Professional football clubs are unusual businesses, their performance judged on and off the field of play. This study is concerned with measuring the efficiency of clubs in the English Premier League. Information from clubs’ financial statements is used as a measure of corporate performance. To measure changes in efficiency and productivity the Malmquist non-parametric technique has been used. This is derived from the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) linear programming approach, with Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) being used to ensure the cohesion of the input–output variables. The study concludes that while clubs operate close to efficient levels for the assessed models, there is limited technological advance in their performance in terms of the displacement of the technological frontier.

Widespread acceptance of football club businesses as stakeholder organizations suggests that clubs might be expected to embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR). Focusing on Scottish Premier League (SPL) clubs, this study provides empirical evidence of CSR engagement and motivation. We argue that these clubs are well positioned to act as vehicles to deliver CSR because of their community embeddedness and the strength of their stakeholder relationships. For CSR actions to occur, findings suggest they must be driven by (a) the normative expectations of executives or stakeholders, (b) a response to wider social agendas, or (c) potential economic benefit. Evidence of each of these sources of motivation is presented in this article. Findings also suggest that enhanced communication of CSR activities provides an opportunity to improve stakeholder accountability within a corporate governance structure and facilitate the development of relational partnerships and networks.

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate football club financial reporting with reference to: the long-standing debate on the nature and purpose of accounting; and the implementation of UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.Design/methodology/approach: – The paper is based on a review and analysis of academic literature, accounting regulation and football regulations.Findings: – The focus of financial reporting on rational economic decision-makers results in football club financial reports being of limited use to many football club stakeholders. Consideration of the social and organisational context of football, as takes place in FFP, can be used as a catalyst to consider broader approaches to football club reporting. The paper calls for fuller and different pictures to be provided of clubs’ performance, in particular broadening the scope of accountability to users beyond that provided by an economic account.Research limitations/implications: – The paper is designed to stimulate debate about accounting for and reporting on football club businesses. A necessary next step is an exploratory project, focusing on one or a small number of clubs and their stakeholders, exploring in a practical setting what enhanced football club reporting might look like.Originality/value: – While the weaknesses of financial reporting have been considered extensively in the mainstream accounting literature and on occasion in terms of sport, the paper seeks to progress this discussion by linking it to significant football policy initiatives and to wider social and community-based football research.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to highlight the heterogeneity of the organizational aims within the professional football teams in Ligue 1. Second, to understand why some teams swing from a win orientation towards a soft budget constraint from year to year, and vice versa.Design/methodology/approach: Financial data from annual reports for the period 2005/2015 was collected for the 35 Ligue 1 clubs. To define the degree of compliance with the intended strategy for those clubs, an efficiency analysis was conducted thanks to the data envelopment analysis method. This measure of performance was supplemented with the identification of productivity and demand shocks to identify whether clubs suffered from such shock or changed their strategy. It enables to precise the nature of the evolution in the utility function, with regards to the gap between expectation and actual performance.Findings: The paper suggests that a team can switch from one orientation to another from year to year due to the uncertain nature of the sports industry. The club director’s utility function could also be maximized under inter temporal budget function in order to adjust the weight between win and profit according to the opportunities in the environment.Originality/value: The paper sheds new light on the win/profit maximization. The theoretical model provides an assessment of the weight between win and profit in Ligue 1 and then identifies a new explanation for persistent losses in the sports industry.

Purpose: Given that professional football organizations have become particularly strong socio-political business institutions, often home to numerous social and business relationships, the purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of how CSR develops within professional football clubs, along with its organizational implications, phases, drivers and barriers for corporate governance. Additionally it aims to to consider CSR development generally drawing specifically on examples from Scottish professional football whilst answering two key research questions: (1) what kind of drivers do clubs identify as reasons to develop CSR?, and (2) can developmental phases be identified during this process? Design/methodology/approach: The paper builds on a qualitative case study methodology that draws on primary and secondary data collected across 12 Scottish Premier League (SPL) football clubs. Three stages of data collection were set out including interviews, web content analysis and annual/CSR reports analysis. Findings: This research highlights internal and external drivers of change in Scottish football clubs along with institutional barriers and organizational (developmental) phases of CSR and corporate governance. Research limitations/implications: This research is limited on the CSR development across 12 SPL clubs Originality/value: The paper is the first to consider CSR in professional football clubs from a developmental point of view. Six phases of CSR development are identified and defined - volunteering, regulation, socialization, corporatization, separation, and integration - and implications for football and general corporate governance are presented

Purpose: Women’s football has received increasing attention in the academic literature, partly due to its growing popularity worldwide. However, women’s football research remains scattered across numerous academic domains. Focusing on the social sciences, humanities and management disciplines, the purpose of this paper is to map and organise contributions, and to identify research directions for future studies within these disciplines. Design/methodology/approach: Using the keywords “women”, “girls”, “female” and “football” or “soccer” to initially identify articles, an integrative approach was followed to evaluate and analyse relevant literature. In all, 117 academic journals were classified and subsequently divided into 26 themes according to the subject area, topic and level examined. Findings: Results of this integrative review show an increasing trend of journal publications since 1998, with a large representation of studies related to historical and sociological research, where qualitative methods are dominant. Articles investigating economic, managerial and marketing areas appeared in more recent times. Women’s football has been researched from different perspectives (players, fans, sport organisations) and across various countries. Research limitations/implications: The restricted scope of this review (i.e. its focus on social sciences) and the manual classification of articles represent two limitations of this study. However, the synthesis of academic literature provided may assist scholars who are interested in women’s football and women’s sports research to fill identified research gaps and contribute to further advance academic investigations in this area. Originality/value: This paper provides an overview of salient research avenues and represents the first attempt to critically appraise the direction of academic contributions in women’s football for the purpose of advancing scholarly inquiry in this sport.