Soft Budget Constraints in Professional Football
European Sport Management Quarterly ISSN: 1618-4742 (Print) 1746-031X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/resm20 Soft budget constraints in professional football Rasmus K. Storm & Klaus Nielsen To cite this article: Rasmus K. Storm & Klaus Nielsen (2012) Soft budget constraints in professional football, European Sport Management Quarterly, 12:2, 183-201, DOI: 10.1080/16184742.2012.670660 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2012.670660 Published online: 30 Apr 2012. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1432 Citing articles: 22 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=resm20 European Sport Management Quarterly Vol. 12, No. 2, April 2012, 183Á201 Soft budget constraints in professional football Rasmus K. Storma* and Klaus Nielsenb aDanish Institute for Sport Studies, Kanonbaadsvej 12A, Copenhagen 1437, Denmark; bDepartment of Management, University of London, Birkbeck, Malet Street, Clore Management Centre, London WC1E 7HX, UK (Received 15 April 2011; accepted 23 December 2011) Professional football in Europe is characterized by persistent deficits and growing debts among the majority of the top league clubs. Despite these problems, the clubs have an abnormally high survival rate. This paper focuses on this apparent paradox and poses the question: Why do only very few European professional football clubs go out of business even though they operate chronically on the edge of financial collapse? The paper argues that the paradox can be explained by the fact that professional football clubs operate within soft budget constraints in a way which is similar to the role of large companies in socialist economies Á a phenomenon which was first identified by the Hungarian Economist Ja´nos Kornai.
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