A review of studies about sports privatization indicates that almost all
countries in the world have paid considerable attention to the role and the
significance of sports privatization. However, it should be noted that there
are not only one or two factors influencing sports privatization. The main
issue is that sports privatization especially for football clubs cannot be
effective without the existence of a set of factors. Accordingly, the present
study concentrated on the most important challenges facing football clubs
privatization in Iran. This descriptive-application study has employed a
survey method. The statistical population included football managers,
university professors in the field of physical education, and sports experts.
Excel software and numerical means were used to identify challenges.
Besides, Expert Choice and ranking techniques such as AHP, TOPSIS, and
SAW were used to perform the primary ranking of factors. Prioritizing
methods such as prioritizing means, BORDA and COPELAND were
employed to merge and rank factors and indexes considered as challenges.
The findings suggested that the most important challenges were legalpolitical,
sociocultural, economic, and technological challenges respectively.
Unplanned privatization with no specific stages was considered as the main
legal-political challenge, sports underestimation in sociocultural
development programs as the main sociocultural challenge, lack of broadcast
right as the main source of income as the core economic challenge, and
finally inadequacy of loans granted to the private sector by the government was
regarded as the major technological challenge.