The Serious Game “Top Eleven” as an Educational Simulation Platform for Acquiring Knowledge and Skills in the Management of Sports Clubs

The aim of this study is to examine whether students of a sport management undergraduate course can gain knowledge in the management of a professional soccer club, by participating in a commercial serious game. Serious is considered the cyber game that its purpose exceeds entertainment. For this case study, the serious sport club management game was “Top Eleven”. The theoretical model that this study was based on, is Misfeldt’s “scenarios based learning” for the transformation of a serious game into an educational means. It includes dimensions that cover part of the sport management class content in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Physical Education and Sport Science. The transformation consisted of educational scenarios vested to the serious game, in order to add educational parameters to its basic elements with the purpose to relate further to the sport management class. The application showed that Top Eleven covers adequately Misfeldt’s model dimensions; therefore it can be used as an educational tool. Furthermore, an evaluation of the class gamification was conducted by the participating students (n = 62). The data collected showed that the majority of the students (f = 61, 98.4%) agreed that the participation in the serious game was “helpful” to their sport management class education process. They further agreed that they gained “very” or “very much” knowledge related to the management of a professional soccer club (f = 41, 66.1%) and that 59.7% (f = 37) of them would choose to work in a position of “sport club manager” as a result of the experience they gained by participating in the serious game.