Football and Management

Comparisons between Sport and Enterprise

S. Soderman

• Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780230391185
• Categoría: Commerce
• Categoría: Stratégie commerciale

What happens off the football pitch? This volume mixes storytelling with theoretical and conceptual reasoning to analyse marketing, product, product development and management, as well as (in football terms), the atmosphere, match, training and club management.

1

Football’s similarities and differences compared with other industries

Company management can teach football and vice versa

Sport, especially football, is the favorite leisure activity for a large number of people in Europe. This has turned the sports industry into an increasingly important economic industry. Despite the challenging global economic environment, the European football market grew to a15.7 billion in 2008–09 (Deloitte and Touche, 2010). The growing commercialization of sport calls for a professionalization of the football clubs. Due to this development and increasing competitiveness in the national leagues of football clubs, demand for the efficient use of resources within a football club is becoming increasingly relevant.

The aim of this book is to describe and explain how organizations such as football clubs actually operate. Moreover, this book will highlight the best practises within profit-driven corporations, which can be learned and adopted by football clubs to enable them to operate in a better manner. In certain contexts, football is used as a role model while in other situations a conventional business model is used. First and foremost, what are the dynamics of different football leagues and other contexts in which football can learn from business? Second, what can business learn from football? And how can business implement these practises? This book articulates a basic framework using the differences between football in Scandinavia and in England. The book aims to present models that are easily applicable in the working place.

This book explains the process of managing uncertainty based on match performance and economic consequences, or ‘winning or profit making’ as stated by Stewart and Smith (2010). The highest cost component in football is player salaries, which vary due to player performance and agents’ activities. Therefore, many club managers dream of controlling exactly which players they have on the squad: a set of human beings that they would like to orchestrate like a conductor ‘manages’ music. A good orchestra is a reflection of the way in which players with different backgrounds can coordinate and perform together to deliver beautiful music. A system of combining people of diverse characters with diverse skills is what a football coach also is searching for. This is as valid for footballers as for professional musicians.

Zlatan Ibrahimović was one of the highest paid footballers in the world during the first decade of 2000. His parents had left the Balkan region and moved to Malmö in Sweden, where as a boy he played for Malmö FF and later, in 1999, became a professional at only 18 years of age (Ibrahimović and Lagercrantz, 2011). Since the summer of 2012 he plays for Paris Saint-Germain having left Milan AC. He is also the captain of the Swedish national team. Wayne Mark Rooney (Rooney, 2006), another fan favorite from a working-class area, born in 1985, is an English footballer who plays as a striker for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team. Rooney turned professional at the age of seventeen. Both these players have a strong commitment towards excellence in their sports.

To live off one’s hobby is many a person’s dream. Many aspiring young men succeeded in becoming professional footballers in foreign clubs, beginning in the 1950s, though decades later in Sweden. However, the amateur sport idea historically was, and still is, strong in Sweden as in most other European countries. Football began in England during the 1860s, and with its increasing popularity, the players became professional in limited companies and thus created the professional sport-business industry we have today. Although professional sport has been in the UK for over a century, it has generally attracted little academic interest beyond social historians. This has changed very noticeably as professional sport has moved from a long-standing and fairly steady state of professional play to a rapidly evolving process of large-scale ‘commercialisation’ (Beech and Chadwick, 2004). The rapid changes and succeeding requirement to adapt due to the strong inter-linkages between professionalization, internationalization and commercialization, imply challenges for all actors in the football industry.

Many talented players do not change clubs since loyalty with team-mates is stronger than the chance to develop in other more professional environments. The means to conduct trade by selling and purchasing players is a fairly recent phenomenon in the majority of football clubs. In 2012, the total number of football players in England was more than 4 million (registered and unregistered). In Sweden, the number of registered and unregistered players is about 1 million (Svenska Fotbollsförbundet, 2010; FIFA 2012a). In England, there are 4,000 professional football players (The Guardian, 2010) and in Sweden about 500.¹ FIFA’s investments in the worldwide development of football have not only enhanced match attendances and TV audiences, but also, according to the latest statistics, increased the number of people around the globe actually playing the game. There are 265 million male and female players in addition to five million referees and officials, comprising a grand total of 270 million people – or 4 percent of the world’s population – who are actively involved in the game of football. These are the impressive findings of the 2006 Big Count, a FIFA survey of its 207 member associations which, after being conducted for the first time in 2000, was repeated last year under the same conditions and offers an interesting insight into the development of football worldwide (FIFA 2012b).

In conjunction with widespread media coverage, certain players like Zlatan and Rooney became not only well-known throughout Europe but also became idols with fans all over the world. International tournaments became marketplaces and in a similar way to beauty contests. In Sweden the buying and selling of players became commonplace after the 1948 Olympics, when Gunnar Nordahl was noticed and moved to Italy (Inside Futbol, 2009). At this point, football clubs had already developed the business model of buying and selling players alongside a range of activities that broadened revenue streams. With the passage of time, football became a business with a big degree of commercialization in most European countries, including Sweden. Zlatan, for example, developed his professional skill by transferring to better and better clubs in different countries. In his book (2011: 350-351) Ibrahimović writes from his last days in Inter Milan justifying his intention to change clubs (here illustrated by a number of excerpts in an unauthorized translation from the Swedish text):

the newspapers had during a whole week written that I was going to leave Italy and test something new … I was fighting but did not manage to get away with the ball. In similar situations the supporters had applauded but not now. There were boos and whistles from the Ultra fans. We the players are working down here on the pitch, we are leaders of the league and you behave like this … There was an open conflict between the biggest star in Inter and the fans. We dominated and won two to zero. When I walked out from the pitch I heard that some leaders from the Ultras were waiting for me in the dressing room. I do not know how they had managed to come that far and close to the players. Down in the culverts there were 7–8 big boys not of the very polite kind who would say ‘Excuse us but can we exchange some words …’ No, these were types from home old streets in Malmö: men full of aggression and everyone around me became nervous. I was also very stressed, but thought that I could not be a coward. A boy from my kind of street cannot retreat. I said: Is there somebody who has a problem up there on the grand stand? Yes, many of us are angry … they started. Well okay ask them to come down to the pitch and we will solve this one to one … However, the discussion continued, the fans requested a new meeting. But why and what can I win by that? The fans are loyal to their club, which is nice. But I as a footballer with a short career must look after my own interest. A player can and must change his club and the fans are familiar with that. I asked the fans to excuse themselves on their home site but nothing happened.

The FIFA World Cup hosted by Sweden in 1958 was a breakthrough for television and acted as the dominant phenomenon behind the indirect experience. From a broader perspective, the business of football like many other industries has many distinctive features.

Despite its exponential growth, professional sport is often characterized as being corporately inferior to other industries, with examples of sophisticated practise found only in isolated cases of effective management (Richelieu and Boulaire, 2005). This characterization is potentially due to the lack of an effective management model for professional sport clubs (Fort 2006; Nadeau and O’Reilly, 2006; Alexander and Kern, 2004).

We will compare football with life sciences which, in a simple classification includes ‘pharmaceutical companies’ that mainly produce block-buster medicines with smaller research-oriented ‘biotech firms’. There are many similarities. A life science research project is like an immature football player. Biotech projects are sold and bought by venture capital firms and similarly other business actors like football players are sold and bought. Some science projects fail just as some players never manage to perform at the top level. (See Figure 1.1.)

Competence development is one key element in all service or entertainment industries. Football and life sciences are struggling with a similar problem, i.e. to develop excellence on the pitch and in science to enable new discoveries and drugs. The common thing is to develop excellence in marketing in order to sell these matches in the same way as the drugs. But there is a third competence, needed to coordinate the scientific and the managerial processes. The same is true in football: to develop excellence in playing style, i.e. activities ‘on the pitch’ and in management endeavors ‘off the pitch’, here called ‘thought style’. Another example revealed by Zlatan concerns his switch from Ajax to Juventus. The administration in Juventus, through their strong man Mr Luciano Moggi, had agreed with the management in Ajax to buy Zlatan for a16 million, but Luciano Moggi refused due to the argument that their stars ‘Trézéguet and Zlatan could not play together. Their playing styles are so different’. The Juventus coach, Fabio Capello, became furious and shouted that Moggi should make sure that Zlatan would join the club, continuing, ‘What is happening on the pitch is my problem.’ This illustrates what can happen when the interface between ‘management’ and ‘science/coaching’ is not functioning.

Figure 1.1 Pharma vs Biotech²

Businesses all over the world face constant competition. For business leaders it is a question of survival and about winning over customers from the competition. A football match is played out over 90 minutes and involves only two teams of eleven players. The actual duration of a game is just a tiny part of the total time that is spent by a football team in terms of practise, and developing skill and playing style. Nevertheless, it is this 90 minutes – the actual playing time, when the ball is in motion, and often only up to 45–60 minutes, that matter most (Soccer by Numbers, 2011). Many more than just eleven players prepare for what happens on the field. Media coverage of athletes and leaders in sport means that they must have a clearer grasp of their own abilities and direction than if they were employees within the corporate world where much more is classified and veiled in secrecy, as shown in 2002 with events at Enron and WorldCom, and later in the Madoff case. The advantage with a football match is that performances can be measured out in the open. The winner is clear to all. The outcome is precise and performance is illustrated by the results – whereas the balance sheet that illustrates success in the corporate world is only published annually. It is thus critical to acquire and maintain competence and skill to manage a football club professionally both on and off the field. A growing threat to sustained competence is the agents. Although agents support their own players, they are ‘the danger’ because they do not necessarily support the club or the team. They are driven only by the potential bonus when managing a club transfer. Zlatan divulges that his agent Mino Raiola is his closest friend. The agents often have a conflict of interest with the clubs and are viewed by many club managers as the enemy.³

The strongest driving force in football, overall, is television, primarily because the Premier League creates so much money to be redistributed to its top twenty clubs. There is another serious and growing split in opinion between nations on who handle the problems that are emerging around sport, such as doping, corruption, match-fixing, betting and ambush marketing. In Northern Europe, the sport organizations claim it is their problem to deal with, while in Southern Europe the issues are seen as a problem for governmental institutions.

A note on football as a model for business

It is important to ask what lessons the world of sport can provide to business leaders, in addition to football’s obvious and measurable performance indicators. This question is implicit in the six imperatives listed below. Football has its own characteristics through its system of rules; there are numerous ways to prepare and to play games that can provide creative inspiration for business development entrepreneurs.

An example of a business takeaway from football could be the assessment of the player’s/employee’s performances. A right-winger who lets his opponents easily pass is rapidly considered ‘useless’ and will be exchanged. Football provides definite results that highlight the performance of the team as witnessed by the spectators. The outcome of the game also gives a clear signal as to how the team (which could be the company) has performed.

The first imperative: the reward system should be directly related to performance;

The second imperative: ensure immediate response and decision-making;

The third imperative: nurture your fan base;

The fourth imperative: learn from the supreme organizer of symbiotic third party interest;

The fifth imperative: make it a rule to scout for young, talented managers; and

The sixth imperative: ensure genuine and virtual internationalization.

These six imperatives are later shown to support Proposition 6 in Chapter 2: some components in football can successfully be applied to business.

But there are many other aspects to take into consideration in an analogy between football and business. For example: The ownership of football clubs: a current case being the takeover of Manchester United Football Club by Malcolm Glazer during 2005; this development dismayed the club’s fans. Glazer later needed money, like many other club owners and the club (in February 2012) received permission to float on the Singapore Stock Exchange (The Guardian, 2011). In July 2012 the owners changed and moved to seek a NYSE listing (Financial Times, 2012). Mr Glazer, like the American owners of Liverpool, is experienced in sport management.

Television channels behind the indirect experience, should not own football clubs. This is one aspect that poses a very important question for the British gover...