Does sport innovation create value? The case of professional football clubs

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze the role of technical–tactical innovation in creating value for professional football clubs. Over the last few years, the sector of professional sport has often been investigated to study the economic benefit generated by introducing technological innovation. From the analysis carried out on the sector of professional football, it is, however, clear that there are very few studies examining the role of technical–tactical innovation in creating value for football clubs. To fill this gap in the literature, the present article is concerned with understanding whether innovation of this kind can generate value for the football clubs in which it is used. The aim of this article is to verify whether the economic and sports results achieved by football clubs can be connected to the skill of their coaches/managers in acquiring and consolidating expertise based on innovative tactical formations. The objective of this research is to analyze the main changes brought to the football sector over the years, and then to concentrate on more recently introduced types of technical–tactical innovation.