Bayreuth sports economists in the Champions League

From June 20 to 22, BaySpo is expecting 120 participants from all over Europe and beyond at the joint annual conference of the Arbeitskreis Sportökonomie (AK), the German-speaking professional association for sports economics disciplines, and the International Association of Sports Economists (IASE) on the Bayreuth campus. The international guests will focus on sports governance, i.e. the topics of trust, transparency and integrity in sport. In addition to discussing challenges, concepts and case studies, they will also experience the special atmosphere of the "Summer Feeling on the University Beach" beach event. This is organized by Bachelor's and Master's students of sports economics around the UEFA EURO and regularly demonstrates the high level of organizational competence and creativity of the Bayreuth Spökos.

Sports economics is still a young sub-discipline at the interface between economics and sports science, which only became institutionalized in the 1990s with international specialist societies. Not so in Bayreuth: the University of Bayreuth was a pioneer and was already "at the start" in the 1980s: in 1985, it was the first German university to offer a degree course in "Sports Economics". Today, graduates work for the major sporting goods companies, soccer clubs and sports associations in Germany, as well as in automotive companies and large advertising agencies.

BaySpo was created in 2022 to bundle sports science and sports economics expertise at the University of Bayreuth. Its founding director, Prof. Dr. Markus Kurscheidt (Chair of Sport Governance and Event Management), is one of the pioneers in Bayreuth. He is Vice Chairman of the Sports Economics Working Group and Vice President of the IASE. Kurscheidt co-founded this first international organization of the economic branch of sports economics in 1999 while still a doctoral student. One of Kurscheidt's current colleagues, Dr. Kristoff Reichel, Academic Advisor at the Chair of Sport Governance and Event Management at the University of Bayreuth and BaySpo member, has now been elected Secretary General of the European Sport Economics Association (ESEA). This means that the ESEA office will also be transferred to BaySpo.

The University of Bayreuth is also represented in the European Association for Sport Management (EASM): Prof. Dr. Tim Ströbel, Professor of Marketing and Sport Management at BaySpo and its Vice Director, is responsible on the EASM board for the scientific management of the major annual conferences with over 500 participants. "The Bayreuth delegation is regularly one of the strongest groups at the EASM conferences and enjoys a high reputation in the sports management community," emphasizes Ströbel. Bayreuth sports economists are also always at the top of the young talent awards. At the last EASM conference in Belfast, Bayreuth Spöko Master's student Yassin Philipp and his team won first place in the student project competition. "There is no shortage of young talent in Bayreuth sports economics. This should ensure that it remains in the Champions League of European sports economics in the future," Kurscheidt and Ströbel are convinced.