No. 193 August 2021 Management Quality of Professional Football Clubs The Football Management (FoMa) Q-Score 2021 Henning Zülcha, Moritz Palmeb, Sébastien Jostc, Benedikt Kirschc a Prof. Dr. Henning Zülch is Holder of the Chair of Accounting and Auditing at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Leipzig, Germany. Email:
[email protected] b Moritz Palme is a research assistant at the Chair of Accounting and Auditing at HHL C Sébastien Jost and Benedikt Kirsch are research associates at the Chair of Accounting and Auditing at HHL Acknowledgement We gratefully acknowledge the valuable and constructive comments of our interview partners, namely high-level represent- atives of distinguished German football clubs (Borussia Dortmund, Eintracht Frankfurt, FC Bayern München, Hamburger SV and RB Leipzig), media representatives (11 Freunde, FINANCE), and external stakeholders (Group Lagardère, Puma), as well as the members of the Sports Management Strategic Interest Group (SIG) of the European Academy of Management Confer- ence, where we presented a similar working paper based on an earlier data set in June 2019. The authors would also like to thank Jonas Böttger for his content-related contribution and editorial review during the preparation of this working paper as well as IHK Leipzig for the continued support of the Chair of Accounting and Auditing. Management Quality of Professional Football Clubs: The Football Management (FoMa) Q-Score 2021 Abstract Managing a football club has become much more complex in recent years, as the clubs have turned into football companies and a growing number of stakeholders have entered the in- dustry. The clubs’ capabilities to handle the increased complexity vary, turning management quality into a crucial competitive (dis-)advantage.