Sport as a Vehicle for Entrepreneurship Education: Approaches and Future Directions

The use of sport and physical activity as a method of developing entrepreneurship is an area that has received considerable attention in recent years. This is evidenced, in part, by the proliferation of sport-based education manuals on entrepreneurship from development agencies, NGOs and business actors alike. Moreover, several organisations operate in the sport for development ecosystem that focuses on sport-based entrepreneurship and developing social businesses in and through sport, including Sport dans la Ville and the Yunus Sports Hub. These programmes and existing literature show different approaches to using sport and physical activity to promote entrepreneurship. These approaches raise specific questions that should be considered when implementing sport for entrepreneurship programmes. Combining findings from academic and practitioner literature as well as considerable experience in the field, this chapter will present three approaches to using sport to develop entrepreneurship and highlight critical questions and concerns related to each approach. These approaches include (1) using sport as a hook to attract youth to entrepreneurial education, (2) using sport activities to develop competences related to entrepreneurship and (3) providing specialised education and support to sport entrepreneurs. To conclude, we propose a number of recommendations on how to maximise the potential of using sport for entrepreneurship education and development.