The Effect of Coopetition on Football Clubs’ Performance Regarding the Mediating Role of Open Innovation and Use of Outside Knowledge

The performance of sports clubs is considered due to the role of sports in community health; in this regard, the present study investigates the effect of coopetition on the performance of private sports clubs in the northern provinces of country regarding the mediating role of open innovation and the use of outside knowledge. This study is an applied and correlation type. The statistical population consisted of managers and members of the board directors of selected private football clubs in Guilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan that 245 of them were considered as a sample by non-randomized judgment sampling method. To collect the data, the standard questionnaires of coopetition of Bouncken & Fredrich (2012), the harmonized survey of open innovation (2012), the use of outside knowledge, and the performance of Wemmer et al. (2016) were used. Cronbach's alpha of the mentioned questionnaires is 0.816, 0.701, 0.797, and 0.803, respectively. Data analysis was performed using the structural equation modeling method of Smart PLS software. The results showed that the coopetition does not directly affect the clubs’ performance but affects it through mediating variables using outside knowledge and open innovation. It was also found that open innovation explains the highest percentage of changes in clubs’ performance. Therefore, cooperation and competition climate with using outside knowledge and open innovation can be such that the clubs’ performance is improved.