Intellectual Capital Efficiency Management in Professional Football Clubs’ Performance: Problems of Assessment

Abstract

Professional success is one of the objective non-financial displays of the effective management of a company’s intellectual capital (IC) as the basis of its economic and financial prosperity. This study analyses the adequacy of the results of some assessment methods of IC efficiency based on football clubs’ public financial statement data and their professional performance based on professional ranking. This study empirically considers the advantages and disadvantages of specific methods for assessing IC efficiency with the example of football clubs that were TOP 50 of UEFA Club Ranking in 2014–2018. The goal of the study is to compare professional ranking as an objectively formed non-financial indicator of a company’s professional performance with IC efficiency to assess its management successfulness in a highly competitive environment. We used the Value Added Intellectual Capital Coefficient (VAIC), MV/BV ratio, and Tobin’s q to assess the IC efficiency of the sampled football clubs. The specialized method of assessing IC efficiency provides results that are more relevant to clubs’ professional performance than methods based on the principles of the theory of investment. We believe that the study of the relationship between company’s IC efficiency with its financial and professional performance has significant prospects with the use of specialized Return on Assets Methods (ROAM), in particular, Intangible Driven Earnings (IDE) and Calculated Intangible Value (CIV).