Technologies such as Robotic Process Automation or Artificial Intelligence are becoming increasingly recognized as essential elements and engines of digital transformation in businesses today. However, especially in the professional sports industry, the adoption of these technologies appears to be lagging behind. This paper aims to provide a deeper perspective and understanding of the drivers and inhibitors of the adoption and use of innovative process technologies in professional sports. To this end, we conducted a grounded theory study of data collected from two German professional soccer clubs: one from the first league (Bundesliga) and one from the third league (3. Liga). Our study shows that adoption depends upon expected efficiency and effectiveness gains, perceived ease of use, perceived (positive) market pull, and perceived (negative) supporter perception. While the first three constructs are well-known in the technology acceptance literature, the latter two are comparably new in this research stream. Therefore, we discuss especially the impact of perceived positive market pull (i.e., a pull from clubs’ sponsors and competition) and perceived negative supporter perception (i.e., the fear that customers might lose loyalty due to increasing process digitalization) on the adoption and use of innovative process technologies in professional sports.

机器人流程自动化或人工智能等技术正日益被视为当今企业数字化转型的基本要素和引擎。然而，尤其是在职业体育行业，这些技术的采用似乎滞后。本文旨在提供更深入的视角和理解在职业体育中采用和使用创新过程技术的驱动因素和阻碍因素。为此，我们对从两个德国职业足球俱乐部收集的数据进行了扎根理论研究：一个来自第一联赛（德甲）和一个来自第三联赛（3.Liga）。我们的研究表明，采用取决于预期的效率和有效性收益、感知的易用性、感知的（积极的）市场拉动、和感知（负面）支持者感知。虽然前三个结构在技术接受文献中是众所周知的，但后两个在这个研究流中相对较新。因此，我们特别讨论了感知的积极市场拉动（即来自俱乐部赞助商和竞争的拉动）和感知的消极支持者感知（即担心客户可能因流程数字化增加而失去忠诚度）对采用和使用的影响职业运动中的创新工艺技术。