The next event will be held with more quality: Identifying and prioritizing barriers to knowledge management in sports events

Abstract Effective knowledge management can help in better performance of projects such as sports events, and it can prevent the reinvention of systems, ideas, and also the repetition of errors. However, considering their temporary nature, projects face serious barriers in effective knowledge management. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to identify and prioritize the barriers of knowledge management in sports events. The statistical population included sports managers and also professors who were knowledgeable about the research subject. Barriers to knowledge management in sports events were identified in two steps. In the first step, the literature was reviewed, and then an interview was conducted with the samples, and in this way, three indicators and 19 sub‐indices were identified. Next, a questionnaire was designed. After collecting the questionnaires, the barriers were ranked through the process of pairwise comparisons in an analytic hierarchy process. The results showed that the most important barriers to knowledge management in the sports event are managerial barriers, with a relative weight of 0.521; barriers related to human resources, with a relative weight of 0.356; and infrastructural and support barriers, with a relative weight of 0.123. The results showed the importance of managerial barriers in the knowledge management of sports events, which shows the necessity of informing and training managers in this area.