Determinants of football players’ valuation: A systematic review

Abstract

As a result of the growth of the football players' transfer market and the increased availability of data, scholars from different fields have been investigating the topic of the empirical determination of the football players’ valuation, that is, transfer fees or monetary valuation proposed by media, for 30 years. We propose a systematic review of the topic to provide the research community with an overview of the determinants of football players' valuation. Peer‐reviewed papers written in English on men's football presenting fully available and interpretable econometrical results were selected. Based on the careful analysis of the 29 selected papers and their empirical models, this study has two main implications. First, it classifies all the independent variables used in the literature to explain or predict football players’ valuation, and proposes a set of core explanatory variables, with associated expected signs, that constitutes the common ground on which to build further research. Second, by presenting the state of the art in the current empirical literature, it highlights the existing gaps and suggests precise future research objectives. From a more general perspective, the review provides empirical insights for researchers interested in the valuation of human resources, signaling theory, market design, or bargaining theory.

Football players in light of economic value theory: Critical review and conceptualisation

“…The determination of transfer fees has been discussed in the literature for 30 years (Carmichael & Thomas, 1993), but the availability of a crowdsourced valuation, Transfermarkt ‘market values’, has given a second wind to the empirical determination of players' valuations (Franceschi et al, 2023; Serna Rodríguez et al, 2022). Many studies on the drivers of the value of football players deem these values as proxies for transfer fees in their empirical settings (see subsequent Section 3.2).…”

“…On further investigation of this football‐related literature, we can pinpoint two indications of increased interest from academics. First is that football player valuation seems to be structuring itself as a research strand per se, as highlighted by the recent publication of two systematic literature reviews (Franceschi et al, 2023; Serna Rodríguez et al, 2022). These works shed light on the increasing number of papers published on the topic in recent years, especially since 2016.…”

“…We contrast with previous review studies, especially mainly descriptive ones, by adopting a theoretical perspective. The aim of this paper is not to analyse empirical results in terms of the influence of numerous tested independent variables on a large number of dependent variables (see, e.g., Franceschi et al, 2023). Rather, this study aims to contribute to a more critical reflection of the current state of the art by analysing the literature in light of economic value theory.…”

Farmers league: squad structure and resource dependency

“…They must interact with their environment to maintain their level of expenses. The age has been consistently tested to determine the value of the football player and shows most of the time a significant positive impact on it in the early career until a decline (Franceschi et al, 2023) The CIES (2022a) shows a significant difference in the average age of the players in 2022 in the top division between Ligue 1 (25.97 years) and more performant leagues such as La Liga (26.67 years old) and the English Premier League (27.02 years old). Interestingly the difference in average age is also quite important within the Ligue 1, with a 5.41-year difference between the oldest and the youngest team (CIES, 2022b).…”

A decision model to value football player investments under uncertainty

“…Carmichael and Thomas, 1993;Dobson and Gerrard, 1999). Due to good data availability and emerging metrics such as the "market values" of the "transfermarkt" platform, a large number of studies can now be found that attempt to estimate "objective" player values from past data (for an overview, see Rodr ıguez et al, 2022;Franceschi et al, 2023). However, there is a gap in the current literature concerning the question of how a player's investment should be appraised from a business economics perspective for the purpose of decision-making.…”