The sports labor market: An empirical comparison between Belgium and Germany

Abstract

The state structures of Germany and Belgium have undergone opposite evolutions in the past few decades. Over this period, Belgium has increased its federalized state structure, while Germany has closed the East-West separation. With 85 million residents, Germany is about eight times larger than Belgium. However, regardless of this difference, the development of the sport sector and, consequently, the labor market and employment in sport are similar between the two countries. This chapter will first provide some facts and figures about the size and trends of the sport labor markets in both countries. For Belgium, particular emphasis will be placed on Flanders, the northern, Flemish-speaking part of the country. In light of the cultural autonomy of each Belgian region, sport is mostly dealt with on a regional level, and seldom at a national level (Taks et al., 1999). While for Germany, the emphasis will be on the country, as a whole. Second, this paper examines the demand and supply of sport goods and services to provide an overview of the sport labor market. The demand side of the sport market directly influences the supply of sport labor, while the supply side of the sports market affects the demand for sport labor (i.e., the derived demand, e.g., Gratton and Taylor, 2000; Taks and Misener, 2015). The comparative approach of this analysis faces the problem of the usage of different methodologies and different types of data sets. These differences need to be carefully taken into consideration when comparing data of both countries.