Zheng Jinming

This chapter primarily examines the development of professional football in Mainland China in the context of commercialisation. It presents the latest trend in China of mixing economic policy with sport policy, which largely follows the Western model of sport governance. The governance structure of Chinese professional football is subject to careful scrutiny at the league/club level in an attempt to identify the structural barriers that may hinder the commercialisation process. Additionally, the controversial topic of overcommercialisation is incorporated into this chapter. Although Chinese sport commercialisation development is still in its infancy, several indicators of overcommercialisation have already surfaced that deserve greater academic attention.

This research spearheads the exploration of chance events in sport studies by the case study of Taiwanese archery, artistic gymnastics and baseball based on policy prominence and Taiwan’s international competitiveness. By using Porter’s national diamond model that examines the competitive advantage, this paper explores how unexpected and uncontrollable events impact competitive advantage and how nations can proactively respond to chance events. Three elite sports/disciplines in which Taiwan has were selected for in-depth case studies with 21 semi-structured interviews. The result shows that chance events are wide-ranging and the impact is context-specific, and chance events impact a nation’s elite sport competitive advantage by altering the national diamond. The key contributions of the study are the disaggregation/development of crises and the identification of unexpected successes and failures as major chance events. This study has substantial practical implications for how elite sport policy actors and practitioners acquire and maintain competitive advantage.

Research question Trust in elite sport institutions is an important antecedent that explains public attitudes towards elite sport. However, the origin of trust remains, to some extent, enigmatic. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that define trust in elite sport institutions.

Research methods Drawing on data collected from a cross-sectional online social survey among 2525 representative Japanese adults, this article examines the impact of a series of (1) institutional approach; (2) cultural approach; and (3) social exchange theory-derived factors on the level of trust in elite sport institutions.

Results and Findings The findings highlight the role that institutional performances, most notably the sporting and political aspects, exogenous cultural elements, and positive/negative perception towards policy development, play in determining institutional trust. Among these determinants, the contribution of institutions’ political performance (e.g. information provision and fiscal responsibility) is the most prominent.

Implications In addition to the pursuit of medal winning performances and elite sport success, enhancing political performance, such as transparency and fiscal responsibility, needs to be considered an equally, and probably more, important part of elite sport policy in relation to public trust.