Athletes as Entrepreneurs

Background Education during the active career of athletes was always challenging. “Dual career” arrangements should allow sportspeople to benefit from their sporting career as well to be well prepared for the time after their active sporting careers and to choose sport AND education. AtLAS is relevant to the objectives of the European policies in the field of sport and is in the pursuit of the objectives from European Commission Guidelines on Dual Career of Athletes. Objectives AtLAS developes athletes’ entrepreneurial competences, strengthens athletes’ knowledge about starting and running a business and fosters entrepreneurial spirit among European athletes. AtLAS is a hands-on flexible training programm for high-level athletes who are planning to start their own Business. The skills cultivated on any playing field serve athletes professionally, beyond competitive sports. Thus they have high potential as Entrepreneurs. To fully exploit this potential, AtLAS comes in. Implementation AtLAS provides athletes a most current learning content in the field of Entrepreneurship adapted for the needs of high-level athletes with some interesting benefits for our special target group. The AtLAS Training programm developed combines a blended learning concept with the tailored-made AtLAS MOOC and concise courses. The AtLAS MOOC enables the target group to learn time and location flexible and offers an interactive learning experience in an intenational setting. Achievements The AtLAS Piloting Training took place in the beginning of 2022. High level athletes from 10 countries participated in the AtLAS learning experience. 43 of the 100 enrolled participants completed the AtLAS MOOC training. 43 % is a very high completion rate compared to other MOOCs. This is due to the very good and individual support of the participating athletes as well as the extremely flexible AtLAS learning framework with special consideration of the needs of high-level athletes.