THE EVOLUTION OF BELGIAN FOOTBALL OVER THE LAST DECADES Trudo Dejonghe Lessius Hogeschool Department of Business and Economics Antwerpen, Belgium
[email protected] UEFA/IASE Seminar “ The economic impact of the UEFA Champions League on national football economies” Nyon, May 2 nd 2006 “…an international player transfer system that promotes the free movement of soccer players, which would be in line with the EU integration philosophy, is a death penalty for many European and national leagues… When international quality differences increase, fans in countries with low-quality leagues are worse off, as their leagues becomes less attractive, while fans in high-quality leagues are better off as their leagues become more attractive. International competitions, however, become less exciting.” (Haan e.a., 2002: 3-4) The evolution of Belgian football over the last decades 2 I. Background A. General economic trends in domestic championships 1. Review of trends in domestic championship for the 1980-1997 period a) The institutional framework of the Belgian FA The Belgian competition started in 1894 and got organised in 1895 when the multisport association “Union Belge des Sociétés des Sports Athlétique (UBSSA)” was founded. In 1912 the football department became independent and changed its name into “Union Belge des Sociétés de Football Associations (UBSFA)”. One year later the organisation also adopted a Dutch name and it is now known as the “Koninklijke Belgische Voetbalbond (KBVB)” (Cohen,1996:130-131; Dejonghe,2001:241-242). In 1935 the KBVB introduced the first distinction based on economic criteria: amateur football and non-amateur football. In 1974 the Belgian football association did accept the creation of the “Prof Liga”, meaning Pro League, the clubs of the first division.