This timely book offers a critical interpretation of the traditional social and economic accounts of sport. It provides an incisive analysis of professional sport and defines alternative foundations to the present model. The authors demonstrate that professional sport is an extremely complex phenomenon encompassing many unique factors depending on its global reach, financing and organization.This insightful and topical book is essential for academics and students of sport management, researchers of the economics of sport, managers of clubs and federations involved in professional sports as well civil servants and journalists.