University College of Northern Denmark will host the annual conference of the European Association for Sport Management (EASM) in Aalborg, Denmark, on 18-21 September 2012 in partnership with Play the Game/Danish Institute for Sports Studies.

In Monday’s final session of Play the Game 2009, a number of experts gave varied and incisive presentations on football’s finances. In today’s economic climate, they asked, will football survive in its present state? And if not, what changes can we expect?

Knowledge bank: Sport and exercise professionals generally have a deep, even romantic attachment to sport. While the field of sport, exercise and physical education has much to commend it, it is important that professionals in this division of the ‘body industry’ have a complete and unsentimental grasp of it.

Football can, it seems, revive national rivalries and conjure the ghosts of past wars. But football, can also, in a different way than long speeches or international resolutions, help induce progress toward peaceful solutions for military conflicts.

Knowledge bank: FIFA has more member nations than the UN. Steven Menary examins the reasons for this phenomena in his conference presentation at Play the Game 2005.

Knowledge bank: In this conference presentation paper, Raymond Boyle from the University of Stirling, examins the increasingly complex relationship between sports, media and public relations.

Knowledge bank: Words of welcome by Jens Sejer Andersen, Director, Play the Game, at Play the Game 2005: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Knowledge bank: Professor Christine Oughton, Director, Football Governance Research Centre, speaks about strategies and corporate governance in football.