Impact d'un haut potentiel financier sur les résultats sportifs d'un club de football

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of financial resources of a professional football club on its sporting results. The first chapter will cover the rise in the European football market. We will see how the revenues have increased over time. To do so, we will focus on the main incomes: broadcasting revenues, sponsoring revenues, gate receipts and revenues from the UEFA. To conduct our analysis, the Big Five leagues as well as the Belgian and Dutch leagues will be examined and compared. We will report the differences among those leagues in terms of capabilities to develop their own market. The second chapter will show the consequences of this rise in revenues and how the clubs came to spend sprees. The boom in the transfer market will be highlighted. The question of a potential financial bubble over salaries and transfers will also be analysed. Further we will deal with the financial problems of clubs and show how the domestic leagues and the UEFA have developed financial controls to give economic credibility to the clubs and stop repetitive losses. To end this chapter, we will focus on the change in the clubs’ financial health. In the third chapter, a statistical study on three football leagues of different size will be done. The aim of this survey will be to estimate the correlation between the sportive results and the financial resources: revenues, payroll cost and profit before taxes. A period of ten years will be considered which represent a lifetime in football. The conclusion of this study will be exposed as well as its limits. This report will end with an attempt to show the possibilities given to smaller clubs to disrupt the current supremacy of the Big Five.