Sport results and footballer performance rights' valuation

One of the most important group of assets in the balance sheet of an enterprise is the intangible assets group. The asset situation of a sports enterprise is particularly complicated. Such a company has an unusual type of intangible assets – players’ performance rights. There are many problems with valuation of such assets. This article presents the econometric approach to solving a valuation problem. Much research takes into account the possibilities of using econometric tools for valuation of the economic value of professional football player performance rights. The most important methods were presented in the paper of Trequattrini, Lombardi and Nappo [2012].

The main goal of this article is to build econometric spatial models to explain the market value of footballer performance rights according to players’ sports results divided into homogeneous groups: goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards. The hypothesis of this research is that the sport results influence the market value of footballers’ performance rights. There are four additional hypothesis. For example one of them for forwards will be as follows - the market value of footballer’s performance rights is dependent on the number of goals, the number of assists and the market value of the team. The following independent variables will be used: goals, assists, performance, yellow cards, red cards, club position in the league and the market value of the club for the whole research. Linear and non-linear models are used to test this hypothesis. The data set includes information about all players’ game activity taken from the Bundesliga (professional association football league in Germany) from the 2013/2014 season.

The results of the analyzes will identify variables closely tied to the market value of the football player’s performance rights (footballers) and measure models’ goodness of fit. The study refers to research conducted since 1999 and indicates new possibilities for the use of common tools - spatial econometric models. It is also a contribution to further research on the models' properties.