Alternative approaches to financial and sporting performance measurement in English professional football

The purpose of this thesis is to combine, in a new way, variables of financial performance and sporting performance in professional football clubs to provide a new measure of overall performance. Previous literature on the topic indicates that the choice of variables used to measure sporting and financial performance has been haphazard and inconsistent. Subsequently, this thesis devises and tests a model that provides a new holistic measure of overall performance and can be used to evaluate the performance of professional football clubs in England. The model was produced using statistical analysis techniques to ensure that the correct variables were included and weighting factors on each variable added a further robustness to the model. The model is also timely in relation to new regulations throughout the European game such as Financial Fair Play which aims to alleviate the debt problem across professional football and encourage clubs to spend within their means. The thesis concluded a number of findings in relation to English professional football clubs since 1992. First, there has been a move towards utility maximisation among English clubs. Second, the foreign ownership model has led to an improvement in sporting performance and a decline in financial performance. Third, there is evidence to suggest that there has been a relationship between rising revenues and rising costs in English football during the last twenty years and that this shows no signs of abating. The central contribution to knowledge o f this thesis is the production of the model. The model highlights, for the first time, the relationship between variables. The thesis also provides a contribution to knowledge when analysing the performance o f clubs in the English football industry since the formation of the English Premier League in 1992. A further contribution is the potential application of the model to other professional team leagues and sports both in the UK and overseas. Such a model can be used by professional sports clubs, academics and practitioners alike to ascertain how a given club is performing in relation to its closest competitors. The model can also be used by governing bodies to inform and implement changes at policy level. Furthermore, the model and its uses are not exclusively limited to the UK given the Eurocentric nature of the work.