This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the performance of English Premier League football clubs from 1998/99 to 2002/03 combining sport and financial variables. The paper evaluates how close the clubs are relative to the frontier of best practices, analysing how they manage sport as well as financial results. Managerial implications of the research are devised.

In the US, most economists argue that professional sports teams are profit-maximising businesses, but it is a widely held view in Europe that professional football clubs are not run on a profit-maximising basis. This belief has important implications for the impact of widely-advocated policy measures, such as revenue sharing. This paper looks at the performance of 16 English football clubs that acquired a stock exchange listing in the mid-1990s. If the European story is true, we should have observed a shift toward profit-maximising behaviour at these clubs, under the assumption that investors were attracted to these football clubs to earn a positive return. This paper finds no evidence of any shift in the behaviour of these 16 clubs after flotation. This result is consistent with the view that football clubs in England have been much more oriented toward profit objectives than is normally assumed.

This article uses an econometric frontier model to evaluate the performance of football clubs present in the English F.A. Premier League from 1998League from -1999League from to 2002League from -2003, combining sport and financial variables. A stochastic Cobb-Douglas production frontier model is used to generate football club efficiency scores. We conclude that the price of labour, the price of capital players the price of capital stadium, points gained, attendance, and turnover all play a major role in football efficiency and find that the efficiency scores are mixed.

This article uses an econometric frontier model to evaluate the technical efficiency of English Premier League clubs from 1998/99 to 2002/03 combining sport and financial variables. A Cobb-Douglas cost specification of the technical efficiency effects model is used to generate football club efficiency scores, allowing for contextual variables which affect inefficiency. We conclude that the efficiency scores are mixed. A policy is devised for the management of this sector.

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