Search

Since the 1990s, professional football has undergone unprecedented economic uplift worldwide. From an economic point of view, this sport has evolved into an industry that beyond the football clubs participating in the championships that are organized by the various leagues also involves rather untransparent, complementary economic operations where companies increasingly perform their specific activities on the level of medium-sized enterprises – when they are measured against traditional industrial actors –, by following their unquestionable economic interests. Football is now a scene of structural changes worldwide that are embodied in the alteration of the legal forms of enterprises backing professional football, as well as the spreading application of modern controlling, planning, risk and financial management tools. From an economic perspective, with these recently emerging elements football clubs have started to build up a modern and complex, specialized sector where the most important requirement until the end of the championship season is the maintenance of licensing conditions. In our study we wish to rely primarily on the peculiarities of German professional football, since it shows most of all the presumable mainstream of the development of football. The outsourcing of significant branches of a football undertaking into the form of an incorporated firm should be deemed as a considerable step forward in comparison with the deficient regulations of the operations of associations, regarding the economic professionality of football clubs, partially from the side of commercial law and partially from the side of shareholding law. Through the introduction of organizational and legal structures that are necessary for the football clubs to be considered professional, there are further positive effects generated for football companies. In the event of the use of the form of the incorporated football firm, it is about the transformation and change of the organizational unit of execution and not about a total abandonment of the form of association. In Hungary the formal conversion of the first-league clubs into capital companies has actually been implemented. Another issue is how much in Hungary the preferred form of capital companies ensures additional capital resources.