SUMMARYProfessional football clubs are unusual businesses, their performance judged on and off the field of play. This study is concerned with measuring the efficiency of clubs in the English Premier League. Information from clubs' financial statements is used as a measure of corporate performance. To measure changes in efficiency and productivity the Malmquist non-parametric technique has been used. This is derived from the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) linear programming approach, with Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) being used to ensure the cohesion of the input-output variables. The study concludes that while clubs operate close to efficient levels for the assessed models, there is limited technological advance in their performance in terms of the displacement of the technological frontier.

Purpose -To critically evaluate football club financial reporting with reference to: the long-standing debate on the nature and purpose of accounting; and the implementation of UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.Design/methodology/approach -The paper is based on a review and analysis of academic literature, accounting regulation and football regulations.Findings -The focus of financial reporting on rational economic decision-makers results in football club financial reports being of limited use to many football club stakeholders. Consideration of the social and organisational context of football, as takes place in FFP, can be used as a catalyst to consider broader approaches to football club reporting. The paper calls for fuller and different pictures to be provided of clubs' performance, in particular broadening the scope of accountability to users beyond that provided by an economic account.Research limitations/implications -The paper is designed to stimulate debate about accounting for and reporting on football club businesses. A necessary next step is an exploratory project, focusing on one or a small number of clubs and their stakeholders, exploring in a practical setting what enhanced football club reporting might look like.Originality/value -While the weaknesses of financial reporting have been considered extensively in the mainstream accounting literature and on occasion in terms of sport, the paper seeks to progress this discussion by linking it to significant football policy initiatives and to wider social and community-based football research. IntroductionThe substantial increases in income enjoyed by top level football clubs in recent years coupled with the resultant benefits gained by elite players have perhaps inevitably resulted in increased emphasis on the business of football and football clubs. Financial performance has become one of the dominant narratives about football with regular commentary on financial success or failure at league and club level. More pertinently, to some extent at least, football as an economic activity has become normalised, in the sense that increasingly clubs are being viewed and reported on by leading commentators as if they were normal businesses (Moorhouse, 2007).Notwithstanding football's highly commercialised nature, this process of normalisation is problematic: football has always been and continues to be a social business; economic in basis, but social in nature (Hamil et al., 2001;, Morrow, 2003Nash, 2000). This approach encourages recognition of the social aspects that distinguish football from purely economic activity; that is how its economic activity affects or is affected by its communities of interest or stakeholders. In recent years there has been increased attention afforded to the ways in which elite level clubs give effect to their putative social and community role and to their resultant accountability to those communities or stakeholders. At one level this has focused on the organisational and governance structure of clubs (see, ...

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Women's football struggles to build a solid platform in terms of fan interest. However, while an increase in gate receipts can help assist its long-term sustainability, there is limited evidence in the academic literature on the factors influencing spectator demand in women's football.The authors investigate determinants of stadium attendance for UEFA Women's Champions League (UWCL) matches. Using regression models deployed on 554 UWCL games played between 2009/10 and 2017/18, the authors examine contextual and sport-related variables as the main predictors of stadium attendance. Findings show that there is no continuous growth of attendance over the period examined, and highlight that spectators' interest is positively associated with five factors: stage of the competition, uncertainty of match outcome, competitive intensity, away club's reputation and weather conditions. Football governing bodies should put in place initiatives to ensure match outcome uncertainty is maintained as this represents a key determinant to maximise stadium attendance. Based on the specific context of European women's football, recommendations to foster its development are discussed. These include incentivising investment into the elite women's game and designing sport policies to encourage participation at grassroots levels.

Building upon calls for research on how rather than whether things are done when CSR is implemented in an organization (e.g. Smith, 2003) However, this type of CSR research remains under-developed in sporting contexts, a sector that benefits from 'coopetition' or cooperative competition. As professional sport is in direct and indirect competition (amongst teams and leagues, between sports and other entertainment forms, for sponsors, fans and air time) and co-

Abstract:Few professionals perform their jobs in an environment as public, as pressurised, as shorttermist and as unforgiving of mistakes, as that which exists for football club managers.

The French Football Federation was the first football governing body to put in place, in 1990, a financial regulation system. It might be expected that UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) system established in 2010 would be similar to French DNCG (National Direction for Management Control) regulations. However, while FFP is concerned with profitability, DNCG is focused on solvency. Hence, a French club may be loss making and not compliant with FFP, while at the same time being solvent in accordance with DNCG rules. Our research confirms that most French clubs do not conform with FFP rules. As such, it provides further evidence that DNCG has not prevented poor financial management within French clubs. The coexistence of DNCG and FFP -or any other domestic financial regulation and FFP -may result in disparities between domestic clubs. As a consequence, there should be consistent financial regulation in all European leagues.

Italian football represents a paradox. It produces teams which, at the elite level, are the most successful in European club competitions, and second only to Brazil in national competitions. The quality of its players, in terms of sporting excellence, make it one of the most admired football cultures in the world. The romance and tradition of Italian football captures the imagination of a global sporting public. On the other hand, the industry is chronically unprofitable and unstable, and characterized by a long history of financial scandal. The 2007/2008 season saw it continue to endure an ongoing crisis of confidence in the wake of financial and sporting scandals, an upsurge of spectator violence in dilapidated stadia and crowds well below their peak in the 1990s. This article presents a comprehensive case study of the recent history of Italian football focusing on its administration, governance and regulation. The objective of the case study is to provide a detailed context, in one of the big five European football markets (the others being England, France, Germany and Spain), against which to analyse and inform fresh thinking on how more effective systems of corporate governance in European football might be developed. Much of what is written about the governance of football tends to focus on the English industry. A premise of this article is that it is necessary to move beyond an anglo‐centric orientation and analyse the systems and experience in other European football markets and cultures. This is because football in individual countries forms part of a pyramid structure ultimately governed by the European football governing body, UEFA. What happens in individual country markets has the potential to affect what happens in other markets either by way of example, through influencing UEFA policy, or through precedent‐setting rulings in the courts, such as the Bosman ruling of 1995 which allowed players free movement at the end of their contracts without a transfer fee having to be paid as had hitherto been the case. The case study is interdisciplinary in its focus - economic, social and political dimensions are all important in trying to understand what constitutes the Italian model of football, a European model of football or indeed the European model of football. Critically the article asks the following questions: (1) Is it possible for Italian football to prosper in an environment in which there appears to have been significant shortcomings in governance? (2) If not, what should be the key planks of an agenda for reform? (3) Is there potential for 'contagion' of negative Italian experience in the rest of the European football market