The real impact of financial fair play (FFP) came along with the break-even rule which prevents clubs from over-spending through a variety of sanctions. As UEFA limited clubs’ expenses with their incomes, the transfer market took a hit. This paper demonstrates the impact of FFP on Russian Premier League teams’ transfer activity, examines how transfers’ demography and career profiles changed and investigates the changes in competitive balance after break-even. A regression discontinuity design is conducted in order to estimate the policy impact. The empirical results suggest that Russian clubs have been severely affected by break-even in terms of transfer expenditure and balance and started to transfer more U21 players and players from lesser leagues of the world. Furthermore, competitive balance in the Russian Premier League deteriorated in favor of the giants in the league as a result of break-even.

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Foreign ownership in European football has been rapidly increasing especially in the last two decades. Although the main interest for the foreign investors are the teams of Big 5 leagues, there are some occasional surprises. One of the surprises is the oldest football team in Czech football, SK Slavia Prague. This study investigates the impact of Slavia’s takeover on Czech First Division. First a stochastic frontier analysis is conducted and efficiency scores are estimated. The results indicate that Slavia’s athletic efficiency has improved significantly after the takeover. The transfer activity in the league increased greatly thanks to Slavia’s additional funds allocated to transfers and also it should be noted that Slavia’s domestic transfers have created an opportunity for the other teams to improve their finances. Finally, the overall competitive balance in the league improved after the takeover despite Slavia’s dominance in the league after the takeover.

Sunk cost fallacy is a behavioral decision-making concept that leads to biased decisions and sub-optimal outcomes. Although academics have shown some interest in this phenomenon, only a few studies investigate the presence of sunk cost fallacy in European football. This study investigates whether the sunk cost fallacy exists in Europe's top two football leagues using transfer fees and playing time. The presence of sunk cost fallacy would indicate a faulty decision-making process.The conducted regression continuity design results suggest that the coaches in the English Premier League make biased decisions due to sunk cost fallacy, whereas the coaches in German Bundesliga do not.The biased decisions of Premier League managers indicate managerial inefficiency, which might lead to undesired outcomes.

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