Economics of football

cantersaddick

So as some of you know I study Economics.

Myself and a mate are doing a presentation on The Economics of football.

Things like:
-creating a football club as a brand
-marketing
-sponsorship
-ticket revenue
-merchandise
-player sales

My mate is a Manure supporter (I know...) so we thought we could concentrate on them and Charlton. Them as a shining example of how to create a brand much bigger than the football and us as an example of how to lose ticket sales and sponsorship.

This doesn't count for anything it's simply part of a 'presentation skills' workshop which I'm forced to attend even though I have been in a job where I regularly presented.... so numbers can be rough..

So basically if anyone has anyone has any ideas for this either generally or relating to Charlton that would be great. Any rough numbers with regards to sponsorship/ticket sales and what sort of drop has happened under Roland...
Any anecdotal evidence on sponsorships etc would also be useful.

Henry Irving

Try back copies of VOTV and the Swiss Ramble website.

Also Wyn Grant Wyn Grant (@wyngrant on twitter) as he's an academic so a better reference for your purposes.

cantersaddick

Henry Irving said:

Try back copies of VOTV and the Swiss Ramble website.

Also Wyn Grant Wyn Grant (@wyngrant on twitter) as he's an academic so a better reference for your purposes.

Cheers will do.

Oh_Yoni_Boy

I did economics a few years ago, might not a bad idea could use econometrics/multiple regression to try to explain the financial 'success' of a football club.

Good things:
- Good number of clubs for sample size
- The product being consumed - 'watching football' is largely homogeneous (especially in leagues below the prem where teams are largely the same in non-fans eyes) so should give relatively 'reliable' numbers
- Finance data is available as income/expenditure is published each year I believe, don't know if it's broken down into the granularity of ticket sales/wages/merchandise etc. but great if it is.
- Loads of data available for things such as attendances, geography, footballing 'success' (e.g. promotions/relegations/cup runs) which you can use as independent variables and are (relatively) easily available

I mean, if we're talking about a presentation rather than full-on essay/dissertation you could go for something bitesize like:

1. E.g. "How are attendances (or ticket revenue if you can get it) affected by league position?"

- All avg. attendances for clubs over last 5 years
- Avg. league positions over the previous 5-10 years

*regression test to see you're getting a good R-squared (explanatory power) and coefficients (significance)*

2. Chuck some more independent variables into the mix...

E.g. "How are attendances/ticket revenue affected by league position, managerial stability, player value and nearby urban population?"

- Population within 10miles of ground (probably need to estimate, but you could use Google maps and a bit of Wikipedia on the local town populations N.B. "urban population")
- Average 1st-team player wage (as a indicator of the 'quality' of team) - could use Football Manager data over the past 5 years or something as it's reliable enough for a presentation on the subject
- Net transfer income (although I'm not too sure if this is a good one - but you can relatively easily get the data and find out, always good to surprise people by show something that might be significant actually isn't if you can)

*multiple regression test to see if things are getting interesting/good results*

3. You can start comparing the figures for clubs with foreign owners to see if there's a delta in any of the coefficients, or for clubs with >1 manager per year on average or whatever you can think of. As long as you can get the stats, you can compare what you want... but I think attendance/ticket revenue would be a good dependent variable to start with - if it was me.

4. This is all assuming you have a number crunching stats programme to use at uni for regression, but I'm sure your uni has one?

5. If you're a 'stats' economics person, you can do some standard stats analysis on the regression results (test for heteroskedasticity & multicollinearity - sounds way more complicated than it actually is, if you haven't done it yet)

Edit: Sorry, got a bit carried away. Hopefully something to think about or a talking point if you didn't want to do it anyway!

Hornchurch

cantersaddick said:

Henry Irving said:

Try back copies of VOTV and the Swiss Ramble website.

Also Wyn Grant Wyn Grant (@wyngrant on twitter) as he's an academic so a better reference for your purposes.

Cheers will do.

Wyn also has a website

http://footballeconomy.com/

cantersaddick

Wow. Thanks for that. Loads of great points. You've made me wish I picked that as my dissertation topic for this year. I'll be doing all of those things but to assess the impact of universal credit on the labour market....

I do love a good regression and we have Stata here at uni. May be at bit too much detail for a presentation that doesn't count for anything.

Looking anything to football manager data for players wages is a good idea.

Thanks very much I'll certainly use some of the basic ideas you've put forward. But probably won't go into too much detail for this presentation.

The wealth of knowledge on CharltonLife never ceases to amaze me!

Oh_Yoni_Boy

cantersaddick said:

Wow. Thanks for that. Loads of great points. You've made me wish I picked that as my dissertation topic for this year. I'll be doing all of those things but to assess the impact of universal credit on the labour market....

I do love a good regression and we have Stata here at uni. May be at bit too much detail for a presentation that doesn't count for anything.

Looking anything to football manager data for players wages is a good idea.

Thanks very much I'll certainly use some of the basic ideas you've put forward. But probably won't go into too much detail for this presentation.

The wealth of knowledge on CharltonLife never ceases to amaze me!

Ha, no problem. Reliving the glory years before I became a work-drone. Good luck.

Scoham

The club accounts are available for free on companies house:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01788466/filing-history

Plenty of figures on there around income, staff costs, a bit on transfer income, debts/loans etc.

If you need a break you can also have a laugh at Meire's resignation form here:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02689249

LuckyReds

Canters, definitely have a look at the accounts that Scoham posted. The auditors that do them do a pretty good job at giving a good account of more than just the balance sheet. There's a fair amount of insight in to ambition, current priorities and so on.

cantersaddick

Scoham said:

The club accounts are available for free on companies house:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01788466/filing-history

Plenty of figures on there around income, staff costs, a bit on transfer income, debts/loans etc.

If you need a break you can also have a laugh at Meire's resignation form here:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02689249

LuckyReds said:

Canters, definitely have a look at the accounts that Scoham posted. The auditors that do them do a pretty good job at giving a good account of more than just the balance sheet. There's a fair amount of insight in to ambition, current priorities and so on.

Thanks both.