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Essay Sugar Daddies in European Football Clubs

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2. Literature review and in-depth critical examination of the issue 1,095/1315 words – old college The ‘Sugar Daddy Game’ received an increased academic attention in recent years; researchers observed and compared many aspects and implications of that phenomenon. To start with Dietl et al. (2009) and their analysis of social welfare and difference between profit-maximising and win-maximising leagues; then Lang et al. (2011) analysed benefactors influence on industry competitiveness; then Madden (2012) studied implications towards the economic stability of the industry; then Franck & Lang (2012) observed growing trend towards riskier strategic investments amongst ‘sugar-daddy’ owned clubs; and finally the possible outcome of new …show more content…

As noted by Lang et al. (2011) ‘sugar daddy’ investments makes big clubs even more dominant within their league. This is because such clubs have more financial capabilities to attract and hire the best talent (Lang et al., 2011) available on rather inelastic marketplace (Madden, 2012). Franck & Lang (2012) decided to analyse the strategic decisions undertaken by ‘sugar daddy’ owned clubs and concluded that these clubs choose riskier investments strategies as compared to clubs without benefactor owners. However they built very limied theoretical framework, whereas they created only ‘one-club-model’ which enabled them to analyse very narrow scope of potetial incentives and implications within broader industry settings. Nonetheless they found that these riskier investments usually take form of overspending on transfer fees and players remuneration. Franck & Lang (2012) also identified existance of ‘too-big-to-fail’ phenomenon which assumes that ‘suggar daddies’ have to inject money to keep the club from bankruptcy only if it acquired sufficiently large market share, otherwsie it is easy to quit and leave the club as a bankrupt. Another interesting issue researched by acadmics was related to the motivation behind acquiring a football club. According to Franck (2010) individuals may seek for positive spillover and higher recognition of their core businesses; they also may seek for political and social acceptability after acquiring their

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