Decrypting the specifics of professional football club investments: Why? What? How? An integrative review

Abstract

Purpose

Since the beginning of the 2000s, investors have more frequently invested into professional football clubs, thereby radically changing the industry landscape. This review's purpose is to analyze and synthesize the state of research to understand motives, roles and implications of football club investors, and to provide recommendations for further research.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents an integrative literature review by identifying relevant English articles based on the search terms investor, owner, investment, ownership, shareholder and stakeholder in combination with soccer or football. Around 2,431 articles were reviewed. A total of 129 relevant articles was analyzed and synthesized within eight subject areas.

Findings

Investors in professional club football is a young research stream with a clear European focus. Investor motives and roles are diverse and implications are multidimensional. Investors mostly aim for indirect returns rather than pure profit- or win-maximization.

Research limitations/implications

Football clubs comprise an own investment class for which the identified, unique specifics must be considered to develop a financially successful investment model. Thorough academic research of investors' inherent characteristics, investor-club pairings and the pillars of long-term strategies for successful investor-club liaisons are avenues of future research. Furthermore, the results illustrate the need for research outside of Europe.

Originality/value

The paper is the first systematic, integrative review of existing literature in the domain of equity investments into professional club football. The findings genuinely show that, depending on the investor type and ownership structure, investors have a wide impact in professional club football.

Citation

Kirsch, B., Sauer, T. and Zülch, H. (2024), "Decrypting the specifics of professional football club investments: Why? What? How? An integrative review", Sport, Business and Management, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 136-168. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-10-2022-0095