Research fields of the International Football Institute

The International Football Institute focuses on applied and targeted research into industry and subject-specific issues relating to soccer management. Top priority is given to the technical and thematic coordination of the research topics with practice-relevant content.
Previous research fields of the IFI…

from the field of sports management:

  • Digitization in active sports

  • Restart professional start (in Germany): Comparison of restart under corona conditions in different sports leagues.

  • Corona crisis & social media: Communication in German Professional Football

  • BLSV – Sportlerapp: Preliminary study for the research project in cooperation with BLSV

  • Smart Stadium: An Empirical Analysis of the Fan Perspective

  • Sponsor integration in social media communication in professional sports – an empirical analysis for the identification of success factors and monetary value measurement bases

  • Social Media League: Quantitative Comparison of the Social Media Performance of First Division Football Clubs

  • Annual trend study: “Future Football – Trends and Challenges for Professional Football Clubs in the 3rd League in Germany” – in cooperation with the German Football Association (DFB)

  • Best practice analysis on internationalization strategies

  • League structure analysis of German soccer

  • Study series Web 2.0 in top-class sports marketing

  • Research project: “Social media marketing in top-class sports and capitalization opportunities in Web 2.0 using the example of Hannover 96”.

from the field of sports science:

  • Quantitative and qualitative game analysis in soccer

  • Participation in the training science component of the project “Computer Adaptive Performance Diagnostics in Professional Football (CLIP)” of the Business and Information Technology School (BITS) Iserlohn and the H:G College of Health & Sports, Engineering & Arts (H:G).
    > Overall project management: Prof. Dr. Ralf Lanwehr (BITS)
    > Subproject management: Prof. Dr. Jochen Zinner (H:G)

  • Optimal regeneration through cold applications

from the field of interdisciplinary research:

  • Effectiveness and efficiency of youth development centers in Germany

  • Significance and impact of U23 teams in German soccer

  • Career management in professional sports

  • Lead study 2014: “Integrity protection in soccer”.

As a research institution, we are open and interested in new research areas and approaches and welcome your suggestions.

The international university network IUNworld and the International Football Institute regularly organize events on current research results and developments.