Entrepreneurial passion amongst female athletes

Abstract

An increasing number of female athletes are becoming sport entrepreneurs in order to utilize their prior sport experience in a business setting. Past research has focused on the role entrepreneurial passion plays in an entrepreneur’s career but few studies have examined it from a sport and gender perspective. Using the theoretical framework of entrepreneurial passion, this exploratory study utilizes semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with ten female athletes to analyze the role of work, obsessive, and harmonious passion. The findings reveal that female athletes consider gender as an influencing factor affecting their entrepreneurial passion but also utilize prior networks and business connections made in their sport career for business ventures. The managerial implications from the article are the need for more entrepreneurship training amongst athletes, and this is linked to the need for policymakers to focus on building female entrepreneurial capacity. Future research suggestions are that there needs to be more link between the disparate gender, sport, and entrepreneurial passion literature.