A new decision model proposal for the place of sports marketing and logistics activities in outsourcing: An application in the football industry

Supplier selection, which has an important role in sports activities, is an important decision problem that has direct and indirect effects on the success, effectiveness and general performance of sports activities. In addition, it is possible to accept it as an important and vital component of viewer's satisfaction. Therefore, sports clubs and other stakeholders have to take this factor into account when planning organizations and structure their activities accordingly. In this perspective, a sports club has to take seriously the choice of service supplier related to its activities and design processes related to this. Accordingly, considering the possible alternatives meticulously and determining the criteria to be taken into account for their evaluation and selection, in addition, the creation of a strong, applicable and methodological framework that can cope with uncertainties can play an important role in solving the decision-making problem in question. Thanks to this study, based on the results of an in-depth literature review, extensive field studies and research in the relevant field, it has been determined that there are three important gaps in the literature. First, the number of studies on the selection of service providers for sports activities is extremely low. In this respect, the number of these studies is insufficient to produce managerial and practical implications. Secondly, there is a lack of a reliable, robust and methodological framework that can meet the requirements in the studies in the literature. In this respect, the few available studies do not offer people in charge an approach that they can apply to real-life problems. Thirdly, there is no agreed and generally accepted set of criteria to evaluate sports providers. It is not clear enough how the criteria sets used in the current studies are determined. At the same time, there is not sufficient evidence about the method or methods applied to determine the criteria in these studies. This study, which has been put forward by keeping all these requirements and gaps in mind, aims to contribute to the elimination of all three gaps with an application in the football industry. In this context, first of all, the SWARA method, which is an extremely up-to-date and effective "multi-criteria decision-making approach" in the perspective of Type-2 neutrosophic fuzzy numbers, which is an approach that captures and processes the uncertainties at the highest level, is proposed as a methodological framework for the evaluation and selection of football suppliers. In addition, this study was carried out with a comprehensive literature review as well as fieldwork carried out with experienced and in-depth knowledge experts in the football industry. In this respect, the study presents a set of criteria suitable for current and real life problems. This set of criteria can be taken into account by decision makers in order to solve the decision-making problems that arise in the football industry, and it can also be inspiring for authors and researchers who will work on this subject in the future. After applying the research methodology, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis of three stages regarding validity and consistency was conducted. The results of the analysis confirm that the proposed new decision model is an extremely stable, consistent and powerful decision-making tool.