Multiciteria evaluation of football clubs: the Greek Superleague

Abstract

Summarization: Football in Greece, as well as in whole world, exceeds the limits of simply the most commercial and widespread sport, becoming additionally a major issue in the political agenda. This can easily become understood, observing the impact of crucial football events (Mundial, Euro Cup, Champion's League etc.) in world level. Besides the above events, each football league attracts the interest of people, media and politicians. Many studies have been done in this field, focusing mostly on the efficiency of football clubs, especially in countries such as England, Spain and Germany. The aim of this paper is to examine the performance of Greek football clubs competing in the Superleague for the period 2012–2014, regarding three different aspects (financial, commercial and sport). Our study differentiates from similar studies in the following points: (a) three different dimensions are examined in order to obtain a global view of football clubs, (b) the sample regards Greek Superleague teams, a regional and not so wealthy championship compared to other Europeans, and (c) the aim is to rank the teams, accordance to these aspects and not identify the efficient and not efficient teams. A well-known and established multiple-criteria decision making method (PROMETHEE II) is used, which has been found appropriate in several topics regarding ranking problems. In order our results to be meaningful, a decision maker assisted in the selection of the most influential factors in football clubs evaluation. The results partly verify earlier studies, since football clubs, with a few exceptions and surprises, were found financially imbalanced, with strong profitability, solvency and liquidity problems. The dependence of Greek Superleague on television rights and the basic sponsorship of OPAP (state betting company) is highly conspicuous amid the wider and much discussed European economic crisis in the field of football. Development trends via proposals of specific economic and social activities are listed, in response to the ...