%0 Journal Article
%T Financial and Sporting Performance in French Football Ligue 1: Influence on the Players¡¯ Market
%A Wladimir Andreff
%J -
%D 2018
%R https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs6040091
%X Abstract Despite the globalisation of European soccer, each professional league exhibits specificities. French Ligue 1 sometimes contends with the trading-off of financial performance against sporting performance of its teams in European soccer competitions, and its inner auditing body, the Direction Nationale du Contr£¿le de Gestion (DNCG), is in charge of controlling clubs¡¯ financial accounts. Moreover, Ligue 1 operates with one of the best competitive balances in the Big Five, which is detrimental to its clubs¡¯ success at the European level. However, the league and a number of clubs have not been able to curb payroll inflation and have not avoided being recurrently run in a deficit and accumulating debts, in particular payment arrears and player transfer overdue. Lax management occurs, since very few clubs have been sanctioned by a payment failure, even fewer by liquidation, and there has been no bankruptcy. The concept of a soft budget constraint theoretically encapsulates such empirical evidence. The novelty of the paper is to establish a link between the soft budget constraint and the players¡¯ labour market where it crucially triggers market disequilibria: an excess of demand for superstars¡¯ talents and an excess of supply for journeymen players are modelled. Data paucity about player individual wages hinders econometric testing of the aforementioned link and the model. However, a look at transfer fees that concentrates on a few of the top European soccer clubs provides a first insight into the arms race for talent that fuels an excess of demand for superstars and dips a number of clubs¡¯ finance into the red. View Full-Tex
%K sports finance
%K soft budget constraint
%K payment failure
%K disequilibrium modelling
%K segmented labour market
%K French soccer
%U https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/6/4/91