Managing Sport and Leisure

Global Trends, Homegrown Systems: Developing Global South-First Frameworks for Managing the Sport Ecosystem

The global sport industry has, for much of its modern history, been theorised, governed, and commercially organised through frameworks originating in the Global North - specifically from Western European, North American and Australasian academic and institutional traditions (Henne & Pappe, 2018). These frameworks, while analytically sophisticated, are often poorly calibrated for the structural, institutional and sociocultural realities that characterise sport across the Global South, as they frequently assume stable governance systems, strong commercial markets, reliable funding and well-developed sporting infrastructure that are not consistently present in these contexts (Vadeboncoeur et al., 2020). Consequently, theories and management approaches developed in the Global North may not fully explain or address the institutional, political, economic and cultural realities shaping sport elsewhere. The consequence is a significant and growing epistemic asymmetry: scholarship published in leading sport management journals overwhelmingly models sport systems as they function in mature, resource-rich economies, leaving practitioners and policymakers in emerging economies with conceptual tools designed for different contexts (Gupta, 2022; Clarke & Mondal, 2022; Mondal & Gupta, 2025). This mismatch can limit the effectiveness of governance strategies, investment decisions, and development initiatives, as global sport organisations increasingly operate across diverse markets with differing institutional and sociocultural conditions.

This Special Issue intervenes directly in this gap. It proceeds from a foundational premise: that the Global South is not simply a site of application for Northern theory but a primary site of theoretical production and institutional innovation in sport management. Several developments make this moment particularly opportune. The rapid commercialisation of cricket - most visibly through the Indian Premier League, the Caribbean Premier League, and the SA20 - has created billion-dollar franchise ecosystems operating under distinctive ownership, labour market, and broadcasting logics (Mondal & Rampersad, 2020). The growing footprint of African football leagues, the emergence of Southeast Asian esports as a competitive infrastructure and the strategic use of sport mega-events by Gulf states represent similarly novel configurations of sport governance, investment and social function that demand bespoke analytical frameworks (Koch, 2018).

At the same time, Global South sport systems are increasingly entangled with global trends such as digital transformation, data analytics, athlete commodification, climate-driven event disruption and the internationalisation of sport talent pipelines (Mondal et al., 2023; Power et al., 2020). Managing these entanglements requires frameworks that are simultaneously locally grounded and globally literate (Houlihan, 2026). This Special Issue invites scholarship that builds, tests, or critiques such frameworks, drawing on original empirical research, comparative institutional analysis, policy evaluation and methodological innovation.

References

Clarke, J., & Mondal, S. (2022). Sport policy in India. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 14(4), 729-741.

Gupta, S. (2022). Reflect in and speak out: An autoethnographic study on race and the embedded sport psychology practitioner. Case Studies in Sport and Performance Psychology, 6(S1), S1-10.

Henne, K., & Pape, M. (2018). Dilemmas of gender and global sports governance: An invitation to southern theory. Sociology of sport journal, 35(3), 216-225.

Houlihan, G. (2026). From Chennai to Texas: Major League Cricket, glocalization and the uber-sport assemblage. Journal of Global South Sport Studies, 1(3), 3.

Koch, N. (2018). The geopolitics of sport beyond soft power: event ethnography and the 2016 cycling world championships in Qatar. Sport in society, 21(12), 2010-2031.

Mondal, S., & Gupta, S. (2025). India at the Starting Line: Turning Growth into Glory for Vision 2036. Indian Sport Management Association.

Mondal, S., & Rampersad, A. (2020). Cricket. In Routledge handbook of global sport (pp. 197-205). Routledge.

Mondal, S., Plumley, D., & Wilson, R. (2023). The other ISL: analysing the finances of the Indian Super League (football) and its franchisees. Managing Sport and Leisure, 28(3), 302-321.

Power, M. J., Widdop, P., Parnell, D., Carr, J., & Millar, S. R. (2020). Football and politics: the politics of football. Managing Sport and Leisure, 25(1-2), 1-5.

Vadeboncoeur, J. D., Bopp, T., & Singer, J. N. (2020). Is reflexivity enough? Addressing reflexive embodiment, power, and whiteness in sport management research. Journal of Sport Management, 35(1), 30-43.

Sub-themes

Contributors are encouraged to engage more than one sub-theme, particularly where their research bridges empirical domains (e.g., linking technology adoption to governance reform, or connecting economic modelling to policy analysis).