Centre for the Eurasian Sport Industry

Antoine Haincourt

Expert Associate, Director of the MSc SIM at emlyon business school, Antoine’s focus is to bridge the worlds of education together with the one of the industry aiming to have an impact on students’ employability. His goal is to help students achieve their passion of sport in a complex and fast-changing environment. His lectures include consumer behaviour and branding strategy, using sport as a field of study. In addition to his management and educational mission at emlyon business school, Antoine is also advising companies identifying great insights to help them move forward to help them create long-term value. His combination of management, corporate, educational and consulting experience together with a deep and broad international culture - leading missions in Europe, North America and Asia - enables him to bridge the gap between research, strategy and business. Antoine also serves as a branding expert at Group les Echos (a leading French economy and finance newspaper) since 2012. Antoine is an avid climber and skier, and beat twice paragliding world record distance (Chile)

Michel Desbordes

Michel is a sports marketing professor at the University of Paris-Sud, France. He has also been an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and the Shanghai University of Sports, China. Mr Desbordes has published 32 reference books in the field of sports marketing, as well as numerous academic articles. As a media consultant, he is regularly consulted by BFM, France Télévisions, Europe 1, Le Monde and L’Équipe to discuss matters of sports business. Since 2009, he has also been the chief editor of the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.

Mickaël ROMEZY

Former sportsman of good level, holder of a Master in Sciences and Techniques of the Physical and Sports Activities, and the CAPEPS, Mickael Romezy teaches the sport during 12 years in the secondary and the superior. Arrived at emlyon business school in 2012, he participated in the creation of the sports services of the Campuses of Saint Etienne, Casablanca and Paris. Now in charge of the Sport Makers Department, he organizes with his team sports programs on all French campuses, he accompanies High Level Athletes on specific programs, coaches student / business sports projects and takes them to the pre-incubation, and animates the sports network of the school, all public confused. In charge of strategic sports partnerships, he develops the school's relations with the French sports institutional landscape.

Amara Mahfoud

Dr. Mahfoud Amara joined Qatar University in the fall of 2015. He is currently the Director of Sport Science Program at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University. Before joining Qatar University, he was Assistant Professor in Sport Policy and Management and Deputy Director of the Centre for Olympic Studies and Research in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University. Dr Amara published a number of papers and chapters on sport business, culture, and politics in Arab and Muslim contexts. He undertook research for a range national of international bodies. Invited speaker to a number of national and international conferences, workshops and symposia for his work on sport in the Middle East and North African region and sport and multiculturalism debates in Europe. In 2012 he published a book with Palgrave and Macmillan on “Sport Politics and Society in the Arab World”. He is co-editor with Alberto Testa “Sport in Islam and in Muslim Communities” (Routledge, 2015), and with more recently with John Nauright “Sport in the African World” (Routledge, 2018).

Anagnostopoulos Christos

Christos Anagnostopoulos (PhD.) is an associate professor in sport management at Molde University College (Norway) and at UCLan (Cyprus). Christos publishes and consults on corporate social responsibility and (good) governance in sport. Co-editor of the Handbook on Football Business and Management (2019-Routledge) and the first ever Research Handbook on Sport Governance (2019- Edward Elgar).

Kim Kihan

Kihan Kim (Ph.D. in Communciation, The University of Texas at Austin) is a professor of sport management in Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. His research expertise covers sport media communication, public sport management, and sport policy. He is the founding editor of Journal of Global Sport Management.

Li Shengxin

Dr. LI Shengxin, Vice Dean and Associate Professor of School of Management, Beijing Sport University. He is director of Centre of Sports and Regional Governance in BSU, also the Deputy Director of GASC Research Base of Sports Social Sciences, and the Member of Think-tank of Sports of Heibei Province.

Schmidt Sascha L.

Sascha L. Schmidt is a professor and director of the Center for Sports and Management (CSM) at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management in Dusseldorf/Germany. At the same time he is the academic director of SPOAC - Sports Business Academy by WHU and affiliate professor at the Laboratory for Innovation Science (LISH) at Harvard University in Boston/USA. The "Future of Sport" is one of Saschas key research areas. Among other things, he observes the global eSports market very closely. E.g. Sascha recently published the case study “Schalke 04 eSports”, in which he examines the entry of Bundesliga club FC Schalke 04 into this new field of business.

He studied economic sciences at the Universities of Essen and Zurich, where he also graduated with a doctorate. At the invitation of Harvard Business School faculty he worked in Boston as a visiting scholar, after which he joint strategy consulting. After several years at McKinsey, Sascha was appointed director of the ICS research program at the University of St. Gallen, and qualified as a professor at the EBS University (habilitation). He then entered into the world of entrepreneurship, building up the activities of recruitment agency a-connect within Germany. In 2011 he returned to academia by founding the Institute for Sports, Business & Society at EBS University. Sascha joined the WHU in 2014.

Stavros Constantino

Constantino (Con) Stavros is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, Finance & Marketing at RMIT University, Australia, and the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Sport, Business & Management. He possesses a global understanding of contemporary business practice, particularly in the development and function of marketing both through, and of, sport.

Sullivan Jonathan

Dr. Jonathan Sullivan is Director of China Programs at the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute. Hi research interests lie at the intersection of politics and popular culture in China, and include the celebrity industry, Chinese internet culture and football. His research is available at jonlsullivan.com.

Widdop Paul

Paul is a senior research fellow in sport business at Leeds Beckett University (UK) and global fellow of the Academy of Sport at the University of Edinburgh (UK). He previously held research positions across various schools at the University of Manchester.  Paul has published 4 books and over 25 peer reviewed articles with a nucleus on sport business and society. His research area is focused on social network analysis as a theory and method applied to political and economic networks. Currently he is exploring the relational nature of the geopolitical landscape of Eurasia, through the lens of sport. As a consultant, he has worked with organisations such as; The Scottish Government, The Football Foundation, Barclays plc and Department of Culture Media and Sport (UK). Since 2014, he has been reviews editor of Journal of Consumer Culture, and he is also co-founder of the Football Collective academic group.

Wong Donna

Currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Coventry University, Dr Wong has been actively involved in sport management research. Her key research areas focus on sports mega-events, mediated sports, and young people’s sports participation, which she has based her PhD thesis – Young People, New Media and Sport on. Her thesis investigates young people’s involvement in sport via the use of new media technology. It examines how sport is employed in the digital age to promote sport participation and engage with young people. These relate closely to her current research which looks at esports development where players are predominantly young people. Her research output has been published widely in books and international journals. Dr Wong has also successfully applied for the inaugural International Olympic Committee Postgraduate Research Grant in open competition in 2010 and she has further secured the FIFA Research Scholarship in 2019. These outputs and research grants not only demonstrate her familiarity with the topics in sport management and research mechanisms, these also reflect her research capability in conducting reviews and providing strategic recommendations.

In addition to her research skills, her eight years of professional appointment with the Singapore Sports Council – the leading sport authority in Singapore, has provided her with the experience of working with sports authorities as well as a good grasp of global sporting landscape. Having spent a considerable amount of time working in the sport industry, her understanding of the nexus of sporting organisations (e.g., National Olympic Committees and National Sports Organisations) established through her work experience and previous research projects will be useful in the holistic analysis of findings in projects undertaken.

Yue Meng-Lewis

Yue is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Digital Marketing at Open University Business School. She previously worked as a Senior Lecturer in Marketing & Sport Marketing at Coventry University Business School, a Lecturer in Marketing at Reading University Henley Business School, and Senior Lecturer in Marketing Communications at Bournemouth University Media School. She completed her Doctoral Studies in Marketing at Leeds University Business School, where she explored how consumers responded to sponsorship initiatives through the Olympic Games. Her research interests focus on international communication strategy, sports sponsorship and endorsement, ambush marketing, and HR practice in various cultural settings. Her work has been presented at a number of international conferences, and published in the European Journal of Marketing, the International Journal of Human Resource Management, the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, and major text books in the marketing and sport management areas. She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.

Zhao Yupei

Dr Yupei Zhao (PhD in University of Leicester, UK) is an tenured assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University, a senior research associate in China Top Think Tanks Institute of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Development Studies, Institute of State Governance at Sun Yat-sen University. A fellow in China Policy institute at University of Nottingham (UK), visiting professor in Xi’an-Liverpool University and Beijing Institute of Technology. She is co-founder and chair of UK-China Media and Communication Association. Her research interests widely includes mixed-methods use to examine neo-globalization communication and Chinese popular media (e.g. e-sport), intracultural communication (hip-pop culture), cultural diplomacy (e.g. Belt and Road Initialitive communication), social media empowering and society.