The Indirect Effects of Participation in Sports on Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Russian Longitudinal Data

The article presents a theoretical model and its corresponding empirical test on the indirect effects of participation in sports on entrepreneurship among non-professional athletes. The empirical strategy consists of panel data econometric techniques, controlling for confounding factors and possible endogeneity concerns. Data are taken from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey ( n = 197,699 observations from 33,889 individuals over the years 2000–2019). The results suggest that individuals who engage in sports and/or physical exercise are more likely to become entrepreneurs, including self-employed individuals, as well as to hire more workers compared to their sedentary counterparts. Overall, non-professional athletes may increase their likelihood of becoming entrepreneurs by 12% to 36% (odds ratios), and hire about 1% to 2% more employees. Therefore, entrepreneurship should be added to the long list of reasons for the promotion of sports and physical exercise. Other implications and specific findings by age, gender, and type of sport are discussed.