Governance of professional sports: using a pooling approach[Gouvernance des sports professionnels : une approche en termes de mutualisation]

For more than three decades, purchasing has now become a major area for publication, reflecting the change of perception and in reality from an operational view of purchasing to a strategic one. This has resulted for instance in the emergence of a win-win approach; as an example, while still competing one with another, organizations can also use coopetition and pooling strategies with objectives such as logistical cost and delivery time reduction, but also of quality improvements to the customer. Using a similar line of thought, this article deals originally with the world of sports through purchasing lens by examining how the pooling concept could be useful to understand better the advantages stemming for the North-American leagues' strategy of player contract purchases, and more globally, of human capital management.