FiT Publishing

Russian football is currently excluded from international competitions as a political sanction due to the military conflict. Despite this, matches in the national football leagues are continuing, and fans still attend professional football matches in the Russian Premier League (RPL). As fans’ attitudes toward aspects of Russian football governance are largely unexplored, the question arises how fans evaluate the governance of the Russian Premier League. Therefore, this article presents evidence from the first large survey of RPL supporters (N = 4,090) with a focus on consumer culture and...Read more

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive restrictions and changes in many different areas of life, including professional sports. In football, many games were cancelled and then, with the unchanged maximum of three time-outs, five substitutions were allowed instead of three—initially temporarily, now permanently. We analyze the impact of this rule change on coaches’ substitution decisions, comparing 836 games with three possible substitutions and 1,000 games with five possible substitutions in the six seasons from 2017/2018 to 2022/2023 of the Bundesliga (first division of German men’s...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

This study aims to analyze fans’ demand for live football matches in the German 2. Bundesliga, focusing on match-outcome uncertainty. To examine the decision to attend sporting events, a fixed effects regression and the Tobit model were used to test the uncertainty of game outcomes and reference-dependent preferences with loss aversion. The estimated fans’ demand for attending live football matches is represented by the logged attendance of 2,442 matches from the 2010/2011 to the 2017/2018 seasons of the 2. Bundesliga. Our findings indicate that fans prefer certain game outcomes over...Read more

This paper focuses on the determinants of transfer market valuations of Italian top division football players over the period 2007‒2017. We use data provided by transfermarkt.de to estimate the association between players’ characteristics and their transfer valuation. Additionally, by applying panel regression techniques, we separate team and season effects from individual attributes. We find an inverted U-shaped association with age and a positive association with goals, assists, and minutes played in national and international competitions. Moreover, the financial sustainability of the...Read more

The number of foreign owners in football clubs has recently increased in Europe and especially in England. This study aims to analyze whether clubs owned by foreign investors show different parameters of sporting and managerial efficiency. We use data on expected performance (from betting odds), wage costs, and the results of football clubs in the English Premier League (EPL) and English Football League Championship (EFL) over 13 seasons. We estimate different measures of efficiency using three alternative methods: expected vs. actual performance index, nonparametric conditional data...Read more

In this study, we estimate an attendance demand model in a reduced form, with uncertainty as one of the determinants of demand, to test the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH). Data from the Russian Football Premier League (RFPL) are used. These data fit our requirements for two reasons. First, there are few sellout matches, so demand for tickets in the RFPL is not restricted by stadium capacity. Secondly, there have been no articles devoted to the study of outcome uncertainty in the RFPL. The results indicate that the UOH does not explain the behavioral pattern of attendees in the...Read more

Sport clubs offer marginal substitutable services and thus achieve strong emotional ties with their customers and fans. If sport clubs need financial support from their fans via a bond, the behavior of these investors might differ from that of less tied-in bond investors. The degree of fan involvement might be a decisive factor. Therefore, we use survey data obtained during a football club bond issue. We find correlations suggesting that fan bond investors with a higher fan involvement have a higher probability of investing as well as a greater tendency toward unusual investment behavior....Read more

This paper aims to answer the question of whether fans discriminate against foreign athletes. It uses data from the fantasy sports environment. The sample consists of 11 rounds in the football competition in Czechia during the 2015–2016 season. A total of 8,036 people participated in the game, and they completed a total of 53,951 squads. The final dataset consists of 3,741 observations of a specific footballer in a single round. The results show that Czech fantasy sports users prefer domestic players. The influence of the players’ origin varies depending on the region they are from. The...Read more

European football in general, and French football in particular, is experiencing huge financial difficulties and insolvencies. This paper analyses the bankruptcy of French football clubs between the 2008/09 and 2015/16 seasons. Various prediction models were used over the period 2008/09 and 2013/14 to create a model applied to French football and to provide regulatory bodies with an additional tool that could be used to evaluate clubs. A validation test was made on the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons. This paper shows that a prediction model for bankruptcy cannot be generalized to apply to all...Read more