Professor Foster, specialist in sports management, entrepreneurship and finance, is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Management at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the 2011 Sir Douglas Myers Visiting Professor.
He says his philosophy of sporting codes sharing the pie in order to create greater overall growth leads him to advocate that revenue sharing and value creation also take place at the individual country level.
“At the moment, when the All Blacks, for example, go to play in other countries, the host country gets to keep the revenue and the visiting country gets the expenses [of going there].”
He says this doesn’t make sense from pure business point of view. “I envisage 70/30 percent revenue share.”
He acknowledges it is not always easy to put in place revenue-sharing schemes. Television rights running over extended periods are likely to create roadblocks.
“But it is possible to construct situation that creates far better alignment with the stronger brands getting much better rewards for their strength than you do under the current system.
“The big danger at the moment is that you may not get enough revenue coming through to justify building and sustaining your best brands in sport.”
Professor Foster is the author of the “Global Entrepreneurship and the Successful Growth Strategies of Early-Stage Companies 2011” report.
Released by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Stanford University and Endeavor Global, it shows the top one percent of companies, from among 380,000 companies reviewed across 10 countries, contribute 44 percent of total revenue and 40 percent of total jobs.
The top five percent of companies contribute 72 percent of total revenue and 67 percent of total jobs.
• For copy of the report: www3.weforum.org/
• For video: www.weforum.org
