https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3806-650X
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ABSTRACT
The aim of this study is to show how an entrepreneurial project that identifies a future form of value may not be motivated by the search for personal financial gain. Based on the new entrepreneurial history framework, the paper analyzes the process by which FC Barcelona was created and consolidated, at a time when football was strictly amateur in nature. It was an entrepreneurial project deployed in a dynamic process based on trial and error characterized by three decisive entrepreneurial momentums: the creation of the club in 1899; its rebirth in 1908; and the construction of a large stadium in 1922. From uncertain beginnings, the club’s eventual consolidation led to long-term socio-economic change and presents the main characteristics of a Schumpeterian creative response since it was key in the introduction of a sport that changed the way in which leisure was consumed in Spain.
Acknowledgement
The author is greatful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Anders Sorensen, for their valuable comments and helpful advice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Bibliographical note
Tomàs Fernández-de-Sevilla is lecturer at the department of Economic History of the University of Barcelona. Previously, he was the Kurgan-van Hentenryk Post-doctoral fellow in Business History at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management and Beatriu de Pinós Post-doctoral fellow (MSCA fellow) at the University of Barcelona. He has written extensively about Spanish industrial history including articles in journals such as Business History, Enterprise & Society, Revista de Historia Económica, and Revista de Historia Industrial. His current research, which examines the origins and evolution of professional football, has been published in The International Journal of the History of Sport.
Notes
1. Throughout this work, the term ‘football’ is used to refer to the game of association football, also known as soccer.
2. This anecdote appeared in the first issue of Stadium, a sports magazine published in Barcelona (Stadium, 1 May 1911).
3. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (Citation2018), professional football generated a direct economic impact of three billion euros during the 2016/17 season in Spain; this figure rises to sixteen billion if one also includes indirect impacts (supply chain), induced impacts (household consumption) and ‘tractor’ effects (consumption associated with match days, pay-TV channels, media, betting and video games).
4. Knight distinguishes between economic risk and uncertainty, with the latter referring to a situation where probabilities cannot be estimated but holds the potential to generate economic gains that perfect competition may not eliminate, resulting key the cognitive faculty of judgment (Langlois Citation2023).
5. However, while the unit of analysis according to Shane (Citation2003) is the opportunity, Foss and Klein (Citation2012) suggested that it is the entrepreneurial project.
6. Casson and Godley (Citation2005) also recognized that profit is not the only motivation among entrepreneurs and noted that entrepreneurship can also take place within the not-for-profit sector, especially when entrepreneurs value status over wealth.
7. The cumulative dimension of the entrepreneurial process has been highlighted in several approaches proposed by business historians, such as the ‘making present’ of Popp and Holt (Citation2013), the sequential process of Wadhwani and Jones (Citation2014) and the entrepreneurial multiplier effect of Galambos and Amatori (Citation2016).
8. Although professionalism was legalized in 1924, its regulations were not approved until 1926.
9. This assumption was called into question by Quirk and El Hodiri (Citation1974), who pointed out that wealthy franchise owners were motivated not only by profits but primarily by prestige and publicity.
10. Garcia-Del-Barrio and Szymanski (Citation2009) empirically confirmed that the behavior of football clubs in the English and Spanish leagues from 1994 to 2004 is best analyzed by assuming a win-maximization rather than a profit-maximization strategy.
11. Although the first professional football competition, the Football League, was established in England in 1888, club ownership continued to be considered a not-for-profit activity.
12. Vamplew (Citation2018) defines sports entrepreneurs as ‘those persons who act as change agents in the supply of sports products, who attempt to increase the output of the industry, improve the consumer experience, or raise interest in sports products by such means as developing new markets and creating new products,’ and categorizes them into four groups: 1) those seeking non-salary economic benefits directly from sports, 2) those seeking indirect economic returns, 3) those seeking psychic income and personal kudos (and such kudos may also come from winning trophies), and 4) those pursuing non-economic objectives.
13. I contacted all of the teams that played in the first division from 1929 to 1936 and, aside from the two clubs mentioned in the text, the clubs which did respond admitted to not having records before the War.
14. Gamper also played for FC Basel occasionally. See Vonnard (Citation2023) for the origins of football in Switzerland.
15. The Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10th, ratified the cession of those territories, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, to the United States.
16. In September 1868, Queen Isabella II was expelled from Spain during a revolution that aimed for democratization. In November 1870, the parliament proclaimed Amadeo of Savoy as king, who abdicated in February 1873, leading to a brief First Republic that ended in December 1874 with the return of the Bourbons. Under the new regime of Alfonso XII, conservatives and liberals alternated in power. When instability forced the government to resign, the king would call on the opposing party to form a new government while simultaneously dissolving the parliament to convene, under the control of the new government, of an election in which prevailing patronage ensured the organizer a comfortable victory (De Riquer Citation1994).
17. These were the most likely names involved, according to the following sources: LD (3 December 1899), LV (29 November 1924), and Carbó (Citation1924a).
18. 1899 pesetas have been deflated to 2017 pesetas using the GDP deflator in Prados (Citation2017: Table 7), and then converted into euros. This same procedure was applied throughout the rest of the work.
19. During the period covered by this work, the board of directors, whose members were elected annually at the general assembly of members, consisted of a president, one or two vice-presidents, a secretary, a treasurer and, after 1911, an accountant. The others were board members.
20. Three games against the British team, one against FC Català and one against a team made up of former Català members (Carbó Citation1924a).
21. The first competition was the Macaya cup, established by Alfons Macaya, president of the Hispania, which took place from 1901 to 1903.
22. When club expenses could not be covered by membership fees, clubs usually asked their wealthiest members to put their hands in their pockets (Carbó Citation1924a).
23. In the cartoon, a civilian and a military officer were seen observing a crowd of people entering a building. The military officer asked in Spanish, ‘What is being celebrated here, with so many people?’ The civilian responded in Catalan, ‘The banquet of Victory,’ to which the military officer then remarked, ‘Of Victory? Oh well, they must be civilians.
24. The first tournament to be designated as the ‘Spanish Championship’ was organized by Madrid FC in 1903, featuring the winners of the championships of Catalonia, Madrid, and the Basque Country. In subsequent editions, the number of teams expanded as the count of regional championships increased. In 1909, two rival organizations were formed, each aiming to govern football in Spain: the Spanish Federation of Football Clubs and the Spanish Union of Football Clubs. FC Barcelona won the title organized by the former. It wasn’t until 1913 that a reconstituted Spanish Football Federation brought together the collection of clubs and joined FIFA. Since then, it has organized the Spanish Championship, in which the winners of regional championships continued to compete in a knockout format.
25. The early signs of professionalization that emerged in the mid-1910s, such as membership fee exemptions and vouchers for the club’s bar and restaurant for players (FCB, MB, Citation1911– 1922), evolved into a practice named ‘shamateurism’, when footballers started receiving more expenses and higher value ‘gifts’ and the club began to covertly pay their first salaries (Pujades and Santacana Citation2001).
26. This was a cup played from 1910 to the start of the First World War between teams from the French and Spanish regions bordering the Pyrenees and was one of the first international football competitions.
27. The players were also starting to call for a share of the income deriving from the expansion of football.
28. In 1914, La Lliga had achieved the creation of the ‘Mancomunitat de Catalunya’, an institution made up of the regional governments of Catalonia’s four provinces with competences in public works, culture, and charity. In November 1918, Catalan parliamentarians presented a proposition to the head of government, García Prieto, to substantially increase Catalonia’s self-government. However, it was withdrawn after the parliament refused to debate it. A new proposal was reintroduced in January 1919, this time after an intense yet unproductive campaign of popular mobilization, as the new proposition also failed to be discussed (Termes Citation2000).
29. By that time, Gamper had achieved a wealthy status after opening a trading company of colonial products together with Enric Mir, a former teammate and son of one of the wealthiest families of Badalona, a neighboring city of Barcelona.
30. The players’ salary appeared for the first time in FCB’s accounts in the 1926/27 season accounting for 220 thousand pesetas out of 880 thousand in total expenses (about 2 million euros in 2017).