Underdogs in the game: how sport start-ups navigate collaboration with external actors

Start‑ups have become important catalysts of innovation in sport. Despite their organizational agility and experimental capacity, sport start‑ups remain constrained by scarce resources, low legitimacy, and limited access to innovation infrastructures, making it essential to understand how they engage in collaboration with external actors. This study examines how sport start-ups experience collaborative opportunities and interactions with established actors in their ecosystem. Theoretically, we draw on the open innovation literature in combination with theories of organizational learning. Methodologically, the study is based on qualitative interviews conducted between May and August 2025 with 15 executives of sport start-ups in Italy. Data were analyzed thematically through a collective qualitative analysis strategy. The findings demonstrate that collaboration with external actors is both necessary and risky for sport start-ups. Furthermore, the study shows that Italian sport start-up executives continually navigate power asymmetries as well as bureaucratic and institutional complexities in their interactions with external actors within their ecosystem. Collaborations therefore appear ambivalent for sport start-ups. While they are crucial for access to resources, skills and legitimacy, they are also a source of vulnerability if the relationship with the external actor is unbalanced or slowed down by institutional logic that is incompatible with the rapid pace that characterizes start-ups. This study indicates that meaningful analyses of open innovation in sport must consider the institutional complexities and bureaucratic constraints shaped by national innovation systems and national sport models.