French amateur football clubs’ finance and revenue volatility: the determinants of demand shocks

ABSTRACT

The article addresses financial troubles in French amateur football clubs and their origins. Previous literature has demonstrated that – in particular in French football – club bankruptcies are triggered by demand shocks. The present research intends highlighting the determinants of demand shocks on those clubs playing French amateur football top two tiers with a longitudinal analysis (2009/2010-2019/2020). Various exogenous elements that influence club demand (i.e. revenues) are taken on board, namely, macroeconomic variables, such as the variation of GDP growth rate between two football seasons, a dummy for the Covid-19 sanitary crisis, and a sport dummy for the effect of the French national team winning the 2018 male football World Cup. The latter is used to check a potential trickle-down effect on amateur elite football. None of these variables do explain demand shocks except if the heterogeneity of clubs’ economic models is taken into account. The determinants of shock demands appear to be clubs’ strategic orientations (towards win maximization vs. a stable economic organization).

KEYWORDS:

• Amateur football
• demand shocks
• economic crisis
• Covid-19
• trickle-down effect

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• L83
• D71
• L2

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the numerous Lagape-IDHEAP seminar participants for their helpful comments and discussion, especially Markus Lang.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).