Sustainable Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Sports Industry

Sustainable entrepreneurship is a new business driven concept with the aim to increase both social and business value. The three pillars of sustainable entrepreneurship are people, profit and planet. The question that comes frequently in discussion is how businesses can mix these three and bring human beings in a balance with the nature by keeping the profit goal. Sports industry registered a huge increase in the last twenty years, including Romania, especially on the side of amateur sports people, usually employees who are seeing sports activity as a way of reaching the life-work balance and a way of destressing after a hard working day. Sports entrepreneurs observed very quickly the opportunity of this form of spending free time, especially through activities done outside in the nature and started to organize diverse events like mountain marathons, cross biking, duathlons etc. The novelty comes from the fact that many events, especially in Romania, have the component of “planet”. People are participating because e.g. part of the fee is financing ecological or social projects in different regions of the country. The aim of this paper is to analyze the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship in relation with different sports events and answer to some questions. How many organizers take into account the social part of the events? Are they more interested in ecological, social or other type of value? Participants decide where to go based on the social or ecological causes financed? Based on different research methods the author is outlining the typology of sports events at the amateur level in Romania and the interest of combining the profit with the social value goal. The results of the study might be of interest for several groups of stakeholders (public authorities, NGOs, companies, managers etc.) when developing public policies, proposing life-work balance programs and other measures aimed at stimulating sustainable entrepreneurship.