The framework responds to a broadening of what governments, sponsors, media, athletes, communities and fans expect from elite sport. Competitive results, medals, rankings and international prestige remain central, but they no longer provide a sufficient rationale for the resources and legitimacy claimed by many sport organizations. Publicly funded systems increasingly mention athlete well-being, sustainability, responsible governance and societal impact, while professional organizations balance sporting success with revenue, audience attention and institutional prestige. The article treats elite sport as an open system linking athletes and coaches at the individual level, organizations and policy at the intermediate level, and social, cultural, economic and political conditions at the broader level.

Performance represents competitive success, commonly expressed through medals, rankings, championships and qualification outcomes. It is both an output and a dominant organizing logic: talent identification, development pathways, coaching and support systems are commonly organized around producing results, while national policies often justify investment through measurable international achievement. Such visibility can also create engagement and commercial opportunities. Yet the analysis warns that an overriding focus on results can encourage short-term decision-making, ethical compromise and the marginalization of athlete welfare or wider social considerations. Performance may therefore generate value while also structuring the conditions under which other forms of value are diminished.

People covers both internal and external social responsibility. Internally, it includes athletes’ and staff members’ physical and mental well-being, labor conditions, organizational culture, safeguarding, professional development and the duty to create safe, fair and sustainable working conditions. These concerns cannot be detached from the pressures that produce sporting outcomes. Externally, it encompasses community engagement, health promotion, education, youth development and social inclusion. The authors argue that such activity creates more credible social value when it is integrated into strategy and governance rather than treated as a symbolic initiative. The framework also places internal and external responsibility in relation to one another, because an organization’s credibility with communities can be affected by its treatment of the athletes and staff who produce its sporting and cultural value.

Planet addresses the environmental responsibilities of elite sport, including travel-intensive competition calendars, venue energy use, construction and the maintenance of infrastructure. The article notes that elite sport is not inherently environmentally benign: globally distributed competitions may depend on extensive mobility, large venues and intensive resource use. Possible responses include altered competition calendars, lower-emission venues and less resource-intensive event formats, but each can affect reach, sponsorship value, media exposure and established revenue models. Planet is therefore both a condition of long-term legitimacy and a potential source of innovation. The framework also clarifies that environmental performance cannot simply be traded against financial gains, because legal obligations, human rights, integrity requirements and ecological limits may impose thresholds that constrain what an organization is permitted to count as an acceptable trade-off.

Profit covers the financial resources, revenue models and market mechanisms that allow elite sport organizations to operate, professionalize and sustain themselves. Broadcast rights, sponsorships, merchandise, ticketing and digital platforms provide revenue within interconnected networks of organizations, businesses, media and consumers. Financial and sporting performance can reinforce one another: income supports talent, infrastructure and innovation, while success increases visibility and marketability. But reliance on a narrow set of revenue sources or results can also create instability. Profit thus matters as an enabling dimension, not because commercial success is ethically equivalent to every other outcome, but because it is embedded in the structures that determine how elite sport organizations operate, which activities they can support and how they respond to changing expectations.

Passion captures the emotional, symbolic and identity-based value generated by elite sport. Externally, it includes fan attachment, collective emotion, belonging and the cultural meaning of teams, athletes and competitions; internally, it encompasses commitment, occupational identity, pride and a sense of calling. Passion can amplify performance, commercial appeal and social engagement, as illustrated by the article’s discussion of Wrexham AFC and its narrative-driven media profile. It is also ambivalent. Strong identification can encourage overcommitment, blur professional and personal boundaries, and normalize excessive workloads or precarious employment. The distinction from People is one of analytical function rather than stakeholder group: occupational pride may belong to Passion, while unsafe conditions affecting the same worker belong to People.

Two illustrations show why the five dimensions cannot be reduced to a simple balance. The Dallas Cowboys demonstrate how commercial scale can support sporting investment and highly curated fan experiences, while relying on resource-intensive infrastructure whose social and environmental costs are distributed among owners, workers, public authorities and surrounding communities. Olympic mega-events illustrate a different configuration: global visibility, place branding and commercial income can coexist with underestimated costs, oversized or underused facilities, displacement, intensified mobility and unequal public investment. In the article’s terms, “event takeover” occurs when the priorities of a major event displace broader urban policy. These cases are conceptual illustrations rather than new empirical assessments, and they show that apparent synergies in one dimension can coexist with unresolved pressures in another.

Governance is presented as capable of influencing these configurations but unable to erase structural conflicts. Leaders and boards can interpret competing institutional logics, alter budgets and incentives, redistribute voice, and embed decisions in partnerships and accountability systems, but they cannot remove unequal power, ecological limits or every contradiction. The article identifies strategic sensemaking, adaptive judgment, relational governance and self-regulation with integrity awareness as relevant leadership capacities. It also warns against ceremonial adoption: an organization may publicly invoke all five dimensions while continuing to reward medals and commercial returns. Testing whether commitments are substantive therefore requires comparing statements with budgets, indicators, remuneration, procurement, competition calendars, athlete representation, environmental targets and board accountability. The index is most useful when it makes exclusions and sacrifices explicit rather than when it converts complex choices into a single numerical result.

The framework remains conceptual and has not yet been empirically validated as a measurement instrument. Its examples come mainly from mature, highly visible and commercialized sport settings, so the dimensions may have different meanings or salience in resource-constrained federations, less-commercialized sports or different political and cultural settings. Future research would need to operationalize each dimension, test whether stakeholders interpret and weight them differently, compare configurations across sports and countries, and examine whether multidimensional language becomes embedded in material practice. Even with those limitations, the ESRI offers a concise way to ask a consequential question: not simply whether an elite sport organization won, but what kind of success it produced, for whom, at what cost and over what time horizon.

Subject of Research: A conceptual framework for evaluating multidimensional value creation and trade-offs in elite sport.

Article Title: The Elite Sport Relevance Index: a five-dimensional framework for understanding value creation in elite sport

Article References: Van der Roest, J.-W., & Berkhout, B. (2026). The Elite Sport Relevance Index: a five-dimensional framework for understanding value creation in elite sport. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 8, Article 1944243. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1944243

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2026.1944243

Keywords: elite sport, value creation, sport governance, performance, athlete welfare, environmental sustainability, commercial value, fan engagement, institutional logics, sport relevance, Elite, Sport