The economic efficiency of european football clubs - Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach

The relevance of this paper lies in the fact that football business has grown significantly in the past 20 years and football clubs have become large companies, which in an effort to be profitable and successful on the field need to improve the efficiency of their business. The aim of this article is to measure economic efficiency of 48 big European football clubs and assess the relationship between efficiency and different financial and sportive indicators (variables). To measure efficiency, we used both widely used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and its extensions: DEA Super-efficiency and DEA Cross-efficiency models. The results showed that these methods can successively be applied to football clubs’ efficiency measurement and the analysis of the them can help to explain why some clubs are efficient or inefficient and which factors affects the efficiency. This paper will be interesting football clubs’ managers, football analytics, economists and other people interested in football business because we combine in it the most interesting ideas and methods about football clubs’ efficiency measurement. © 2016 Pyatunin et al