The aim of this article is to measure the efficiency of the professional soccer teams that play in the Spanish First Division in their activity of converting attacking moves during the match into sporting success. The timeline of the study is the three seasons from 1998 to 2001. To that end, we apply the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology, taking as input variables the players used, attacking moves, the minutes of possession of the ball, and the shots and headers; as output, we considered the number of points achieved. Our main conclusion is that the efficient teams in the activity analyzed do not always correspond with those that finished highest in the league at the end of the season.The professional soccer teams that comprise the Spanish First Division are, in their majority, the star product of the institutions of which they form a part. Many of these institutions also have soccer teams that play in lower leagues, as well as basketball teams and other professional team sports that represent a broad and varied offering for their shareholders and season ticket holders alike. Furthermore, the great majority of them take the legal form of corporations (more specifically, under the Spanish company law system, sociedades anónimas deportivas). In the near future, some of these companies will be quoted on the Spanish stock market, as is already the case with some soccer clubs operating in other European countries. We are, therefore, dealing with entities that can be analyzed and studied from the point of view of economics and are using the tools of analysis that are provided by this discipline. In this sense, these entities carry out a productive process in which the productive factors are essentially human resources. These resources take the form of a team, which during the working week generates and perfects skills that are

In the case of football it could be argued that the purpose of clubs is to win the competitions in which they participate. However, the assessment of football clubs from the efficiency would be relevant in judging whether the results have been obtained without waste. The chosen sample is football teams who played in the Champions League from 2003 to 2007 and the method of calculating the efficiency will be both the traditional version of the DEA as well as the version proposed by Andersen and Petersen (1993), which allows discrimination among efficient units. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper aims to evaluate the performance of the most significant football teams in Europe. In particular, we have selected all the teams who have participated in the UEFA Champions League (UCL) during the last nine seasons (2004/05 to 2012/13): 94 different clubs in total. We have applied the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a deterministic non-parametric frontier method usually developed in efficiency studies. To solve the problem of measuring sporting results as output in knockout competitions we have proposed the use of the coefficients applied by UEFA from UCL revenue distribution. As far as we know it is the first time that it is analysed efficiency in UCL considering a long period of time and applying revenue distribution as sporting results measurement. These differences from previous studies let us to obtain some interesting results. Firstly, there is a high inefficiency level in UCL on the studied period: only the 9% of the teams seem to be efficient. Also, the teams have many problems to maintain their efficiency during the seasons. Secondly, the champion always is efficient. Thirdly, we have identified two inefficiency sources: waste of sport resources and the selection of sport tactics. Finally, from a methodological perspective, the output measure proposed seems to be suitable to represent reliably the sports results archived by clubs in this qualifying competition type. Some management implications have been suggested to boost efficiency in inefficient clubs. In some cases, clubs might employ better their resources. In other cases, changing tactics is the best solution.

This study examines the Total Factor Productivity evolution of Spanish First Division Soccer teams employing the values of the Malmquist Index. The football seasons from 1998 to 2004 are used as the time horizon. The breakdown of the two components of the Malmquist Index Values (efficiency change and technical change) enable one to understand the influence of these factors on productivity and conclusions can be drawn about the relationship between the values of efficiency and the playing field strategy adopted by the analysed teams.

PurposeThe purpose of this research is twofold: to evaluate the performance of Spanish First‐Division soccer teams, comparing the sports results that they actually obtain with those that they should have obtained on the basis of their potential, and to propose a future course of action.Design/methodology/approachIn order to assess the potential of each team in the Spanish professional soccer league between the years 1998 and 2005 an output‐oriented version of Data Envelopment Analysis is used. In this way it is possible to calculate the number of points a team could have achieved with an efficient use of its actual resources and, consequently, its potential position in the league classification.FindingsThe main conclusion is that a team's final league position depends more on its efficient use of resources than on its potential.Practical implicationsFrom the practical perspective, the results seem to stress that measures directed at improving soccer teams' results should focus on improving their efficient use of available resources. Consequently, this work provides a preliminary result, obtained using economics tools, that suggests where soccer team managers might direct their efforts to improve their sports results.Originality/valueThe present work is based on the same concept of potential in sports teams as Zak et al. (1979) and Hofler and Payne (1997), but with a number of differences compared with the earlier studies. First, the potential of the teams and their actual results are compared not by assessing their efficiency in the use of resources, but by observing their final league table positions. Second, the technique which is used to estimate the frontier is in this case Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), or the deterministic non‐parametric frontier method, which has not often been used in order to measure efficiency in soccer. Finally, the object of study is the Spanish First Division soccer teams in the seasons 1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004 and 2004/2005.