Martin Carlsson-Wall

In this chapter, the authors examine the strategic tension football clubs face between short-term sporting performance and long-term commercial sustainability. Focusing on the role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), the chapter explores how clubs can navigate these competing demands through organizational diversification. Drawing on March’s (1991) Exploration–Exploitation Framework and Simons’s (1995) Levers of Control model, the authors outline how clubs can balance innovation and operational stability while preserving both club identity and commercial viability. Through case studies of City Football Group and Red Bull Football, the authors illustrate three distinct approaches to managing exploration–exploitation tensions—sequential, spatial, and paradoxical—and map them to Simons’s four control levers in football-specific contexts. They argue that modern football clubs require CFOs who bring not only analytical expertise but also strong stakeholder empathy, positioning them to drive transformational change rather than incremental optimization. As football continues to evolve into a globalized and professionalized industry, the chapter concludes that clubs capable of integrating emotional and rational logics will be better equipped to achieve sustainable growth.

In this chapter, we introduce the “3P-Model” as an analytical framework for the geopolitical issues of football clubs. This framework is based on three interrelated dimensions – passion, profit, and politics – that provide important levels of analysis inherent to most clubs. We apply the 3P-Model using two illustrative examples of current issues in global football to show that football is not “just another industry” and that the navigation of passion, profit, and politics requires a holistic view on how sport, economics, politics, and geography interconnect and influence one another in the field of football. We conclude with avenues for future research in this regard.

Technology has begun to fundamentally change the sport industry. With the upsurge in the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality, and augmented reality, the sport industry has begun to use more technology to enhance the consumer experience. Along with the rise in these other technologies, is the use of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is driven by three key pillars: (1) distributed computation, (2) public key cryptography, and (3) decentralized consensus. Blockchain is changing the sport landscape by supporting the use of non-fungible tokens for creative sport content, cryptocurrencies for purchases, and platforms that better protect consumer information and enhance their engagement opportunities with athletes, teams, and leagues. In this chapter, we discuss how blockchain technologies can provide opportunities and risks to the sport industry.

In their chapter, Carlsson-Wall and Newland introduce the sportstech dilemma. They describe how sport is an industry driven by emotion and the importance of maintaining competitive balance, which distinguishes it from other industries. Then, they survey the blockchain tech landscape in sport and differentiate seven market segments depending on customer type and the type of impact sought. They propose three strategic questions—concerning the level of integration into the sport ecosystem, potential for a hybrid business model, and geographic footprint—to guide companies navigating the sportstech dilemma. Finally, they look further into the future and see unexpected possibilities for blockchain in sport.

In this article, Anders Richtnér and Martin Carlsson-Wall discuss the future of Executive Education. Drawing on SSE’s experience from the finance, retail, and sports industries, they argue that Executive Education needs to focus on co-created industry development. The future of Executive Education will no longer be about “education of executives”. Instead, it will focus on industry or sector transformation that has a positive societal impact.