Social value measurement in basketball clubs: is it possible?

Abstract

In recent decades, sport has become one of the most important social activities in the Western world, showing an important capacity to attract people from different backgrounds. In this sense, basketball clubs do not pursue economic profit maximization, but instead they need to be analyzed according to their capacity of creating both social and economic value. In this regard, social accounting, as a tool that measures social effects, is also applicable to a basketball club.
For that end, in this paper we have applied part of a social accounting methodology, the SPOLY Methodology (Retolaza, San-Jose, & Ruíz-Roqueñi, 2015), to two elite basketball clubs of the ACB League (Spanish First Division), in order to make further steps towards the future monetization of social value. For that purpose, in this paper we will identify different outputs and proxy-s corresponding to a range of specific social value variables established in the interviews with the different stakeholders that were identified in a standard stakeholder map for elite basketball clubs (Mendizabal
et al., 2020).
Subsequently, 13 sports management experts, both lecturers and practitioners, have validated the list of specific social value outputs and proxy-s identified. The findings support the application of the SPOLY Methodology in basketball clubs, and the process of adaptation and validation carried out throughout the paper. The results also open a way towards the application of SPOLY Methodology in other top-flight sport organizations.