Rethinking Intellectual Capital Accounting Through Professional Sport Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to systematize sport accounting literature with intellectual capital (IC) lenses. Professional sport organizations are knowledge-based institutions, in which the IC plays a central role. IC is a significant driver for value creation for professional sport organizations and it is the expression of their market value. The relevance of IC in professional sport organizations allows us to delve into IC accounting research. Growing but highly fragmented literature focuses on accounting and reporting practices inside professional sport organizations, and analyzes single aspects of IC. As a starting point, we analyze the sport organizations’ literature with the aim of investigating the IC value creation process. We then investigate IC accounting and reporting practices and the role of IC disclosure in relation to information transparency. The present work contributes to the extant literature by providing the “state of the art” of sport studies in accounting for IC. It also contributes to the extant literature by offering future avenues for advances in IC accounting research and theories.