The Financial Times recently reported a striking fact about the finances of the Premier League. Even though it is the richest football league in the world, and even though interest from private equity, sovereign wealth, hedge funds, and other investors has poured into European football over the past decade, Premier League clubs collectively lost almost £800mn before tax in the 2024-25 season. Revenues rose from roughly £6.3bn to more than £6.8bn, yet 14 of the 20 clubs still reported losses. Chelsea alone lost £262mn, while Tottenham and West Ham also posted very large deficits. At first glance, this looks hard to reconcile with the willingness of sophisticated investors to pay high valuations for football clubs.

What is less well understood is that, in an open league with promotion and relegation, this pattern is not an accident or a temporary deviation from normal business logic. It is close to the equilibrium outcome that Stefan Szymanski describes in his book Money and Soccer. The central idea is that football clubs in relegation leagues do not behave like ordinary firms whose main objective is to maximize profit. They operate in an environment where sporting success determines future revenues, status, and even survival in the top division. Under those conditions, competition pushes clubs to convert revenues into playing talent rather than into profit. In the medium run, the expected outcome is that clubs earn little or no profit.

Szymanski’s logic begins with a simple observation about what clubs are trying to achieve. Owners may care about financial sustainability, but football clubs are judged primarily by results on the field. League position, qualification for European competition, avoidance of relegation, and trophy contention all matter directly to owners, supporters, and executives. That means clubs are better understood as win-oriented organizations subject to budget constraints, rather than as firms that take sporting outcomes as a means to the end of profit. Once a club has new revenue, the temptation is not to distribute it to shareholders, but to improve the squad.

That incentive is especially strong because player quality is the key scarce input in football production. A club that wants more wins must usually spend more on wages, transfer fees, scouting, coaching, and related football operations. And this spending is not made in isolation. Each club’s decision affects the others because league success is relative. If one club strengthens its team, the competitive position of every rival worsens unless they respond. This creates the logic of a contest: clubs are not just selling entertainment to fans, they are engaged in a race against one another for rank. In such a setting, extra revenues are not quietly retained as profit. They are bid away in competition for talent.

Relegation makes this pressure even more intense. In a closed league such as the major North American sports leagues, poor performance is costly, but it does not usually threaten membership in the league itself. In European football, by contrast, underperformance can mean relegation and the loss of a large stream of broadcasting, sponsorship, and matchday income. So the downside risk from not investing is enormous. A club that behaves like a cautious profit-maximizer may preserve cash today, but it may also increase the probability of finishing lower in the table, missing European qualification, or dropping out of the division altogether. That makes holding back strategically dangerous.

This is what helps explain the FT numbers. The article notes that revenues continued to grow because international demand for Premier League media rights remains strong and sponsorship markets remain buoyant. But it also notes that spending on players surged, with Premier League clubs spending roughly €2.4bn in the summer of 2024 and more than €3.5bn in the summer of 2025 according to Transfermarkt. Clubs also faced higher costs from stadium investment and expanding commercial operations. From a Szymanski perspective, this is exactly what one should expect. Higher revenues do not relax competition; they intensify it, because each club now has more resources with which to chase sporting advantage.

The article also points to an important wrinkle: some clubs improved their reported accounts through related-party asset sales. Newcastle, for example, posted a pre-tax profit only after selling its stadium to its parent company. Uefa does not count such deals in its own financial assessments. This matters because it suggests that underlying operating profitability is even weaker than headline accounts sometimes imply. Szymanski’s argument is not that clubs can never report an accounting profit in any given season. It is that the structure of competition makes persistent economic profit very difficult, because any surplus tends to be reinvested in the search for better results.

Seen this way, the apparent puzzle of rising investor interest alongside weak profitability becomes less mysterious. Investors may still buy clubs because they value capital appreciation, political visibility, prestige, global brand reach, or complementary business opportunities. But those are not the same thing as expecting stable operating profits. If Szymanski is right, then the normal equilibrium in an open relegation league is not one in which well-run clubs earn healthy margins year after year. It is one in which revenues are largely competed away through spending on talent, leaving clubs financially fragile even when the league as a whole is commercially booming.

The broader implication is that the Premier League’s losses should not be read simply as evidence of poor management or irrational exuberance. They are also a predictable consequence of the economic structure of the sport. In a relegation league, clubs cannot safely stand aside from the competitive race and harvest profits the way firms in ordinary industries might. If they do, they become weaker on the field, and weakness on the field undermines the very revenue base on which profitability depends. That is the core of Szymanski’s insight, and it provides a coherent explanation for why the richest league in the world can still look like such a poor business for so many of its participants.

At the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last week, I kept coming back to a theme that seems to be gaining traction among American CEOs who have invested in European football clubs. Many appear to have concluded that one of the great under-exploited revenue opportunities in European football lies not only in media or commercial deals, but in the stadium itself: better monetizing the live fan experience through ticket pricing, premium amenities, food and beverage, parking, and comfort.

On one level, that logic is easy to understand. If clubs can make the stadium experience more convenient and more pleasant, they can likely charge more. Comfortable seats, better concessions, smoother entry, and better surrounding infrastructure all raise the value of attendance for many consumers. From a standard economic perspective, reducing the non-price costs of attending should increase demand.

But this also raises a question that I have been thinking more about lately: what if some of those frictions are not just inefficiencies, but part of what selects for the kind of fan culture that makes European and Latin American football so compelling in the first place?

Fans, like any economic agents, choose the option that gives them the highest net benefit. Attending a match is worthwhile when the marginal benefit exceeds the marginal cost. And marginal cost is not just the ticket price. It also includes long lines, crowding, uncomfortable seating, limited amenities, transportation hassles, and even a degree of disorder or discomfort. When those frictions are high, the people who still choose to attend are disproportionately those with extremely high attachment to the club. Their fandom is strong enough that it outweighs everything they have to put up with.

Once clubs reduce those frictions, however, the calculus changes. The stadium becomes more attractive not only to the deeply committed supporter, but also to the more casual consumer. And if that shift is paired with higher ticket prices, the effect may be asymmetric: the price increase screens out some die-hard fans, while the improved comfort draws in some less-invested ones. In other words, clubs may be raising the costs that hurt their most passionate supporters while lowering the costs that matter most to more indifferent attendees.

That does not mean clubs should avoid modernization or ignore revenue opportunities. But it does suggest a possible tension that owners may be underestimating. The very atmosphere they are hoping to monetize may depend on a fan base that was selected, in part, by inconvenience, discomfort, and sacrifice. If clubs smooth too much of that away, the live product may gradually start to feel less like European football and more like an NBA game: enjoyable, polished, and commercially efficient, but also a bit more superficial.

The question, then, is not whether clubs should improve the fan experience. It is whether they can do so without unintentionally changing the composition of the crowd, and with it, the emotional intensity that made the product valuable to begin with.

It started with a protest. A thousand voices and one message from the Curva Sud: “GO HOME.” AC Milan’s ultras turned their backs on the club’s American ownership in a demonstration that blended choreography, fury, and decades of cultural resistance. This wasn’t just local fan unrest; it was a flare of resistance in a growing battle over what football will become.

While the English Premier League remains the global benchmark—refined, revenue-maximized, and relentlessly televised—the more consequential struggle for football’s future is unfolding in Italy. Serie A, with its romantic inefficiencies, aged infrastructure, and once-dominant brands, has become the most fertile (and volatile) testing ground for a bold experiment: that football, reshaped by American capital, can become a scalable, stable, and highly profitable business.

Over the next ten years, we’ll find out whether football adopts the calculated efficiency of American sports management; or whether its more unpredictable, emotionally charged traditions can resist that transformation. The outcome, however, won’t be decided in London or Madrid. It’ll play out in the contradictions of Serie A, where identity and capital are already colliding.

American Capital, Italian Canvas

American capital is coming for the Serie A. This isn’t just a hunch, it’s already happening. Over the past decade, a subtle revolution has unfolded. Almost half of Serie A's clubs are now controlled or heavily influenced by American investment groups. Milan (RedBird), Inter (Oaktree), Atalanta (Pagliuca), Fiorentina (Commisso), Roma (Friedkin), Genoa (777 Partners), Bologna (Saputo), Venezia (Newco) and Parma (Krause Group) are all backed by U.S.-based capital. The trend is unmistakable.

But why do I think the future of football will play out in Italy? Why not focus on the Premier League, where American billionaires also have footholds in clubs like Liverpool (FSG) and Chelsea (BlueCo)? The difference is structural and cultural. The Premier League has already absorbed many of the norms of American sports capitalism: centralized media deals, global branding, and a tolerance for profit-driven ownership. In many ways, the creation of the Premier League in the early ’90s was a deliberate departure from the old Football League structure—designed not just to modernize English football, but to emulate the commercial architecture of American leagues like the NFL. The breakaway allowed clubs to centralize broadcast rights, maximize revenue, and package the league as a premium entertainment product. It wasn’t just a rebrand; it was a business model pivot. (If you’re interested in how the Premier League borrowed from American leagues like the NFL, read Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson’s excellent book, The Club.) Italy, by contrast, is a messier but more revealing frontier: a league with immense brand value, deep-rooted fan culture, and inefficiencies ripe for “optimization.” Serie A is where American capital must prove it can modernize a historically stubborn system without tearing apart the soul of the sport. And that makes it the true test case for the future of football.

But why not Germany or Spain? Serie A is the most prestigious European league with significant American capital, yet unlike Spain (where Barcelona and Real Madrid are member-owned) or Germany (with its 50+1 rule), Italian clubs are largely private entities. And unlike France, Italy has legacy brands with massive cultural cachet and a global following that far exceeds their recent sporting success.

That, economically speaking, is undervalued equity.

But what changes will American ownership bring to club football? I discuss this below.

Profit Over Glory? The First Fault Line

This is the foundational difference—the one from which all other tensions flow. At its core, the clash between European football tradition and American ownership begins with a simple but profound question: what is a football club for? In much of Europe, owning a club has long been a civic symbol, a vanity project, a vehicle for glory and identity. Success has been measured in silverware, not balance sheets. But American investors bring a different lens: they see clubs as underleveraged media assets with untapped potential. (Why else would firms with little understanding or interest in football like Oaktree and RedBird be investing?) And that reframes the objective function entirely.

Once profit becomes the goal rather than a constraint, everything else follows: the push for closed systems to stabilize returns, salary caps to contain costs, stadiums reimagined as corporate hospitality zones, and fans recast as premium customers rather than lifelong stakeholders. Every downstream change—however technical—flows from this upstream assumption. The sport stops asking how do we win? and starts asking how do we monetize?

This isn’t just cultural, it’s theoretical. Sports economist Stefan Szymanski has spent years studying this divide. In work co-authored with Pedro García-del-Barrio and others, he’s shown that clubs in open leagues like those in Italy and England often behave like win maximizers: they pour resources into on-field success, even at the expense of profitability. In this view, financial sustainability is a constraint, not the goal. Promotion and relegation supercharge this logic—if you don’t spend, you drop (more on this later).

In contrast, the American model—born in the closed ecosystems of the NFL, NBA, and MLB—favors profit maximization (see here and here). Owners aren’t just trying to win games; they’re trying to grow enterprise value. Revenue sharing, salary caps, and franchise stability make it possible to generate predictable returns while maintaining competitive balance. This logic aligns neatly with the "invariance principle" first proposed by Simon Rottenberg: that in a profit-maximizing world, market mechanisms—not sporting ambition—allocate talent and shape outcomes.

In short, it’s not just different accounting, it’s a different worldview. And it’s one that’s now colliding with Serie A’s traditional ethos. The first real glimpse I got of this philosophical rift came at the 2024 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. On stage sat Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital—the man at the helm of AC Milan—alongside Stephen Pagliuca of Atalanta. Cardinale didn’t mince words: he said he wouldn't want Milan to win every year, as that could diminish fan interest in Serie A and, by extension, reduce the value of his investment in the league (watch his answer to this question here). It was a statement grounded in business logic (economist Walter Neale's logic to be clear), the kind of sentiment that makes perfect sense if your primary concern is league-wide commercial growth and media rights stability. But to a Milanista—and even to an average football fan like me, with no skin in the game—it felt like blasphemy. If AC Milan and its competitors are’t trying to do everything to win, then why watch sports?

From Promotion to Profit: The Problem of Relegation

If the first battle is over why clubs exist—to win or to profit—the second is over how they’re structured to do so. And here’s where things get existential. Because once you adopt the American objective function (profit over glory) you immediately run into a structural problem: relegation.

In North America’s closed leagues like the NFL or NBA, the revenue pie is large, stable, and, crucially, predictable. That predictability underwrites the investment thesis. Teams become franchises. Franchises become assets. Assets can be priced, leveraged, and sold. But in European football’s open system, where even a Champions League club can be one bad season away from the second division, financial risk is anything but contained.

Relegation doesn’t just punish failure—it distorts incentives. Clubs often overspend to avoid the drop, especially on player wages, which are tightly correlated with performance. That may raise short-term quality, but it breaks the equilibrium needed for sustained profitability. In economic terms: relegation introduces convexity into the cost function of club management. As survival becomes uncertain, the marginal cost of winning skyrockets into irrational territory.

It’s no wonder, then, that American owners fantasize about a closed ecosystem. Remove relegation, and suddenly wage inflation slows, revenue is pooled, and investor downside is capped. It’s profit-maximization’s dream scenario: less chaos, more control. We saw this vision in its most brazen form with the now-defunct Super League; a proposal that sought to enshrine elite clubs in a permanent, risk-free competition. It failed spectacularly, thanks to massive fan backlash. But that doesn’t mean the idea is dead. More likely, it will return in quieter, more piecemeal forms—structural tweaks here, expanded Champions League protections there—until the open system has been gradually engineered into something far more closed.

Enter Salary Caps, Exit Volatility

If closing the system is the structural fix, regulation is the financial one. Once you're optimizing for profit, the next logical step is to reduce volatility, and that means imposing constraints.

Salary caps, revenue sharing, financial fair play—these are all tools designed to normalize returns and reduce variance in operating margins. In sports economics, such mechanisms bring the system closer to Nash equilibrium conditions: clubs stop acting like high-stakes gamblers chasing marginal gains and start behaving like prudent portfolio managers optimizing risk-adjusted returns.

But something gets lost in the process. Competitive purity is diluted. You’re no longer watching who’s best—you’re watching who’s most efficient within the rules of the spreadsheet (that’s really what Moneyball is all about). Managerial ingenuity becomes the star, and players are judged less on magic than on whether they justify their slice of the salary cap. It starts to feel less like football, and more like fantacalcio—a fantasy league dressed up as a real one.

To some, that’s a win for sustainability. To others, it’s the death knell of ambition.

The Monetization of Fandom

Once you've secured the profit motive, stabilized the system, and capped the costs, the next frontier is obvious: squeeze more out of the customer. And in football, the customer is the fan.

One of the most visible American exports is the industrialization of the matchday experience. Think VIP boxes, exclusive lounges, curated food courts, and six-figure “seat licenses” just for the right to buy a season ticket. (This isn’t a hypothetical. It’s exactly how the LA Rams structured access at SoFi Stadium—where fans shelled out $100,000+ before even purchasing a single match ticket.) Now imagine that same logic applied to get a ticket at San Siro.

This model doesn’t just generate revenue, it rewires who the stadium is for. It replaces fans with consultants, die-hards with influencers. It extracts value from fandom while eroding the very soil that nourished it.

In economic terms, it privileges price discrimination over consumer surplus. The stadium is no longer a public good. It becomes a revenue-maximizing machine: efficient, exclusive, and emotionally hollow.

The Endgame: You Bought Passion, But Can You Keep It?

Go to an NBA or NFL game in the U.S. and you’ll get the full “experience.” There’s curated food, halftime contests, t-shirt cannons, and music that never stops. It’s not really a sporting contest, it’s an event. The game itself is only part of the spectacle, just one item on a larger menu of monetized entertainment touchpoints.

What’s often missing is atmosphere. Not noise, but meaning. Not volume, but stakes. No chants with history, just playlists with sponsors. Transactional attention, a perfectly engineered environment for casual engagement… and casual disengagement.

That, whether knowingly or not, is what American capital risks replicating in European football. They see the passion in football stands and think: imagine if we could bottle that and sell it with a premium subscription. But the passion they want to monetize wasn’t built for quarterly returns. It comes from irrational roots; decades of tribal loyalty, losing seasons, cheap tickets for pensioners, and the unspoken understanding that the club belongs to its people, not its balance sheet.

That irrationality isn’t a bug. It’s the entire operating system. And once you replace it with rational, profit-maximizing logic—once you stop playing the aging club legend or price out the teenager who’s never missed a home match—don’t be surprised when the passion you paid for vanishes.

In buying the product, you may end up destroying it. And that’s why what happens next in Italy matters. Not just to Serie A, but to the future of football itself.

La reciente entrevista de Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia en el podcast Gelatina generó revuelo en redes y medios. El presidente de la AFA defendió con fuerza el actual formato del torneo argentino, con 28 equipos en Primera División, y dejó en claro que no tiene intenciones de volver a un sistema más acotado. “¿Para qué querés 20 equipos?”, desafió, sosteniendo que la estructura actual es más inclusiva, más federal, y mejor para el fútbol argentino.

Pero, ¿qué dice la teoría económica sobre esto? ¿Tiene sentido mantener una liga tan grande? A continuación, repasamos sus principales argumentos y los analizamos desde una mirada económica, que pone el foco en incentivos, calidad de la competencia, sostenibilidad y atractivo para el público. Trabajos como el de Szymanski (2003) sobre el diseño económico de torneos deportivos ofrecen un marco útil para pensar estos temas, especialmente cuando se trata de equilibrar participación con intensidad competitiva.

1. “Somos formadores”: más equipos, más vidriera

Tapia insiste en que Argentina no solo compite, sino que forma. Según su lógica, cuantos más equipos haya en la máxima categoría, más jugadores jóvenes tendrán lugar para mostrarse. Esto, dice, potencia a Argentina como exportador de talento.

Desde la economía, tiene cierta lógica: ampliar la primera división puede aumentar la cantidad de jugadores profesionales activos, lo que mejora la visibilidad de nuevos talentos. Pero también hay una advertencia clara: si baja la intensidad de la competencia, se resiente la calidad del desarrollo. Los jugadores no crecen del mismo modo en contextos poco exigentes, donde se juega por nada durante buena parte del torneo. De hecho, casos recientes como los de Enzo Fernández, Julián Álvarez o Alexis Mac Allister, que emigraron muy jóvenes y tras un corto paso por la liga local, han llevado a algunos analistas a sostener que la verdadera formación de élite ocurre en el exterior. Si esto es así, entonces más minutos en la Primera División argentina no necesariamente se traducen en mejores jugadores, sino simplemente en un mayor volumen de tránsito.

Lo clave no es solo tener lugar, sino tener contextos que premien el esfuerzo, la mejora y el rendimiento. Si la mayoría de los partidos se vuelven irrelevantes, eso va en contra de cualquier proceso serio de formación.

2. “Con más equipos hicimos un calendario atractivo”

Otro de los argumentos de Tapia es que el formato con 28 equipos permite armar torneos como la Copa de la Liga, evitar fechas entre semana, y cuidar a los equipos que compiten internacionalmente. También menciona que esto genera una mejor oferta para la televisión y los sponsors.

Es cierto que un calendario más amplio puede dar lugar a formatos más creativos y más partidos vendidos. Desde una mirada económica, más partidos implican más ingresos potenciales, sobre todo si se llega a más plazas del país y se capta más audiencia.

Pero el riesgo está en que a mayor cantidad de partidos, más chances de que bajen el interés y la calidad. Si muchos equipos están a mitad de tabla sin pelear por nada, esos partidos se vuelven poco atractivos para el hincha, la tele y hasta para los propios jugadores. Desde una lógica económica, esto refleja un beneficio marginal decreciente: los primeros partidos del campeonato pueden ser emocionantes y rendidores, pero a medida que se suman fechas sin consecuencias deportivas reales, el valor de cada partido adicional cae. Además, si los ingresos no se reparten de forma equitativa, los equipos grandes se benefician más, y se profundiza la brecha con el resto.

3. “¿Por qué no 30?”: el argumento federal y social

Tapia plantea que una Primera más grande permite incluir a más regiones del país, sostener más planteles profesionales, y fortalecer el rol social de los clubes en sus comunidades. Además, menciona que los equipos chicos siguen siendo competitivos: “Central Córdoba le ganó a Flamengo”.

Es cierto que el fútbol en Argentina tiene un rol social muy fuerte. Los clubes son, muchas veces, el centro de la vida comunitaria. Pero desde la teoría de incentivos, lo importante no es que alguien pueda ganar de vez en cuando, sino que todos tengan motivos reales para competir durante toda la temporada.

En ligas con muchos equipos y pocos premios, es habitual que se genere un desinterés progresivo. Hay clubes que “navegan” sin objetivos claros, bajan la inversión, y eso deteriora el nivel general del torneo. Es un fenómeno que se vio en otras ligas grandes del pasado (como el Brasileirão o la Serie A en ciertos momentos).

El federalismo no tiene por qué estar reñido con la competitividad. Pero para que funcione, el diseño del torneo debe mantener viva la pelea por algo en cada fecha.

¿Existe un punto de equilibrio?

En un país como Argentina, donde el fútbol no es solo un negocio, sino también una red social, cultural y económica, tiene sentido pensar en formatos que no sean puramente europeos. Pero aun así, hay un límite a partir del cual el crecimiento en cantidad de equipos empieza a jugar en contra de la calidad de la competencia.

Muchos economistas del deporte coinciden en que ligas de entre 18 y 22 equipos tienden a equilibrar bien el acceso con la intensidad del torneo. En ese tipo de formatos, casi todos los equipos tienen algo en juego —campeonato, copas, descenso— durante todo el año. Eso es lo que mantiene al público interesado y a los jugadores motivados.

Si la AFA quiere sostener una liga de 28 equipos, debería acompañarlo con: i) un reparto de ingresos más igualitario, ii) múltiples torneos con premios significativos, y iii) una programación que evite tramos del calendario sin tensión competitiva

Conclusión

La pregunta que Tapia lanzó —“¿Para qué querés 20 equipos?”— merece una respuesta. Desde la economía, no se trata de capricho ni de elitismo, sino de cómo diseñar una competencia que incentive el esfuerzo, mantenga el interés y mejore el producto fútbol.

La cantidad ideal no es la que permite que todos jueguen, sino aquella en la que todos tengan razones reales para jugar con intensidad. Porque lo que enamora al hincha argentino no es solo ver fútbol, sino ver fútbol que importa.

Discrimination in labor markets has long been a troubling and persistent issue, rooted not in differences in productivity but in characteristics unrelated to an individual's performance—like race, gender, or nationality. Despite the expectation that competitive markets would naturally eliminate discrimination, it continues to thrive in many industries, including professional sports. Understanding why requires a closer look at the underlying economic theories and real-world evidence that challenge conventional wisdom.

One of the foundational theories comes from economist Gary Becker, who argued that in a perfectly competitive market, discrimination should eventually disappear. The reasoning is simple: firms that discriminate will incur higher costs and lose out to more efficient competitors who hire based solely on merit. Yet, the reality is rarely that straightforward. Labor markets are far from frictionless, and various constraints can allow discrimination to persist despite competitive pressures.

A vivid example of this paradox comes from professional football. Economist Stefan Szymanski conducted a groundbreaking study examining wage discrimination in English football between 1978 and 1993. His hypothesis was elegant yet powerful: if black players were systematically underpaid compared to their white counterparts, then teams with a higher proportion of black players would consistently outperform expectations based on their payroll. After all, if wages truly reflected talent, a team’s performance should correlate with total payroll, not racial composition.

The results were striking. Szymanski found that clubs with above-average numbers of black players consistently exceeded expectations, suggesting that these players were indeed underpaid despite delivering high performance. The implication was clear: racial discrimination in wages was alive and well in English football, contradicting the assumption that market forces alone would correct such inefficiencies.

This begs the question: why didn’t competition eliminate discrimination, as Becker’s theory would predict? The answer lies in market frictions—specifically, constraints on labor mobility. Prior to 1995, football players faced severe restrictions on movement between clubs, including hefty transfer fees and strict limits on the number of foreign players allowed. These constraints effectively handed clubs monopsony power, enabling them to suppress wages without fearing that talented players would move to more equitable teams.

The landscape of European football changed dramatically with the Bosman ruling in December 1995. In one sweeping decision, the European Court of Justice abolished two major barriers to labor mobility. First, it eliminated transfer fees for out-of-contract players, allowing them to move freely at the end of their contracts. Second, it struck down foreign player quotas for EU nationals, enabling free movement between clubs within the EU. This monumental ruling forced clubs to compete more fairly for talent, weakening the grip of discriminatory practices.

Economists Pierre Deschamps and José de Sousa revisited the issue decades later, analyzing whether the Bosman ruling truly eradicated wage discrimination. Their findings painted a promising yet incomplete picture. Before Bosman, the wage-performance gap identified by Szymanski remained evident, confirming ongoing discrimination. However, in the years following the ruling, that gap vanished for EU players, indicating that increased mobility had indeed curbed discriminatory practices.

Yet, the story doesn’t end there. While EU players enjoyed newfound freedom, non-EU players remained subject to stringent work permit requirements and visa restrictions, trapping them in a web of limited mobility. As a result, wage discrimination persisted for these athletes, demonstrating that even the most transformative rulings cannot fully dismantle entrenched biases when barriers to mobility remain.

The lesson from European football is profound. Competition can be a powerful force against discrimination, but only when labor markets are genuinely open and fluid. When mobility is constrained—whether through restrictive contracts, non-compete clauses, or immigration policies—firms retain the power to indulge their biases without facing the full cost of inefficiency. Addressing discrimination, therefore, demands more than just theoretical market corrections; it requires dismantling the structural barriers that keep workers from voting with their feet.

The insights from football extend far beyond the pitch, offering a template for tackling discrimination in other labor markets. Whether it’s non-compete clauses in tech or visa restrictions in professional services, reducing labor mobility frictions is essential for fostering fairness and efficiency. Only by confronting these obstacles head-on can we hope to create a truly meritocratic workforce where talent, not prejudice, dictates success.

References

• Becker, G. S. (1957). The Economics of Discrimination. University of Chicago Press.

• Szymanski, S. (2000). "A Market Test for Discrimination in the English Professional Soccer Leagues." Journal of Political Economy, 108(3), 590-603.

• Deschamps, P., & de Sousa, J. (2021). "Labor Mobility and Racial Discrimination." European Economic Review, 135, 103738.

Most research on "choking under pressure" has focused on static, unopposed actions such as basketball free throws, golf putts, or penalty kicks in football. These situations give players time to stop, prepare, and aim without interference. While these studies are insightful, they only capture one part of the high-stakes performance equation. In our recent study, we shift the focus to something new: examining whether professional athletes choke in dynamic, time-sensitive situations where they don’t have the luxury to pause and think. Specifically, we explored high-stakes moments in open-play football, where players must act immediately. This approach reveals a side of performance that more closely mirrors the intense, real-time demands found in many high-pressure professions. Think of a surgeon performing a life-saving operation, a pilot managing unexpected turbulence, or a stock trader reacting to market volatility. Each of these roles involves rapid decision-making under significant pressure without the option of extensive deliberation.

In exploring how football players perform during these fast-paced, high-stakes moments, we hope to offer a new perspective on how pressure affects decision-making, not only in sports but also in high-stakes jobs. By moving beyond controlled, static settings, our study delves into a more dynamic and constrained environment—one that better reflects the complexities and pressures of real-world situations.

To analyze this, we used data from the five top European football leagues, covering several seasons of gameplay. We leveraged the “expected goals” (xG) metric, a cornerstone of football analytics, which calculates the probability that a given shot results in a goal based on factors like shot angle, distance, and defender positioning. By using xG as a control, we could isolate shot quality across different scenarios, allowing us to measure whether players perform below their expected level when pressure is at its peak.

The data revealed some striking patterns. Specifically, when players’ teams were trailing by one goal during stoppage time—often the tensest moments of a match—their conversion rates dropped significantly. This underperformance did not occur when the game was tied, suggesting that players may feel heightened pressure in situations where they’re trying to avoid a loss rather than simply striving for a win. This finding aligns with the concept of loss aversion from behavioral economics, which suggests people are more motivated to avoid losses than to achieve gains. In these critical moments when a player’s actions can impact the outcome of the match, the fear of failing their team may contribute to a measurable decline in performance.

Quantitatively, the effect was notable. We observed that the probability of scoring decreased by about 17% for players in these high-pressure, trailing situations compared to more neutral contexts. Given that the average shot success rate in football hovers around 10%, this 1.7 percentage point drop represents a significant shift. In the competitive world of professional sports, even small changes in performance can have outsized impacts on outcomes, reputations, and careers. Imagine a scenario where a player has one final chance to score; this slight performance drop could mean the difference between glory and defeat.

But what makes this study particularly exciting is the relevance of our findings beyond sports. Our results offer insights applicable to many high-stakes professions where quick, high-pressure decision-making is required. Consider a surgeon in the operating room, a firefighter in an emergency, or a trader managing assets under market pressure. Just like professional athletes, these individuals must make critical decisions without time to second-guess. Our study suggests that the way people react under such high pressure may hinge not only on their skills but also on the stakes involved—especially when potential losses are at play.

For anyone who’s faced a high-stakes moment—whether in a job interview, a big presentation, or an important negotiation—our findings resonate on a personal level. The link between loss aversion and performance under pressure suggests that our tendency to choke may often be tied to the fear of failure rather than the desire for success. Recognizing this pattern can be helpful for developing strategies to manage pressure, as it underscores the importance of focusing on positive outcomes instead of dwelling on potential losses.

By examining performance in real-time, high-pressure football scenarios, we demonstrate that even in situations requiring split-second actions, the weight of expectations can impair performance. This suggests that the phenomenon of choking might not be just about overthinking but may be tied to the inherent stress of high-stakes decisions. Future research could build on these insights by exploring similar dynamics in other sports or professional fields. 

In the world of football, more has always meant better: more leagues, more matches, and more tournaments—all designed to satisfy an endless appetite for the game. But recently, fans, networks, and even players seem to be reaching a limit. With the football calendar packed to the brim, the thrill of each new tournament or match is fading, and broadcasters are starting to lose interest in shelling out for endless games.

Let’s explore why football’s ever-expanding schedule might be backfiring and what this saturation means for the sport, its fans, and the industry.

1. The Diminishing Thrill of New Tournaments

The law of diminishing marginal utility states that the additional utility gained from an increase in consumption decreases with each subsequent increase in the level of consumption. In football, we’re seeing this play out with the endless introduction of new tournaments.

Take the FIFA Club World Cup, for instance. FIFA recently expanded the tournament to 32 teams, hoping the larger format would attract widespread fan and sponsor interest. However, the competition has faced significant commercial roadblocks. Despite FIFA’s ambitious revenue target of $4 billion, they have yet to secure a broadcasting partner for the event. FIFA President Gianni Infantino even scheduled an emergency meeting with global television executives to generate interest, underscoring the urgency. While Apple initially entered discussions with FIFA, reportedly offering $1 billion for global streaming rights, they ultimately withdrew. The company’s offer amounted to only a fraction of FIFA’s target, and FIFA then reverted to traditional regional media rights tenders, which still haven’t yielded a partner (source). FIFA is now reportedly exploring a backup plan to find a financial partner who can support the tournament, potentially broadcasting it through FIFA’s own streaming platform, FIFA+.

Adding to the complications, FIFA has also struggled to secure key sponsorship deals. While the electronics company Hisense signed on as a partner, other major sponsors like Adidas and Coca-Cola remain at odds with FIFA. Both companies argue that their existing contracts should already cover the Club World Cup, while FIFA is pushing for separate agreements specific to the tournament. The dispute has been escalated to the Swiss Arbitration Centre, with Adidas and Coca-Cola resisting FIFA’s efforts to renegotiate. The absence of a broadcast deal has further strained negotiations with potential sponsors, who are hesitant to commit millions without guaranteed television exposure (source, source).

This predicament highlights the challenges of continually expanding football’s calendar with new tournaments, as each additional event risks becoming “just another tournament” rather than a must-watch spectacle.

2. Fans are Hitting “Football Fatigue”

The concept of “football fatigue” isn’t just about an overload of matches—it’s also about dwindling stakes. With big matches every other night, the thrill of a major showdown feels diluted.

In several European leagues, this oversaturation is starting to impact financial stability. For example, the Guardian reports that Ligue 1 faced a financial crisis when its initial broadcast deal with Mediapro collapsed, leaving the league scrambling to piece together emergency deals. With superstar players like Messi, Neymar, and Mbappé departing the French league, viewership dropped, and Ligue 1 was only able to secure a broadcast deal worth roughly half of what it had projected. Such reductions in TV revenue are a stark warning to leagues across Europe that oversupply risks diluting value (source).

In England, the Carabao Cup—a domestic tournament traditionally embraced by English football culture—is now seeing fewer spectators. For many clubs, especially the top-tier ones, the tournament has become an opportunity to field second-string players, signaling to fans that it lacks the significance of other competitions. When the games don’t matter as much to the teams, it’s tough to get fans excited to tune in.

3. TV Deals Reflect Fan Apathy

 For years, TV networks banked on fans’ undying loyalty to the game. But in recent seasons, even some of the most popular leagues are feeling the effects of oversaturation, reflected in lower TV revenues.

This cooling of enthusiasm is evident across major European leagues as well. According to recent figures, Serie A’s domestic rights value has decreased from €973 million to €900 million, while the Bundesliga dropped from €1.16 billion to €1.1 billion. Ligue 1 faced an even sharper decline, from €657 million to €500 million, following high-profile exits of star players like Messi and Mbappé. Even the Premier League’s latest deal, while rising from £1.615 billion to £1.675 billion, only achieved this increase by adding 70 extra games to each season’s broadcast package. These adjustments indicate that broadcasters are becoming increasingly cautious, aiming to avoid unsustainable spending as the market reaches a saturation point.

The UEFA Champions League’s expanded format, designed to generate additional revenue by increasing the total from €3.5 billion to €4.4 billion per season, has further strained broadcaster budgets. While the concept “more matches equal more revenue” once held true, it no longer appears to align with broadcasters’ financial realities or fan interest. Many networks now struggle to balance advertising and subscription revenues with the high costs of these rights, especially as the football calendar becomes more crowded with games and tournaments.

As fan enthusiasm becomes increasingly stretched, broadcasters are showing caution, unwilling to invest heavily in tournaments that might not deliver substantial returns. This shift suggests that football leagues and tournaments may need to rethink their approach to scheduling and broadcasting if they hope to retain both viewers and lucrative TV deals.

4. Oversupply of Matches Dilutes Quality of Play

With leagues, national teams, and clubs filling the calendar, even top players can’t keep up. The physical toll on players is immense, with injuries rising season over season, impacting both their careers and the quality of the game itself. When star players are frequently benched due to fatigue or injury, the quality of play diminishes, and fans notice.

Take Liverpool’s 2020-2021 season, for example. In the wake of a packed calendar, the team faced an unprecedented number of injuries, which saw them struggle to maintain the high standard of football they had become known for. Similarly, teams like Real Madrid and Manchester City have faced mounting injuries, attributed in part to congested schedules that allow little time for recovery. As a result, many players returned exhausted, leading to a noticeable slump in performances in domestic leagues following the tournament. The relentless schedule takes its toll, and fans lose out on seeing players at their peak.

5. The Path Forward: Quality over Quantity?

Football, by its nature, thrives on passion and intensity. But as leagues and organizations pack the calendar with matches, they risk eroding the very excitement that makes the game beloved. A similar issue is currently facing professional basketball, where the regular season’s abundance of games has led to a decline in fan interest and engagement. With over 80 games in an NBA season, fans often wait until the playoffs for matches with real stakes, knowing that many regular-season games don’t significantly impact the outcome.

Football could face a similar fate if the calendar continues to expand. By reducing the number of games and focusing on fewer, higher-stakes events, leagues might actually reinvigorate fan enthusiasm. When each match carries significant weight, the excitement and anticipation rise, creating moments that fans won’t want to miss.

The lesson from basketball’s long season shows that too much content can dilute engagement, making games feel less meaningful. For football to keep its edge, leagues might need to embrace the idea of “less is more,” ensuring that each match feels like an event, rather than just another date on an overcrowded calendar.

Conclusion: Time to Reassess Football’s Expanding Calendar?

Football has a unique place in global culture, uniting millions of fans across borders. But even for the most devoted fans, the sheer volume of games and tournaments is becoming overwhelming. With FIFA struggling to secure lucrative deals, broadcasters hesitating on commitments, and fans feeling burned out, it may be time for the football industry to press pause and reevaluate.

The answer may lie not in more matches, but in better ones. For football to keep its edge, leagues might need to focus on quality over quantity, ensuring that each game is an event worth watching rather than just another entry on a packed schedule. After all, the magic of the game is in the passion, the stakes, and the thrill of the unexpected—something that’s best savored in moderation.