FIFA Master 12th Edition Final Project Conference review

An intensive year for the 29 postgraduates of the 12th edition of the FIFA Master programme came to a close on Thursday 19th July 2012 with the presentation of their group Final Projects.

A specially invited audience of sports industry representatives and academic experts gathered for this important final stage of assessment. They were joined by the friends and family of the current class and former FIFA Master Alumni. The FIFA Master Scientific Committee was delighted to be able to welcome so many guests for the event.

CIES Director and IOC Executive Committee member Professor Denis Oswald provided the opening address before welcoming the first Final Project group on to the stage to begin the session. The first group of Konstanze Grammatikos, Ulf Marquard, Marc-Olivier Neu, David Squires and Guy Von Senger considered the highly topical area of Financial Fair Play with their project, ‘Financial Fair Play: The Sanctioning of clubs within European Football’. The project was the perfect way to begin the conference and generated a lot of interested questions from the audience at the end of the presentation.

Next, the morning session moved to group 2 with Lindsay-Anne Freire, Kylie Isdale, Tracy Lu and Honey Thaljieh investigating the increasingly influential area of social media in sport with their project ‘Engaging Fans through Social Media: Case Study of #WomensFootball’. Their highly engaging presentation made good use of twitter and provided a range of recommendations to help various sports capitalise on this often under exploited resource.

Following a brief coffee break, the session reconvened to learn about labour disputes in sport from James Kitching, Eric Sieber and Karolin Smeets. Their comprehensive and detailed project on ‘Resolving labour disputes in team sports – What can be learned from the FIFA and FIBA models?’ proved to be of great interest to the many legal experts in the audience. Their innovative use of new online presentation tools helped to convey a clear overview of this complex area of study.

Group 4 moved to the important role that cultural sustainability has to play in the decision making process for a modern football club. María De La Paz, Antonio Ibanez, Laura Ruhnke and Amir Sedighi made a clear argument that cultural sustainability should be a main consideration for any club and will play a vital role in the years to come. Their paper, ‘How can local football clubs be culturally sustainable? A benchmarking analysis of specific business models’ provided an excellent resource for any club wishing to develop this area of activity.

At midday the conference paused for a small buffet lunch and the chance to network and meet with friends and family who had travelled from all over the world to attend the day of presentations.

The afternoon session began with Mirella Arnhold, Alexandre Cabot, Mario Maggi, Andres Portabella and Federico Raviglione delivering a fascinating overview of their work on ‘Benchmarking of Continental Club Football Competitions: What can be gained from the success of the UEFA Champions League? The Case of Copa Libertadores’.  Their research assessed the potential implementation of key success factors of the UEFA Champions League into other major competitions.

Group 6 captivated the audience with an innovative presentation style as they emphasised the threat of match fixing to the integrity of world sport with their project, ‘Stealing back the world’s game: A realistic approach to combat match fixing’. This impressive presentation from Rhali Amrani, Diana Engetschwiler, Adam Giles and Robert Swain was later awarded the Madella Prize for best presentation by the course Scientific Committee.

The final project of the day was presented by Aneeqah Dinaully, Enio Gualberto-Junior, Sonam Jigmi and Chaerhee Lee. In response to the global economic crisis, their project ‘Sailing on stormy waters: Are high-performance sport programmes sustainable under the global financial crisis?’ provided a thoughtful analysis of the challenges and possible new approaches that world sport should adopt to negate as far as possible the impact of the financial crisis over the next few years.

The closing remarks to this fascinating day of Final Project presentations were provided by Professor Denis Oswald.

Thank you to all of the Final Project tutors and academic staff who help guide the 12th edition students throughout the Final Project process.

Finally, congratulations to the 2011 – 2012 Final Project groups on the quality of your work and presentations!