Does Selection Bias Matter in Football Players’ Valuation? A Crowdsourced Valuation Approach on Players’ Athletic Characteristics

ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes the influence of football players’ athletic characteristics on their corresponding market values. To measure players’ market values, we use estimates of market values by experts from a crowdsourced, international frequently cited sport-database (Transfermarkt.de). Therefore, market values reflect the expectations of stakeholders in the football industry involved in transfers and give implications for future transfer prices. We use a unique data-set including 915 players of the First and Second German Bundesliga and analyze by using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions the influence of players’ minutes played, days injured, amount of goals and assists, yellow cards, dismissals, and titles won on their market values. Players’ minutes played, goals scored, assists scored, and titles won have a significant positive influence on their market values. Players who are more often injured have higher market values than players who are less often injured.

本文旨在分析足球运动员的运动特征对其相应市场价值的影响。为评估运动员的市场价值, 我们使用国际上广泛引用的、基于众包的体育数据库(Transfermarkt.de)评估市场价值。因此, 市场价值反应了足球产业利益相关者对转会球员的期望, 并且暗示了未来球员转会的价格。更具体地说, 我们使用特有的数据集 (包括德甲和德乙的915名球员) 用普通最小二乘回归法分析球员上场时间、受伤情况、进球和助攻次数、黄牌、被罚下场和夺得冠军次数对市场价值的影响。球员的上场时间、进球次数、助攻次数和夺得冠军次数对其市场价值具有积极的影响。经常受伤的球员的市场价值高于不常受伤的球员。此外, 本文还阐明了上述分析结果对足球产业不同利益相关者的重要性以及为其带来的利益, 例如, 俱乐部经理或球员经济人可基于我们的模型更有效地商讨球员转会价格。另外, 分析结果有助于各足球俱乐部根据球员的市场价值分配电视许可费。

KEYWORDS:

• Human capital
• player characteristics
• wisdom of crowds
• transfer fees
• football transfers

JEL Classification:

• G00
• G39
• L38
• Z20
• Z23

关键词:

• 人力资本
• 球员特征
• 群体智慧
• 转会价格
• 足球转会

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Professor Andreas Oehler, Bamberg University, and Professor Stefan Wendt, Reykjavik University, for helpful comments and suggestions. We further thank participants of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Swiss Society for Financial Market Research (SGF) in Zurich, participants of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the European Accounting Association (EAA) in Glasgow, participants of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the German Economic Association of Business Administration (GEABA) in Basel, and seminar participants at Bamberg University. Furthermore, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments which really improved the quality of the paper. Finally, we would like to thank Trail and James (2016) for their helpful input for this paper by their work. All remaining errors are our own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For information about the Bosman free agency see Binder and Findlay (2012) and Ericson (2000). See Feess, Frick and Muehlheusser (2004) for implications on transfer fees, remaining contract years, and expiring contracts.

2. The term human capital defines a person's useful skills and knowledge and captures the possible future real income from these skills. Human capital can be increased by improving physical and mental abilities of people, see e.g. Schultz (1961) or Becker (1962).

3. Club characteristics can be divided in selling and buying-club characteristics. Moreover, general market characteristics like year-to-year variation in market conditions or transfer deadline effects may influence transfer fees (see e.g. Gerrard, 2014).

4. See the literature overview in Frick (2007) and the discussed studies therein.

5. A handful of well-published studies (e.g. Bryson, Frick & Simmons, 2013; Franck & Nüesch, 2012; Frick, 2007; Gerhards et al., 2014) rely on the data provided by Transfermarkt.de.

6. Since Transfermarkt.de is focused on the First and Second German Bundesliga, there are primarily German experts who evaluate players. This is evident in the evaluation process (i.e. discussions and comments of experts regarding their market value estimates) on the website.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim A. Herberger

Tim Alexander Herberger (PhD, Bamberg University, Germany) is a research and teaching assistant and habilitate at the Department of Finance at Bamberg University. His research interests are empirical capital market research, financial intermediation, valuation of human capital as well as sport economics. His work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Asset Management, Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und Praxis (BFuP), Journal of Law and Financial Management, among others.

Florian Wedlich

Florian Wedlich is a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Finance at Bamberg University. His areas of interest include behavioral and empirical finance, corporate finance, experimental economics, and sports economics. His work has appeared in such journals as the Journal of Behavioral Finance, Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und Praxis (BFuP), among others.