Organization
Larger sports clubs are characterized by having professional and amateur departments in various sports such as football (soccer), basketball, futsal, cricket, volleyball, handball, rink hockey, water polo, rugby, track and field athletics, boxing, baseball, cycling, tennis, rowing, gymnastics and others, including less traditional sports such as airsoft, billiards, orienteering, paintball or roller derby. The teams and athletes belonging to a sports club may compete in several different leagues, championships and tournaments wearing the same club colors and using the same club name, sharing also the same club fan base, supporters and facilities. Many sports clubs have an associate system where the affiliated supporters pay an annuity fee. In those cases, the supporter becomes eligible to attend the club's home matches and exhibitions across the entire season, and have the right to practice almost every kind of sport at the club's facilities. Registered associate member fees, attendance receipts, sponsoring contracts, team merchandising, TV rights, and athlete/player transfer fees, are usually the primary sources of sports club financing. In addition, there are sports clubs, or its teams, which are publicly traded and listed on a stock exchange - several professional European football clubs belonging to a larger multistports club are examples of this (namely, Portuguese SADs (Sociedade Anónima Desportiva) such as Sport Lisboa e Benfica and Sporting Clube de Portugal, or Spanish SADs (Sociedad Anónima Deportiva) Real Zaragoza, S.A.D. and Real Betis Balompié S.A.D., as well as Italian clubs like Società Sportiva Lazio S.p.A.).
Some sports teams are owned and financed by a single non-sports company, for example the several sports teams owned by Red Bull GmbH and collectively known as Red Bulls. Other examples of this are the several sports teams owned by Bayer AG and Philips corporations through the TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen and PSV Eindhoven respectively, that originally were works teams, the teams owned by the Samsung Group, and the teams owned by the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). They may compete in several different sports and leagues, being headquartered in some cases across several countries.
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—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)