FiT Publishing

The 50plus1-rule in German football is a controversially discussed institutional change that regulates investment behavior of professional football teams. This paper provides an empirical analysis of its effects. We gathered panel data on 47 teams in the German Major League Football (“Erste Bundesliga”) from the seasons 1989/90 until 2018/19. This paper applies a difference-in-difference approach to examine investment behavior in budgets as well as sporting success between impacted competitors and those exempted from the rule. Our results do not suggest any equalizing properties of the...Read more

Many professional football clubs have big plans for new stadiums or stadium expansions. Bigger stadiums are a sign of status, help to increase and diversify revenue streams, and enhance the fan experience. So how should a football club go about getting a bigger stadium? Should they build a new one or expand their existing stadium? And how are these stadium investments associated with club performance? Using an event study approach, we analyze sporting performance in the years around stadium investments in the English Premier League from 1992/1993 to 2021/2022. We find that clubs with...Read more

To date, little empirical work has examined the institutional returns associated with athletic program investments. While intangible brand effects are commonly cited, such as athletics serving as the perceptual “front porch” of the institution, direct examination of the effects of athletic programs has often been narrow in scope. Within this study, we assess the contributions of investment in athletics as compared to other areas of institutional investment, on important institutional outcomes. Data for the study was collected from two datasets, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data...Read more