Recently, sustainable partnerships between professional sports clubs and companies are being explored, with keywords such as “sponsorship activation” and “ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investment” being used. This study aims to clarify the factors that influence the formation and enhancement of partnerships between professional football clubs in the J. League and their sponsors (official partners). We conducted a case study on the official partner of Mito Hollyhock. Several qualitative research methods, such as document collection, interviews, and participant observation, were employed to trace the process of the formation and strengthening of the partnership. The results highlight that the partnership was realized through two factors： creating legitimacy for resource mobilization by the official partner, and building empathy for the club. The coexistence of various reasons； the contribution of an opinion leader, and the organizational characteristics of the official partner (structure, culture, and size), were influential in the justification process of resource mobilization for the official partner. Furthermore, the establishment of the club’s brand promise, the implementation of management reforms, and the establishment of a brand image generated empathy from the official partner. This study suggests that partnerships between professional sports clubs and their sponsors are formed not only through the exchange of benefits, but also through co-creation.

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A variety of stressors may be encountered while trying to achieve a dual career in sports. Therefore, it is necessary for athletes to develop coping strategies to deal with stress. The purpose of this study was to identify dual career proactive coping strategies which lead to positive behavior toward realizing dual careers for athletes, and to develop guidelines for acquiring these strategies. In Study 1, the purpose of this study was to clarify coping strategies used in attaining a dual career. Six subjects were interviewed and analyzed qualitatively. In Study 2, the aim was to create a scale to measure “dual career proactive coping”. A survey was completed by 406 dual career college students. Factor analysis, t-test, and multiple regression analysis were performed. Study 1 revealed that subjects with dual careers used seven coping strategies. In particular, “proactive avoidance thinking” and “proactive avoidance behavior” were considered characteristic coping strategies for a dual career. In Study 2, as a result of exploratory factor analysis, a Dual career Proactive Coping Scale (:DPCS) for college student athletes was created with 23 factors, including four factors： As a result of examining whether there was a difference in the average score of each subscale due to the difference between the high and the low ability group and the degree of stress coping, results showed that the high ability group score was significantly higher for all four factors. As a result, it was shown that “resilient thinking” leads to high performance, and “relaxation of mind and body”, “resilient thinking”, and that “proactive avoidance” lead to high stress management. The results of this study suggest that efforts to acquire dual career proactive coping may affect the ability to perform and acquire stress coping abilities.

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In this study, from the perspective of physical education teachers, who are the human resources for physical education and sports management, we will clarify how to promote lessons on Olympic and Paralympic education in the unit of “Sports as Culture” in the area of “Physical Education Theory.” We found that, regarding “difficulty,” physical education teachers from both schools frequently answered “lack of teaching materials” and “lack of time.” Furthermore, regarding “solutions,” junior high school physical education teachersʼ answers were “considering plans,” “improving awareness and understanding” and then “devising lessons,” while the most common responses of high school physical education teachersʼ responses were, after “Improving lessons,” “Examining plans” and “Improving awareness and understanding.” These differences were thought to be due to the high level of expertise of high school teachers and the systematic practice orientation of middle school teachers. From these results, we obtained the following suggestions. Based on the “difficult” results of the former, we suggested the need to utilize teaching materials related to Olympic and Paralympic education and to develop cross–curricular and cross-disciplinary learning guidance models. Regarding the latter “solution,” we suggested the need for teacher training and the development of learning instruction models that take into account the differences in the characteristics of physical education teachers at junior high schools and high schools.

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Although esports seem to have gained a certain level of social recognition in Japan, it seems they have not been fully accepted socially, due to prejudice and criticism of esports. We examined these aspects of prejudice and criticism towards esports using Guttmann’s framework of modern sports. As a result, we found that esports are considered to be a concept that can be approximated to modern sports, not only as “spontaneous play” but also as “organized competition”, but the two concepts may be confused and misunderstood due to criticism and prejudice against esports. This fact also seems to be reflected in the definition of esports by JeSU: “In a broad sense, it is a term that refers to entertainment, competitions, and sports in general using electronic devices, and is a term used when competitions using computer games and video games are considered as sports competitions”. For example, there is a public tendency to view esports based on criticism from a specific sports ideology or prejudice such as a negative image of computer games, and individuals such as researchers may confuse the two concepts when they discuss the negative effects of esports.

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This study examines how a regional club without specific backing can acquire sponsors regardless of the teamʼs performance by analyzing the case of Fagiano Okayama, a regional club in the J 2 League. Regional clubs are overwhelmingly disadvantaged in terms of advertising revenue compared to clubs with a specific parent company behind them, but Fagiano Okayama earns a lot of advertising revenue as a regional club. I interviewed Fagiano Okayamaʼs sales representative and the presidents of the clubʼs three sponsor companies. Based on the content and the clubʼs internal materials, we examined the factors that led to Fagiano Okayamaʼs acquisition of many sponsors. As a feature of Fagiano Okayamaʼs sponsorship activities, 3 points were analyzed. (1) Sponsorship sales start from communicating the club teamʼs philosophy, not economic value. (2) Emphasis is placed on building medium-to long-term cooperative relationships, rather than on short-term sales performance. (3) Team identification from the sponsor company is obtained by utilizing the human network, such as by having the management of the company with whom the sponsorship agreement is signed introduce the business destination. Fagiano Okayama “sells dreams, not advertisements”. It appeals to the clubʼs ideology in a straightforward manner, and it gets companies that resonate with it decide to sponsor it. For that reason, they start by getting people to like it, as people, over a long period of time. They pay close attention to how they meet people and how they interact with them. This type of business is thought to be suitable for moving peopleʼs hearts.

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The theme of this research was the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) ’s Athnavi, which started in 2010 as an employment support program providing matching between companies and top athletes. In 2018, the author of this research paper focused on a possibility that Athnavi may be a new model of corporate sports and clarified some activities of twelve (12) companies, which had employed top athletes in an earlier stage of Athnavi, from a human resources management perspective through interviews with them in 2016. This research, after more than seven (7) years has passed, clarified the achievements of Athnavi, which has been regarded as established, through investigating its real situation, including what changes have occurred up to the present time.

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