“…Breuer, 2018, 2016b;Wilson et al, 2013), amongst other factors, have been recently examined, almost no academic research has focused empirically on the financial outcome of both corporate diversification strategies in the football market context. Existing diversification research in this context concentrates on business diversification of a few clubs (Teichmann, 2007), clubs' historical narratives (Andrews, 2015), internationalization case studies (van Overloop, 2015;Post and Druker, 2018), the league level (Andrews and Harrington, 2016) or a conceptual framework (Schmidt and Holzmayer, 2018). This lack of empirical research on business and international diversification in the football industry is puzzling, as the interplay between the current growth trajectory, volatile sportive performance, and influential wealthy investors provides promising ground for investigating corporate diversification strategies and their financial effects.…”