As the voluntary football clubs grew in numbers the non-governmental umbrella organisation Danish Football Association (DFA) was established to represent the clubs and work to improve the conditions for football. From a macro perspective, the DFA and the clubs are closely linked, with the DFA serving as an interest organisation holding and representing the clubs. Yet their organisational peculiarities build on different non-profit regimes due to their different positions in civil society, not least their different state-subsidised cash flows rooted in different rationales. These different positions have been building up for the last hundred years and are regulated by different laws and different societal discourses, creating institutional inertia due to path dependence. This system has shown to be sustainable, yet the context surrounding sport is changing creating a need for the involved actors to become innovative to embrace new challenges, rooted in sports participation patterns and sport policy. Against that backdrop, the research question is: What do different civil society positions mean to their relationship as “member clubs” and “interest organisation” and how does it affect their ability and attitude towards new challenges. The methodology applied is rooted in institutional theories (Scott, 2014) and document analysis using a hermeneutic deductive coding strategy. The documents (pp.300) provide information on the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements of respectively the DFA, the regional country units and the clubs. Moreover a recently completed survey on voluntary football clubs in Denmark will contribute to the understanding.
Keywords: Sports Organizations; Sports Clubs; Sport Policy; Civil Society