Pricing practices of football and basketball clubs in Italy

Abstract

Revenue management is widely adopted across industries—except in the sports industry. In the context of the present study, we contact every single football and soccer club belonging to the top league in Italy—one of the world’s most successful football nations—and obtain responses from close to half of all clubs. We find that one-third of all football clubs apply revenue management, far more than basketball clubs. Basketball clubs rely heavily on fixed pricing, whereas soccer clubs use variable pricing or revenue management. Study data also suggest that perceived barriers to revenue management include a fear of alienating customers or perceived high implementation costs; since experiences of revenue management implementation are overwhelmingly positive, this study suggests that the fears of revenue management implementation are overblown. This study advances research on the practical implementation of revenue management in non-traditional industries and provides an encouragement for executives working in other industries to implement revenue management.