Equity Crowdfunding in Sports Clubs: Consumer Oriented Strategic Marketing

Equity crowdfunding is a new way for seed stage start-ups to generate initial capital and, as such, raises questions around the choices made by investors within this area. Understanding it is important for investor protection, as investors are generally unaware of the factors that can influence their decisions. However, investing in equity crowdfunding places the investor in a unique decision-making framework, in which resources such as images, videos and storytelling are all mobilized by entrepreneurs and platforms as tools of persuasion.

Equity crowdfunding is a new way for seed stage start-ups to generate initial capital and, as such, raises questions around the choices made by investors within this area. Understanding it is important for investor protection, as investors are generally unaware of the factors that can influence their decisions.

Sport, and in particular the sporting environment, has undergone significant changes in recent decades. The social significance and commercialization of sport; the use of new technologies and organizational structures; and the involvement of various stakeholders matter more today than ever before.

This book focuses on the relevance of equity-side innovative financial tools for SMEs in overcoming financial threats. Scholars identify difficulties in the financial sphere as the main causes of SME mortality. Such problems do not allow them to reach sustainable growth. It thus becomes critical to have the best knowledge of innovative financial tools to overcome financial constraints. By exploring the origin of financial needs, the book aims to observe how innovative equity-side financing tools, particularly equity crowdfunding, contribute to the SME dimension. The work outlines the main development factors, observing equity-crowdfunding’s effect on the rate at which SMEs reach sustainable total development (STD). Moreover, outlining the fundamentals of the main theories developed on financing choices, the work concludes with a systematic literature analysis on equity crowdfunding, highlighting the main features that currently increase scholars’ interest in the topic.