Introduction: This research aimed to identify and model the structural-interpretive factors of strategic capability in emerging university-owned sports clubs.

Methods: This research employs the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) method. The statistical population included all academic analysts with executive expertise (professors of sports management with executive and managerial experience in university and club sports). Factors were identified through a qualitative study using a thematic analysis approach. Subsequently, the factors were organized into a pairwise comparison questionnaire suitable for the ISM method. Data analysis was performed using Interpretive Structural Modeling and MICMAC analysis.

Results: The results placed 15 factors into seven levels, based on which the ISM graph was designed. The direction of influence between the variables was determined from the seventh level to the first level of the model. The seventh level included: leveraging opportunities, mitigating challenges, and requirements of university club management; the sixth level included: structural growth and learning, and strategic and managerial orientation; the fifth level included: activating sports axes, optimizing executive mechanisms, and resource provision; the fourth level included: human empowerment and talent development, networking, and participation; the third level included: professionalizing disciplines, commercialization, and marketing; the second level included: competitiveness, sports success, financial growth, and value; and the first level included: organizational maturity and club stability.

Conclusion: so the presented model explains a flow and chain of factors from environmental factors towards contextual and systemic factors, and then procedural and functional factors for the path of university sports club management and its growth.