SUMMARYProfessional football clubs are unusual businesses, their performance judged on and off the field of play. This study is concerned with measuring the efficiency of clubs in the English Premier League. Information from clubs' financial statements is used as a measure of corporate performance. To measure changes in efficiency and productivity the Malmquist non-parametric technique has been used. This is derived from the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) linear programming approach, with Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) being used to ensure the cohesion of the input-output variables. The study concludes that while clubs operate close to efficient levels for the assessed models, there is limited technological advance in their performance in terms of the displacement of the technological frontier.

Purpose -To critically evaluate football club financial reporting with reference to: the long-standing debate on the nature and purpose of accounting; and the implementation of UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.Design/methodology/approach -The paper is based on a review and analysis of academic literature, accounting regulation and football regulations.Findings -The focus of financial reporting on rational economic decision-makers results in football club financial reports being of limited use to many football club stakeholders. Consideration of the social and organisational context of football, as takes place in FFP, can be used as a catalyst to consider broader approaches to football club reporting. The paper calls for fuller and different pictures to be provided of clubs' performance, in particular broadening the scope of accountability to users beyond that provided by an economic account.Research limitations/implications -The paper is designed to stimulate debate about accounting for and reporting on football club businesses. A necessary next step is an exploratory project, focusing on one or a small number of clubs and their stakeholders, exploring in a practical setting what enhanced football club reporting might look like.Originality/value -While the weaknesses of financial reporting have been considered extensively in the mainstream accounting literature and on occasion in terms of sport, the paper seeks to progress this discussion by linking it to significant football policy initiatives and to wider social and community-based football research. IntroductionThe substantial increases in income enjoyed by top level football clubs in recent years coupled with the resultant benefits gained by elite players have perhaps inevitably resulted in increased emphasis on the business of football and football clubs. Financial performance has become one of the dominant narratives about football with regular commentary on financial success or failure at league and club level. More pertinently, to some extent at least, football as an economic activity has become normalised, in the sense that increasingly clubs are being viewed and reported on by leading commentators as if they were normal businesses (Moorhouse, 2007).Notwithstanding football's highly commercialised nature, this process of normalisation is problematic: football has always been and continues to be a social business; economic in basis, but social in nature (Hamil et al., 2001;, Morrow, 2003Nash, 2000). This approach encourages recognition of the social aspects that distinguish football from purely economic activity; that is how its economic activity affects or is affected by its communities of interest or stakeholders. In recent years there has been increased attention afforded to the ways in which elite level clubs give effect to their putative social and community role and to their resultant accountability to those communities or stakeholders. At one level this has focused on the organisational and governance structure of clubs (see, ...

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Women's football struggles to build a solid platform in terms of fan interest. However, while an increase in gate receipts can help assist its long-term sustainability, there is limited evidence in the academic literature on the factors influencing spectator demand in women's football.The authors investigate determinants of stadium attendance for UEFA Women's Champions League (UWCL) matches. Using regression models deployed on 554 UWCL games played between 2009/10 and 2017/18, the authors examine contextual and sport-related variables as the main predictors of stadium attendance. Findings show that there is no continuous growth of attendance over the period examined, and highlight that spectators' interest is positively associated with five factors: stage of the competition, uncertainty of match outcome, competitive intensity, away club's reputation and weather conditions. Football governing bodies should put in place initiatives to ensure match outcome uncertainty is maintained as this represents a key determinant to maximise stadium attendance. Based on the specific context of European women's football, recommendations to foster its development are discussed. These include incentivising investment into the elite women's game and designing sport policies to encourage participation at grassroots levels.

Building upon calls for research on how rather than whether things are done when CSR is implemented in an organization (e.g. Smith, 2003) However, this type of CSR research remains under-developed in sporting contexts, a sector that benefits from 'coopetition' or cooperative competition. As professional sport is in direct and indirect competition (amongst teams and leagues, between sports and other entertainment forms, for sponsors, fans and air time) and co-