Winning Team Value Strategies of Professional Football Clubs : A Resource-Based Approach

Details

Supervisors

Vas, Alain ; Zintz, Thierry

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

The football industry has fundamentally changed over the last decades. The appearance of professional football clubs combining both objectives of sport performance and commercial targets has deeply transformed the industry. The emergence of a Super League illustrates the point very well. The objective of this thesis is to describe how a professional football club operates and to apply a resource-based strategic framework and value chain model to identify for each key activity the essential resources and capabilities required to support a sustainable competitive advantage. We introduce first the conceptual model and the possible main resources and capabilities. We then use data for the top 125 UEFA clubs to test some of these concepts statistically. We then conduct an in-depth analysis of four football clubs to gain a more detailed and granular understanding of the resources and capabilities needed to be successful. Both the statistical analysis and the case studies confirm the importance of the infrastructure of the club, in particular its stadium both in terms of sport performance and support to commercial activities, as well as key capabilities for selection and recruitment such as developing a network of partner clubs and scouting skills, team value management which includes player trading skills, and the development of an integrated and coherent business model. This last point means that the history, the location and the culture of the club and its fans must be consistent with its way of selecting, developing and trading players, as well as its playing style. It also has to be consistent and coherent with the development of the brand, the way to conduct the commercial activities and the selection of its partners such as its sponsors.