The Influence of Expenditures in Football Industry Results: Case Study of the Brazilian Football League

Abstract

Reserarch question: the paper investigates the influence of football clubs investments on their performancen the first division of the Brazilian league. Motivation: Considering football as the most important sport in Brazil, representing a cultural symbol of the country, understanding it better becomes necessary. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the financial amounts involved in the management actions to try to understand the influence of the investments that the clubs make about the marketing and championships improvement and, thus, to be able to delineate the relation between investment and success in Football. Idea: In this perspective, the central hypothesis of this study is that the clubs that present the highest expenditures on soccer will also present the best classifications, since these expenses are related to better training conditions and salaries, which may contribute to the recruitment of the best athletes. Data: The study was conducted with data collected over the internet, using data provided by clubs. Only the clubs belonging to the first division were used, being a total of 19 clubs, divided into 3 groups, according to the investment value in Football. Tools: This study presents descriptive and inferential analyzes, since the qualitative-quantitative approach was assumed as a way of understanding the data. Assuming the number of clubs participating in the study, we chose non-parametric inferential analyzes in the intra- and inter-group evaluations, using the alpha value of 0.05 as criterion. Findings: The results showed that clubs in groups G1 and G2 had similar expenditures dynamics, while G3 group clubs had a slight swing. In addition, clubs in groups G1 and G2 had the largest amount of expenditures, while G3 clubs had the lowest expenditure during the period analyzed. These results demonstrated that the clubs of the G1 and G2 groups achieved the best positions in the championships, corroborating the research hypothesis. Contribution: One can conclude that the investment of the clubs directly influences the classification in the championships, being necessary great investment to conquer the championship. However, this study has some limitations, such as sample size (19 teams only). Therefore, we emphasize the need for new studies.