The Analysis of Amateur Sports Clubs Funding: A European Perspective

A literature review shows that the heterogeneity of financial resources is one of the main characteristics of the third sector in general, and of sports clubs in particular. Nevertheless, there are big discrepancies between clubs and the aim of this paper is to answer the question: why do some clubs succeed in diversifying their financing structure while others rely strongly on member fees? To deal with this topic, four indicators of revenue heterogeneity were first built. A set of explanatory variables had to be selected and afterwards tested according to the step by step OLS method. Performing the econometric test on all the clubs of the database allows the selection of the most appropriate diversification index (Hirschman Index). Afterward, data were processed on the one hand sport by sport, and on the other hand country by country, to identify respectively sport's particularities and national discrepancies. Some of the results were expected, variables like the sporting level of the club, the size of the budget, the organization of sporting events, the percentage of women, being positively correlated with revenue diversification. Nevertheless, other results are more original, it is so in particular for the location of the club, and of the number of employees which do not influence revenue structure in the expected manner. From the results, it is possible to give some recommendations to club's managers looking for a more diversified and stable financing model. We can explain on which variables they should play in a way to get additional revenues.