Annals of Applied Sport Science

In the present research, the role of the mass media in the development of private sector participation in Mazandaran Province sports was studied. For this purpose, a sample of 130 individuals consisting of sports experts and managers and media executives participated in the survey. In the poll process, a researcher-made questionnaire was utilized after its content validity was confirmed by a number of experts in sports management and its construct validity was approved by the exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor with the LISREL software. Its reliability was determined to be 0.91 by Cronbach's alpha. The results indicated that the mass media’s roles of awareness and information, education, publicity, and culture-making in the development of private sector participation in Mazandaran Province sports are efficient while its role of social partnership has no impact on the development of the mentioned sector on the same ground. The major roles of the mass media in the development of private sector participation in sports in order of priority include culture-making, advertisement, public information, education and social partnership. There were significant differences between the participants’ views about the mass media’s role in the development of private sector participation in sports. Consequently, the media managers were found to be more willing to involve the private sector in sports.