The structure of football can also be conceived as a form of ecosystem, or even a social world, constructed through a network of individuals, within a division of labour, that interact under a set of specific conventions. In this commentary we describe that socially constructed world – Football World. The nature of this structural world makes network theory an appealing framework to explore processes of the football ecosystem during COVID-19. While we focus on the English Premier League, notably this league is embedded within a European and international marketplace it offers relevance for the broader global football ecosystem. We proceed to explore this dynamic Football World by considering how the different collective forms – specifically fans, players and clubs – have been affected by COVID-19. We comment on the potential implications for the connective fabric of the broader network and what these observations mean for potential future research.

COVID-19 has sent a shockwave into society and sport. As result of this, sport and football resuming without spectators - fans or supporters, has brought a number of financial issues that has threatened the sustainability and future of many clubs. This commentary unpicks what has happened and some of the tensions, decision-making and consequences surrounding the return of spectators. The commentary presents the case that spectators are key to the survival of football clubs and that the United Kingdom Government must reverse their decision to not let spectators return. Now more than ever, these words hold substance, meaning and truly matter to clubs and their networked communities, “Football without fans is nothing”.

This article investigates the impact of the competitive intensity (CI) on the stadium attendance for Italian soccer in three Serie A seasons (2012-13 to 2014-15). The central element of novelty concerning the existing literature is that fans expectations are also included among the explanatory variables of the Tobit model. Our results show that CI has a significant impact on match-day attendance in relation to all the sporting prizes but Europa League qualification. Moreover, we find evidence supporting the existence of reference-dependent preferences, where the attendance increases when the home team rank is higher than the preseason expectations.

Following advances in information technology and the rise of social media, prosumption – a model of simultaneous production and consumption of the commodity – has become a significant focus in many industries and for academic study. Prosumption represents a new message creation and delivery paradigm, where anyone can seamlessly shift from consumer to contributor, to creator. Central to this is the idea of creating ‘use-value’ and re-orientating ‘exchange value’. Perhaps an overlooked facet, but one deeply engrained in its manifestation is that prosumption is inherently relational, involving micro-interaction between consumer and producer. The recent global COVID-19 pandemic, it too being relational in its transmission, has had a paralysing effect on global leisure activities with households and sports organisations experiencing some form of state-enforced residential lockdown. Using social network analysis, this commentary examines the network structure of a prosumed leisure activity during societal lockdown and its implications for the leisure industries.

Research question: Following a network perspective, we present football's European loan system as an economic network and aim to answer the following questions; (i) what is the structure of the network? and, (ii) what are the topological properties of the network? Research methods: Using data on the top-5 European leagues in European football 8139 loan transactions between 31 December 2009 and 22 December 2017 were analysed using social network analysis. Results and findings: The results show that the loan system is embedded in ongoing structural relationships across Europe, more so in the Italian Serie A than other European leagues investigated. Additionally, our findings indicate that several elite clubs are extracting value from the loan system, while others are value creators. Implications: The implications of this research are fourfold: recommendations for executive-level professionals in the football industry and how to maximise the structure of the system; considerations for UEFA and FIFA policy around regulations applied to loan systems; application of economic network theory to the trading (loan) system in European football; and recommendations for future academic research.

Contemporary football (soccer) is a competitive industry. Some football clubs have enacted new roles, such as the Sporting Director, to gain a competitive advantage through effective recruitment of...