The Factors That Affect the Development of Sports Industry as an Economy

When the history of sports is analyzed, it can be seen that it dates back to antiquity. Sports became more widespread and an important and indispensable part of life as it appeals to nearly every section of the society. The more widespread it became, the bigger an industry it turned out to be, with the involvement of money in it. The components of sports are participants (active and passive), entertainment (sports contests and organizations, etc.), outputs (goods and services), sports facilities (stadiums and saloons), media, security and management systems (sports clubs, federations and political managers, etc.) Sports industry can be defined as the marketing of the goods and services associated with sports. From a broader perspective, it is the place of sports with all of its parties within the economy systems. Sports economics and industry have already become a sector establishing its own market. There are various reasons behind this speedy growth of sports economy. Some of them are generation of different sports activities, sports becoming a demonstration game, increase in the amount of free times of people, increasing tendency to associate themselves with sports, development of the sports products and technologies, globalization of sports as a concept and increase in the size of areas of sports economy and technology. The fact that the annual revenue of European football industry is approximately 15 billion EURO and revenue of Turkish football industry is approximately 1 billion TL has created the need to study and analyze the sports economy. In this context, this study attempts to reveal the size of the sports industry (football industry in particular) and the factors behind the development of sports into an industry. The methods of content analysis and literature research were used in this study.