The Effect of a Sports Institution's Legal Structure on Sponsorship Income : The Case of Amateur Equestrian Sports in Germany

Choosing the legal structure of a sports institution is one of the key decisions that sports managers must make, in part because the legal structure influences the revenue composition of sports institutions. Based on platform theory and property rights theory, this paper suggests that members associations receive higher sponsorship revenues than private firms. This study empirically confirms this assumption for amateur sports with data from a survey of equestrian sports institutions in Germany