The COVID-19 countermeasures and the organizational resilience of community-based professional sports teams in a provincial city: A case study of Fagiano Okayama and the Kochi Fighting Dogs

Community-based professional sports teams in Japan have played an essential role in regional revitalization. However, teams in provincial cities remain financially unstable and challenging to manage. Furthermore, many of these teams have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few years. In the present study, we explored factors that enabled two professional sports teams in a provincial city, Fagiano Okayama (J-League) and the Kochi Fighting Dogs (independent professional baseball league), to successfully maintain their operations despite the challenges faced during the pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with both teams to gather information on their COVID-19 countermeasures and analyzed their organizational resilience. The results revealed that the antecedents of organizational resilience for both teams included “social resources,” “entrepreneurial behavior,” “executive leadership,” “internal communication,” “rapid decision-making mechanism,” “excellent human resources,” “commitment of members,” “optimism and tolerance,” and “support from the league.” We also discovered that team-specific considerations, such as “social resources” (i.e., trust with stakeholders), “entrepreneurial behavior” and “executive leadership” as innovative aspects of management, may be significant for the operational success of professional sports teams in provincial cities.