Whether we like it or not, UFABET เข้าสู่ระบบ และเดิมพัน are at the core of all leisure cultures today, including – and certainly not least – those that are associated with football. It is for this reason that it has become impossible to understand any aspect of football culture, or indeed many other kinds of cultural phenomenon, without taking into account how the digital, to varying degrees, is implicated in their perpetuation and formation.

However, it is also the case that the increasing influx of large-scale commercial interests into professional football has transformed management practices and strategic international development in fundamental ways. The result has been a steady decline in overall club profitability over time, with many clubs struggling with chronic financial loss.

Tradition vs. Innovation: Navigating Football’s Balancing Act

To address this problem, many clubs are exploring innovative solutions that might enable them to move away from a reliance on commercial revenues alone and towards the co-creation of value by different stakeholders in the football ecosystem. This approach can be seen in the recent development of a range of fan-centred media platforms (e.g. AFTV, the Arsenal Fan TV network) that seek to promote fan involvement on matchdays and beyond (Ratten et al. 2020).

However, our literature synthesis has revealed that this is a rather unsatisfactory solution to the problem of football club sustainability as it can be argued that this type of innovation only offers a temporary respite from the hyper-competitive environment in which clubs operate, and that their continued profitability will eventually revert back to insolvency. In this context, radical environmental changes (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) might entice clubs to explore other novel forms of business model innovation.