simon Chadwick, Director, Centre for the International Business of Sport, Coventry, UK. The opinions expressed are his own. -

This summer’s Tour de France was truly historic: the race finished without anyone having returned a positive dope test. Monumental! In a sport seemingly beset with drug problems, professional cycling appeared to have turned the corner, started over, seen the error of its ways, cleaned up its act etc.

Some weeks later however, it was back to “situation normal” when Mikel Astarloza, winner of Stage 16 in this year’s race, tested positive for EPO use. To be honest, the only real surprise about this was that the media singularly failed to refer to the test result as “dope-gate” or some such other gating scandal.

Yet gates elsewhere were swinging this summer like those on a disused farm caught in a tornado. The world of sport witnessed scandals ranging from “crash-gate” to “blood-gate” and beyond (even to situations where women were apparently men – gender-gate?). Crash-gate was the most serious of the summer’s attempts at self-implosion, according to some possibly the most serious sporting scandal of all time.

Indeed, there was a sense amongst certain people that the 2008 F1 Grand Prix in Singapore will serve as a headstone on the grave of sporting credibility: we can no longer trust in or rely upon those involved in sport. Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have admitted their guilt and apparently done the decent thing, but others may well be complicit too.

Just how could something so brazen, so dangerous, have remained secret for so long amongst such a small group of people? From whistle-blowing, to organisation culture, the use (and abuse) of power and the basis on which teams compete, the whole saga has been a sad, pitiful, mangled mess of managerial, organisational and commercial issues.

Blood-gate was a lot less controversial than the Renault fiasco, if for no other reason than it was essentially a domestic drama and wasn’t therefore played out in the glare of international publicity. Moreover, while the likelihood of a physically painful outcome was much greater in the F1 case, Harlequins willingness to feign a physically painful outcome was at the heart of bloody matters down at The Stoop.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the club is not the only one in rugby that maintains a supply of blood capsules, but Harlequins got caught. As with the Renault team, those responsible at Harlequins have either done the decent thing; or else had the decent thing imposed upon them by the relevant authorities. Dean Richards has been the main target of disciplinary interventions because of his prominent role in the affair – strangely, and worryingly, Richards is a former police officer.

While the RFU and the FIA both took a stance in respectively dealing with crashgate and bloodgate, the nature of the interventions was different, and has posed some interesting questions about how scandals in sport should be dealt with. In Renault’s case, the regulatory intervention was much less serious than it was for Harlequins, in part due to the team’s troublesome twins having already fallen on their gilded-swords.

However, Renault suffered more as a result of the commercial consequences than did Harlequins; at a conference late in September, a senior member of the rugby team’s senior management team claimed there had been no problems with sponsors and partners. Renault on the other hand lost its main sponsor (ING) and a secondary one (Mutua Madrilena), both on the same day. The team will undoubtedly have lost money as the result, as well as a considerable measure of commercial lustre.

Essentially, the two cases discussed here have raised an important issue: is sporting scandal dealt with more effectively by regulatory sanctions (as with Harlequins) or by market-led sanctions (as with Renault)?

The latter is controversial, as many people will argue that money got sport into trouble, so can it really be expected to now get it out of the difficulties it faces?

Moreover, it relies upon sponsors and partners terminating their contracts with immediate effect, when in fact adjustments and sanctions may move much more slowly as these sponsors and partners only refrain from renewing a contract once it is finished (which might be years in advance).

Yet regulation appears to have a history of failure: despite everyone’s best efforts, doping still takes place, players pop blood capsules in their mouths and cars get deliberately crashed into walls by their drivers.

As such, if money does indeed talk, then perhaps it is pay-back time and the very big carrot that used to hang from a too frequently ineffective stick should be used as the medium through which cheats are dealt with?

-Professor Simon Chadwick, Director, Centre for the International Business of Sport, Coventry, UK. The opinions expressed are his own. -

There is a famous song, composed in the run-up to UEFA Euro 96, in which the Lightening Seeds, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel refer to England’s 30 years of hurt (the period at the time since England won its one and only World Cup).

England recently took a step closer towards addressing their continued failure to win world football’s biggest prize, by beating Croatia 5-1 to qualify for next year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa. In so doing, the team also overcame its two years of hurt, following a failure to qualify for Euro 2008 at the hands of their Croatian rivals.

While the fervent mood amongst passionate English fans and patriots alike will no doubt grow as we progress towards the start of the tournament in June 2010, there is likely to be much more action off the pitch than there is on it – and not necessarily just in England, in all of the countries that have teams which qualify for South Africa.

Indeed, as we get closer to the 11th June kick-off, World Cup micro-economies will start emerging domestically and internationally across the world.

Many English, Korean and Brazilian fans will already have booked their flights, arranged their hotels, possibly even have bought their replica shirts, flags and hats, diverting expenditure away from other industrial sectors or from their savings accounts. During English summers, the intensity of such expenditure is becoming legendary, if not mind-blowing.

Whether bedecking one’s car in flags and stickers, hanging a banner out of the bedroom window, buying the latest England merchandise, bulk-buying beer and burgers for a garden barbeque or relentlessly purchasing packs of stickers for a World Cup album collection, all are becoming the essence of what football tournaments have become.

The question is: how much are such micro economies worth? In England, there are various estimates of this, ranging from 1.2 billion pounds through to 2 billion pounds or more. Such figures in themselves have taken on an almost mythical status, as reliable scientific data about the economic effects of winning is unavailable.

We think we know what happens, there have historically been plenty of predictions, but we don’t actually seem to know what the precise economic impact will be when that winning goal goes in, nobody has ever collected the data.

In addition to the tangible impact of “that” goal in qualifying, there is a consensus too that qualification for big tournaments is also likely to generate intangible positive impacts.

The “Feel Good Factor” is seemingly worth something, with people working harder and spending more, as national team success induces a sense of euphoria, whilst also diverting people’s attention away from their normal everyday travails.

Moreover, in terms of national identity, the enhanced national self-esteem that such high profile success brings is surely worth millions, if not billions, of pounds? But again, this is accepted wisdom rather than scientifically proven fact. Nobody really knows if this is true because nobody has ever set out to measure the impact.

It would be easy to surf the wave of hype and expectation that inevitably accompanies a national team qualifying for an international tournament, but one needs to mitigate the potential for a positive impact with the potential for negative impacts. Has anyone ever monitored the decrease in productivity around World Cup time, as people spend more time chatting and speculating than they do producing and managing?

Moreover, is anyone prepared to acknowledge that absence through sickness stats go through the roof around tournament time, especially when a game at a crucial stage of the tournament kicks –off in the middle of the day?

And what about the drunk and disorderly behaviour of some fans down at the local pub and the noise they make, or the litter that people generate when watching games on public viewing screens in the local park? All of these activities, and more, have a negative impact and, so, a cost attached to them. The question is: how much?

And could it actually be the case that the costs of qualifying could, in theory at least, outweigh the benefits of progressing to the finals of a World Cup? Nobody knows because nobody has ever set out to accurately measure it before.

My prediction for next year? From an English perspective, Quarter-Final defeat, probably on penalties, following the sending off of a key player for a questionable challenge on an arch enemy. Off the field, who knows?

Given the conventional wisdom, my next prediction is an economic impact of between 1 billion and 2 billion pounds – that’s a decent enough of a margin of error. But we really need precise, robust measures of impact to know exactly how important the World Cup will be.

-Simon Chadwick is the Director of the Centre for the International Business of Sport at Coventry University, and runs the blog ‘Daily Sport Thought’ in which he addresses many of the important challenges currently facing sport. The opinions expressed are his own.-

I love sport, I have always loved sport, and I make my living researching, writing and talking about sport. As such, I do not need to be convinced about the social, cultural, psychological and health benefits associated with our engagement in sport. I also do not need any convincing about the economic benefits of sport, although some people will always and inevitably exclaim, “he would say that wouldn’t he!”

Well, it is not me it is actually the United Nations which states that sport may account for as much as 3 percent of global economic activity. It is the European Union that estimates sport to be worth 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). And it is the British government that has recently acknowledged just how significant sport as an industry has become by commissioning research which will result in the development of robust measures for the contribution that sport makes to the British economy. Previous estimates already indicate that sport may generate as much as 2.5 percent of GDP, in which case this means it is an industry bigger than agriculture and not so far behind manufacturing.

Sport is, indeed, much more important than we realise or acknowledge. It is deeply ingrained in many of our psyches: for some people this dates back to our childhoods and is bound up in our social and geographic identities; for other people, sport allows us to indulge in vicarious achievement (related to the psychological phenomenon of BiRG-ing – Basking in Reflected Glory) and euphoric collective experiences.

The consumption of sport is thus not a rational economic activity, an observation that is particularly pertinent amidst these recessionary times. Whereas other industries continue to suffer the effects of the downturn, sport remains one of the more recession-resistant sectors, buoyed by the inherently unique features that differentiate sport, making it a safe-haven during difficult times.

Sport can be relied upon not to let people down, it provides value for money, not least because of its central proposition: the uncertainty of outcome – you never know what the result is going to be, something absent from virtually all other forms of consumption in our otherwise increasingly homogenised and standardised world. As such, people actively seek out sport and remain loyal to it, even during economically troubled times.

There is clear evidence already that sport has bucked recent recessionary trends; for instance, over the last year, Arsenal reported a profit of almost 37 million pounds; both the Rugby Football Union and the Premier League have announced new, high value, long-term televisions rights deals; Badminton England signed its most lucrative ever sponsorship deal; advertising revenues derived from slots during American Football’s Superbowl broke all records; and television viewing figures for the Champions League Final in Rome were up by 27 percent.

If one then factors in the specific economic impacts that sporting success can have, there are strong grounds for optimism that our love affair with sport may actually help lift us out of our current economic malaise. In the months immediately after last year’s Beijing Olympic Games, sales of bicycles reportedly increased by upwards of 20 percent; sales of sports bras were up by 27 percent; sales of swimming equipment may have increased by upwards of 36 percent; and sales of energy bars and sports drinks apparently increased by as much as 155 percent.

Moreover, a YouGov poll conducted prior to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany indicated that almost half of all men and women felt that sporting success lifts their mood, helps them be more optimistic and increases their productivity.

So what are the prospects for this summer, and beyond into the autumn? It is a pity that there is no major football tournament due to take place, as previous research indicates a tangible link between football success and economic uplift. A Manchester United victory in the Champions League Final would have been helpful, as would an Andy Murray win at Wimbledon. We still have the Ashes ahead, the World Athletics Championship in Berlin, and Jenson Button leading the Formula 1 World Championship.

It may nevertheless be towards the end of the year before witnessing the real economic excitement. If the England football team can keep their nerve and qualify for next year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa, then businesses from pubs and pizza-makers to television manufacturers and internet service providers will be gleefully rubbing their hands.

Perhaps that Anglicised Scot, Gordon Brown, may be the one who will rub his hands more than most? Sporting success over the next year could not only help to save the economy, it might also help him to save his job. Roll on that Croatia game in September, eh Gordy?