This study aimed to objectively and quantitatively explore domestic professional sports management research by conducting an integrative literature review, including the clarification of research topics and trends and a discussion of future research agendas. A total of 113 articles were collected from seven Japanese journals related to sport management research. Topic modeling based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation was applied to analyze the research topics. After topic modeling, the articles were aggregated by 16 research topics: Spectator behavior, consumer behavior and intention, product and spectator characteristics, sponsor and brand, attendance and spectating frequency, spectating needs, top sports players, youth and rookie players, human resource development, profitable business and governance, economic value and impact, organizational studies and globalization studies, stakeholder, community/local and life, league management, and others. Of these, the number of articles in spectator-related research topics accounted for 41.6% of all articles. However, an increasing trend of published articles on research topics other than spectator-related topics was observed after 2011. Consequently, owing to the insufficient yet essential amount of studies that were indicated by the above research trends, future research promoting professional sports management research based on a life-studies approach is necessary.

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　Due to the increasing enrolment in universities and their role as a hub for lifelong participation in sports, the improvement of the sports life of university students is now positioned as an important issue. A review of previous studies on the sports life of university students identified the following issues: the existence of a quarter of Non-exercisers, half of those who are members of an athletic club exercise six or more days a week, and half of those who are members of a circle use off-campus facilities and bear the financial and time costs. However, no studies have examined these issues according to the characteristics of the university or department to which the students belong. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to examine the sports life of students according to the characteristics of their universities and faculties, and to clarify the details of their actual conditions and issues.
　A questionnaire survey was conducted at 41 universities across the country, asking questions about current exercise frequency, barriers to exercise, current exercise status, and venues and costs of activity. The participants were categorized by athletic environment into “Members of an athletic club”, “Members of a circle”, “Other exercisers” and “Non-exercisers”. Further analysis was conducted based on three characteristics: the “Establisher”, “University size”, and “Faculty”.
　As a result of the analysis, the following four points were identified as the actual conditions and issues in the sports life of university students.

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　Community-based professional sports teams in Japan have played an essential role in regional revitalization. However, teams in provincial cities remain financially unstable and challenging to manage. Furthermore, many of these teams have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few years. In the present study, we explored factors that enabled two professional sports teams in a provincial city, Fagiano Okayama (J-League) and the Kochi Fighting Dogs (independent professional baseball league), to successfully maintain their operations despite the challenges faced during the pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with both teams to gather information on their COVID-19 countermeasures and analyzed their organizational resilience. The results revealed that the antecedents of organizational resilience for both teams included “social resources,” “entrepreneurial behavior,” “executive leadership,” “internal communication,” “rapid decision-making mechanism,” “excellent human resources,” “commitment of members,” “optimism and tolerance,” and “support from the league.” We also discovered that team-specific considerations, such as “social resources” (i.e., trust with stakeholders), “entrepreneurial behavior” and “executive leadership” as innovative aspects of management, may be significant for the operational success of professional sports teams in provincial cities.

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　Extracurricular sports activities have been expected to have various educational effects but have reached a major turning point. Now, there is an urgent need to implement innovations in every school. In order to solve the problems related to extracurricular sports activities, innovation in athletic club activities is being studied. The adoption process, promotion factors, and hindrance factors have been verified from cases such as multiple sports events, general athletic clubs, multiple school joint events, and regional collaborations. However, the implementation status of extracurricular sports activities innovation in every school has not been clarified. The purpose of this study was to clarify what kind of extracurricular sports activities innovations are taking place in schools, considering activities that are different from conventional club activities as innovations.
　Overall, innovations that were in line with guidelines and the context of work style reforms in schools were relatively easy to be adopted. On the other hand, innovations that fundamentally reshape the conventional nature of extracurricular sports activities, such as collaboration with external organizations and outsourcing, were less likely to be adopted. Moreover, innovations that would change the nature of extracurricular sports activities themselves from being under the control of teachers to being completely student-centered were also found to have not progressed very well. Analysis by school size suggests that it was difficult for small schools to adopt innovations such as the introduction of external instructors and collaboration with outside organizations.

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