Influence of the Team Value of Professional Football Clubs on Their Success in Sports

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.