Soccer Mad Boffins at Wembley Stadium

As we have previously reported, here at Soccer Mad Boffins we were very pleased to have contributed to the National Football Museum's flagship World Cup 1966 commemorative exhibition which runs until 23rd April 2017.

Conveniently for footy fans in the South of England, the exhibition is replicated at London's famous Wembley Stadium until 31st December 2016.

Whilst slightly scaled-down, many of the features of the Manchester exhibition are included, as we discovered when we visited.  For example, you can see information about the public sector's involvement in planning and organising the tournament, as featured in our book 'Foundations of Managing Sporting Events':

We also got to see many other interesting exhibits and artefacts:

It was exciting to see the name of the exhibition that we had contributed to being advertised in huge writing on the front of the stadium in front of the iconic statue of World Cup winner Sir Bobby Moore:

We caught this photo from long distance just as the board message was changing, but it gives a sense of size and perspective:

More luck with this one and the good news is that the exhibition is FREE to visit:

The view from Wembley Way (aka Olympic Way):

We were also pleased to see our names on the acknowledgements list inside, at the end of the exhibition, although is somewhat smaller print than the advertising outside of the stadium!:

After a long day of travel and looking around Wembley Stadium and the World Cup '66 exhibition it was time to visit the hotel bar to rehydrate and debrief the day's work, with a great view of Wembley Stadium as our inspiriting backdrop:

The exhibition can be visited for FREE at Wembley Stadium, London and also at the National Football Museum in Manchester. More info here.

Our book 'Foundations of Managing Sporting Events' which helped to inform the exhibition is available now in hardback and e-book formats from all good book stores and libraries.

Soccer Mad Boffins Summer Conference Activity: British Academy of Management Conference 2016, Newcastle

Having spent recent weeks/months being busy launching our new book, we realised it is now already November and that we've been a bit quiet on the blog lately.

So, better late than never, we thought now might be as good a time as any to provide a quick summary of our conference activities over the previous few months.

Following July's previously reported successful jaunt to the Management History Research Group's workshop in Sheffield (and the tie-in article that we wrote for Sheffield Star newspaper about that cities hosting of World Cup 1966 fixtures) in September we headed North, to the British Academy of Management's 2016 Annual Conference - this year hosted by Newcastle University Business School.

Our paper had received positive comments during the peer review process leading up to the conference and so we looked forward to presenting our work and discussing with other peers our research.

This year the business and management history track was particularly attended and there was a real buzz about the occasion - in attendance were a number of leading academics.  We had some really productive discussions afterwards, and also outside of the seminar room.  Thanks to all who were there and who we spoke to.   It is very encouraging to see our work garnering interest from such esteemed colleagues!

We also had a space on the 'Meet the Authors' desk where our book had a display. This was a really fun thing to do and we hope to participate in more of these at conferences in future. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and spoke to us, picked up a flyer, or had a look at the sample copy of the book.

All in all a really outstanding conference. We'll be back!

Information about next years BAM conference, which will be held at Warwick, is here.