Editorial

Sport has its roots in the mists of time as cave paintings found in the Lascaux (France), dating back to time around 15,300 years ago, depicting sprinting and showing wrestling scenes. Sport has followed the evolution of civilisation: testimonies are coming from the Bronze Age passing through the ancient Egyptians up to ancient Greece where, in 776 B.C., the first Olympic Games of the ancient era was there organised. During the Roman Empire, the sporting activities (especially those engaging with the famous gladiators) were very prominent and these ‘public spectacles’ became a source of pride for numerous Emperors. In Rome in the first centuries A.D. there were numerous circus and stadiums (as Colosseum and Circus Maximus), full of chariot races and gladiators’ fights. For many centuries, the sport has been kept in the shadows and only at the end of the Middle Ages, it came back to the attention of the population, particularly with the famous knightly tournaments in horse-riding species. During the Renaissance a clearer and more important recovery of sport finally arose. In this regard, the so-called ‘Calcio fiorentino’ represents actually an early kind of football originating in Italy. In Mantua, in 1423, the Vittorino’s from Feltre ‘Casa Giocosa’ hosted the practice of fencing, fighting, horse riding, archery, in several occasions. As well as, in England and in the Netherlands the golf sport was also developed in the meantime. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Girolamo Mercuriali wrote De Arte Gymnastica. Likewise in England in 1617 the Declaration of Sports was written by James the First, in 1719 James Figg becoming the first British boxing champion. In 1840 the first edition of the Oxford-Cambridge regatta took place, while in 1863 the Football Association was born. In 1894, Baron Pierre de Coubertin restored the Olympic Games during an historic Congress in Paris: this did lead to the organisation of the first Olympic Games of the modern era in 1896, based in Athens (in memory of the Ancient Greece). In 1924 the Olympic Winter Games were introduced. In 1930 the first World Cup was disputed in Uruguay. After the Second World War with the advent of mass media and global communication, the sport has had a notable development so professionalism became prevalent, and this improved substantially the overall sports’ popularity. In this period, the sport became a real area of economic activity, a true international kind of industry. Fort this reason Sport is a social institution that can influence society on a large-scale (Baker et al., 2015). Sport, today, is one of the most established phenomena in the world, involving billions of people on all five continents. The revenue generated in the global sports market in 2017 are 91 billion of US dollars, in Europe the sports sector produces 2% of the total EU GDP, while the total employment generated by sports activities is 7.3 million units, accounting for 3.5% of total employment in the EU. Despite these impressive numbers, the economic impact of sports industries appears to be often underestimated. This continuous progress confirms that the sports industry is going to remain one of the major and most diverse businesses in the global marketplace. Mullin et al. (2014) refer to sport management as a hybrid field of study that covers numerous other disciplines. The sport industry has been developing rapidly during recent years and promises to continue to expand. Jobs in marketing and promotions as well as in sports information and communication are often accessible. Several employment opportunities exist in professional sports in relation to event management and community relations as well as in reference to financial markets (Howard and Crompton, 1995). Further employment options are also rapidly emerging in sporting goods, sports agents and arena management.