The Schadenfraude Effect in Sports Management: A Conceptual Investigation

Abstract

Human relations have always had an important place throughout the historical process. The necessity of managing human relations effectively and efficiently reveals the need for the concept of management. The concept of management plays an important role in terms of the desire to ensure social peace, welfare and development. The concept of sports management is accepted as one of the sub-branches of the concept of management. Ensuring effective and efficient sports management can provide many benefits not only to the functioning of sports organizations and organizations but also to society. Sports management can be defined as the process of managing human and material resources effectively, efficiently and systematically, in line with certain objectives of sports organizations and activities. In daily life, people generally turn to the negativities experienced by other individuals in order to get rid of their failures and to feel good about themselves. This mindset can be explained by a concept known as schadenfreude, which has become increasingly popular and frequently encountered in recent years. This concept carries a complex and human aspect, expressing the secret pleasure felt at someone's misfortunes. Especially in sports management, in case of success or failure in individual or team sports, a feeling of grudge, hatred and jealousy occurs in the fans of the rival team towards success, while in case of failure, feelings of joy, happiness and relief occur. In this study, a conceptual analysis was made on the effect of the concept of schadenfreude, which expresses the feeling of happiness felt by someone else's sadness, on sports management.