The Efficiency of Premier League Clubs According to the Country of Origin of the Majority Owner

Abstract

Owning a successful football club is a matter of good management, financial stability but also prestige. Owning a club participating in the English Premier League, the most prestigious and richest football competition in the world, has so far attracted investors from the Middle and Far East, the United States and other parts of the world. The aim of the presented paper was to use data envelopment analysis to calculate efficiency and then evaluate and compare the efficiency of selected clubs of the English Premier League owned by British investors and by foreign ones. The researched period are the seasons 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The data used were obtained from the official databases of both examined sports competitions and subsequently supplemented with private databases of companies operating in the football environment. In terms of results, some implications for the management of football clubs are discussed and suggestions for increasing efficiency in inefficient clubs are made. Clubs owned by British investors are not generally less efficient than clubs owned by foreign investors and vice versa.