The Influence of Expenditures in Football Industry Results: Case Study of the Brazilian Football League

Abstract

Reserarch question: the paper investigates the influence of football clubs investments on their performancen the first division of the Brazilian league. Motivation: Considering football as the most important sport in Brazil, representing a cultural symbol of the country, understanding it better becomes necessary. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the financial amounts involved in the management actions to try to understand the influence of the investments that the clubs make about the marketing and championships improvement and, thus, to be able to delineate the relation between investment and success in Football. Idea: In this perspective, the central hypothesis of this study is that the clubs that present the highest expenditures on soccer will also present the best classifications, since these expenses are related to better training conditions and salaries, which may contribute to the recruitment of the best athletes. Data: The study was conducted with data collected over the internet, using data provided by clubs. Only the clubs belonging to the first division were used, being a total of 19 clubs, divided into 3 groups, according to the investment value in Football. Tools: This study presents descriptive and inferential analyzes, since the qualitative-quantitative approach was assumed as a way of understanding the data. Assuming the number of clubs participating in the study, we chose non-parametric inferential analyzes in the intra- and inter-group evaluations, using the alpha value of 0.05 as criterion. Findings: The results showed that clubs in groups G1 and G2 had similar expenditures dynamics, while G3 group clubs had a slight swing. In addition, clubs in groups G1 and G2 had the largest amount of expenditures, while G3 clubs had the lowest expenditure during the period analyzed. These results demonstrated that the clubs of the G1 and G2 groups achieved the best positions in the championships, corroborating the research hypothesis. Contribution: One can conclude that the investment of the clubs directly influences the classification in the championships, being necessary great investment to conquer the championship. However, this study has some limitations, such as sample size (19 teams only). Therefore, we emphasize the need for new studies.

Sport management in Emerging Economy:

“…Group G1 reports greater spending on football, largely surpassing Group G2, in addition to conquering the best positions on the leader table of the Brazilian championship, which is connected with what was dealt with earlier in the paper. By investing more, there is a greater tendency for Group G1 to pay higher salaries to their athletes, as in this way they have even greater possibilities of fundraising since they obtain greater visibility and remain regularly in the elite and, in many cases, compete in continental competitions, which will further enhance the prominence of the teams entered in this group (Lima et al, 2018;.…”

“…The fact that Group G1 have larger squads can be related to the ability to collect more resources than Group G2 (Lima et al, 2018) allowing for hiring and keeping more athletes in the squad. It is assumed that this hypothesis was not supported by intra-group correlations because a large squad is not necessarily a skilled squad, while the wages paid to the athletes and financial condition seem to arise as more precise indicators in measuring the performance of the teams.…”

“…Whereas there is no relationship between the number of athletes on the roster and the position occupied in the table, there is a relationship between the investments into football and the classification in the League. It is understandable, with subsidies also present in the literature (Lima et al, 2018;Mijatović et al, 2015;Pavlovic et al, 2013;Pavlović et al, 2014;, that the investment in the wages of the athletes in the squad is an important aspect in the context of investment into the football department since it allows you to keep the best players for extended periods of time and thus be able to compete with a squad more qualified than those in the rival squad, corroborating partially with the hypotheses of the present paper.…”

“…Within the context described by these figures, the present study investigates if the number of athletes generally plays an important role in winning better positions on the leaderboard of the first division of the Brazilian Football, relating it to the investment in the football Department of the Club, since the literature points that football clubs investments influence the final positions obtained in the tournaments played, with large investments being needed to become champions (Lima et al, 2018), added to the information that higher-revenue teams showed better final positions in the Brazilian League table by collecting more resources. These facts suggests that they might have better conditions to keep increasing their revenues and compete for the title , signing the best players they can and paying higher salaries for the squad, for example, since wage issue can be important for athletes, even more than their own transfers between clubs.…”

The need for expatriation and the planning of the process: Organizational looks for sports

“…In sports, until the 1960s, it dominated the concept that the team belonged to the fans and that the sport could not be appropriated by the private groups (Machado, 2013). However, this vision was replaced by the vision of business management, in which sport should be a product, a way of raising revenue and, consequently, a profit for clubs and federations (Lima et al, 2018;Tertuliano et al, 2018). This was due to the globalization that the sport suffered, especially after the 1970s, when sports began to be seen as a spectacle sport, that is, an entertainment product transmitted by the media as a form of profit (Proni, 1998).…”