Football players in light of economic value theory: Critical review and conceptualisation

Abstract

Football players represent the key assets of football clubs, and their value determination is therefore at the heart of clubs' investment and decision-making processes. Unsurprisingly, the topic of player value has attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines for decades. Despite this, there is a corpus of academic literature, which, although it works empirically with the relevant data, does not discuss any of the concepts related to the terms ‘value’ and ‘price’ in depth. Conversely, there are studies that do so but do not present a unified and coherent concept of the terminologies used. Consequently, no comprehensive definition of the value of football players seems to emerge from the literature. The central aim of this paper is to fill this gap. Based on a critical review of existing literature, we propose a unified framework embedded in subjective value theory, particularly as formulated by the Austrian school of economics. As a result, this work presents a theoretical basis for defining the use value and market value of football players, the comparison of which can improve clubs' decision-making. In this context, we also discuss the conceptual validity of Transfermarkt values, a widely used crowd-sourced valuation tool. Overall, we seek to strengthen the link between economic theory and practical management problems in the football industry. Furthermore, our results are not solely limited to football but are also applicable to athlete valuation in other sports.