The EU needs to facilitate veteran athletes in their efforts to utilize the skills they acquired in their career in sports so as to succeed in other sectors of the economy as entrepreneurs or employees. Despite the fact that the sports sector comprises a rapidly and steadily rising section of the EU labor force representing more than 1.7 million people (Eurostat, 2018), the EU has so far not managed to ensure that this workforce will enjoy a smooth transition after retirement from the sector to (self) employment and / or entrepreneurship in other domains.
What is missing, so far from EU efforts is a tailor-made to the athletes’ needs strategy that can teach them how to “translate” the skills and competences they developed in the sports sector into skills and competences that can be applied in selected domains in which veteran athletes have the greatest potential to succeed as employees or entrepreneurs.
The project BOUNCEBACK is an initiative co-funded by the European Commission Erasmus + program and involving sports and academic institutions towards a clear objective:
To boost the integration of former athletes into employment, business and entrepreneurship.
This is done through an innovative learning approach aiming at transferring the skills acquired during a sports career into tools which are useful in the entrepreneurial and business world.