Abstract
Research background:Professional football is becoming more and more commercialized. The most recent attempt to establish a “Super League” failed, but the big football clubs are nevertheless trying to generate success in sports through increasingly high player transfers.Purpose of the article:The aim of this paper is to empirically test the above statements and assumptions. On the one hand, the question arises whether the placement in a ranking table of a competition depends on the investment volume. At the same time, it is analyzed whether this relationship exhibits stability over time. Table placement was chosen because it has a direct influence on the distribution of funds in a competition. In addition, individual matches are analyzed to determine whether the investment volume has a statistically significant influence on winning a match.Methods:The years 2014 to 2020 of the competitions of one of the top five European leagues, the German Bundesliga, are prepared in a database. In addition to the player results and table positions, the market values of the players in the season are used. All data is taken from the website Transfermarkt.de. In the context of the table rankings, a regression analysis is performed to explain the place in the table by the market value of the team. When analyzing individual matches, the team value on the field in each case is determined and the differences between the values of the teams playing are established. These differences are explained as a dependent variable in a regression line with three dummy variables: won, lost, and draw.Findings & Value added:The results enable the management of football clubs to make an investment decision for a successful future. They show, on the one hand, whether the team value has an influence on the league position and, on the other hand, on the match result.
Highlights
Football is the most popular sport and inspires millions of people worldwide
Findings & Value added: The results enable the management of football clubs to make an investment decision for a successful future
Primary focus in the dataset creation was on the individual matches, the minutes played by the players and their market values at the time of the match
Summary
Football is the most popular sport and inspires millions of people worldwide. While amateur football is mainly about enjoying the game and feeling part of the team, professional football is more about success and economic factors. Hackinger (2019) investigated if football coaches let players with high transfer fees play longer despite bad performance and came to the conclusion that professional sports teams in Germany act rationally. The issue of property rights, in particular, is of immense economic importance for professional clubs, as they can be used to achieve sporting as well as economic success. In order to achieve their respective sporting and financial goals, clubs are increasingly willing to sign new players under property rights or to sell players who are already under contract. In this context, ever higher transfer fees are paid from season to season. In order to investigate this issue, the five major European professional football leagues will be evaluated on the basis of a data set
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