Across many segments of its workforce, the sports industry faces unique challenges with recruitment, retention, and talent development. This is, in part, due to the visibility and sensitivity of sports-related occupations to cultural, emotional, and seasonal fluctuations, and the performance of employees at all levels. We conduct a narrative review of recent literature from 2020 to 2025 related to these three challenges. We found evidence in support of competitive, informal, short-term, and irregular employment systems, high commitment and high-identification labour forces from a variety of sports-related organisational segments. We postulate that these competitive systems tend to attract high-commitment employees, but over the long term can lead to normalized work over the long term, limited labor mobility, increased exclusion, burnout, and turnover. We also examine the recent research related to the work-life balance and many of the challenges from abuse, particularly bullying, and gender discrimination, poor job design, and the unregulated use of artificial intelligence and HR analytics within the industry. We recommend shifting from informal, reactive staffing systems to transparent, formal systems of recruitment and onboarding, inclusive career systems, continuous professional development, and well-being safeguards. We offer a strategic, integrative framework that relates the context of the sports industry to specialized HR practices and employee talent.