Many soccer clubs never win anything and can’t pay their bills, but professional soccer has never been in better shape.
Recommendation
Each year, the same soccer teams win their league championships, and many soccer clubs operate in the red. Fans fret about the future of their beloved sport. How can soccer survive if most teams can’t pay their bills and never win? Sports economist Stefan Szymanski argues that soccer has a brilliant future. An amateur sports historian, he has assembled and analyzed business data on professional soccer since the 1980s. He examines the business of soccer and discusses how the fiscal realities affect the clubs, the players, the owners, the stadiums and everything else. He also details how 19th-century Britain shaped modern-day soccer. His bottom-line message is that soccer is in great shape today, and will be in better shape in the future. getAbstract recommends Szymanski’s in-depth analysis to soccer fans around the globe, and to anyone interested in how professional sports make and lose money.
In this summary, you will learn
- What factors define professional soccer today,
- Why the richest teams dominate,
- Why half of soccer clubs suffer financial distress,
- How the promotion-and-relegation system functions and
- How “Financial Fair Play” works.
Summary
About the Author
Co-author of the bestseller Soccernomics, Stefan Szymanski is the Stephen J. Galetti professor of sport management at the University of Michigan.
