ABOUT THE SMART SPORTS DEVELOPMENT. EVIDENCE FROM THE UK PREMIERE LEAGUE

Abstract

Smart economy implies the development of key factors like global economy growth, competition, economic progress, economic prosperity, innovation. In the European top-level football, like the case of the British Premier League, financial indicators have demonstrated that the factors that define smart economy can be identified. The new rules of the financial fair-play policies and the ever growing revenues for television rights have created a new market in sports economy, one that identifies itself with the criteria identifies in studies regarding smart economy.
This paper comparatively examines the determinants of four indicators of the football team quality in the British Premier League, in order to find out whether a common set of potential determinants could be effective in improving all four indicators of quality, without worsening any of them. This allows finding what measures undertaken at the level of football teams could raise the football team quality. Considering the subjective and multidimensional nature of the football team quality, we first propose four indicators that might be appropriate to define this latent summative measure. Then we select a number of four potentially common determinants of the football team quality, and finally discuss the empirical results, based on panel generalized least squares regression models. The television broadcasting rights are found to be the most important determinant of the football team quality.