Book Launch and Social Event: Professional Team Sports and the Soft Budget Constraint
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
No booking required
We have postponed this event and we will update the event with a new date shortly.
Exploring why professional team sport clubs are almost always able to survive despite financial mismanagement, inflated player salaries and persistent deficits, this book provides new evidence on how to explain this phenomenon. It looks at the context in which many clubs operate – the soft budget constraint – and how the clubs in this respect resemble state-owned enterprises in socialist countries or big banks in financial crises.
Please join us as Prof Klaus Nielsen, Professor of Institutional Economics at Birkbeck, discusses these and other questions from his recent book, Professional Team Sports and the Soft Budget Constraint with Sean Hamil, Director of the Sport Business Centre.
This also serves as the annual Autumn Term event for Birkbeck’s sport management alumni. Please come along and join us – there will be plenty of time to chat and drink after the book discussion.
Itinerary
6.00pm Registration
6.10pm Welcome and Introductions – Mr Sean Hamil, Director of the Sport Business Centre
6.20pm Professor Klaus Nielsen in conversation with Mr Sean Hamil
6.45pm Q&A from the audience
7.00pm Drinks Reception in the Clore Foyer
7.30pm END
Book Abstract
Why are professional team sport clubs - in particular, but not only football clubs - almost always able to survive despite financial mismanagement, inflated player salaries and persistent deficits? This book provides new evidence on how to explain this phenomenon. It looks at the context in which many clubs operate – the soft budget constraint – and how the clubs in this respect resemble state-owned enterprises in socialist countries and big banks in financial crises.
The book discusses the challenge of hardening the budget constraint, including UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulation. It includes new data about the soft budget constraint phenomenon, including evidence from Central and Eastern Europe. It develops the understanding of the causes for the phenomenon by using institutional theory, dialogue with critics of the approach and discussions of the merits and limits of soft budgets. The book also investigates key case studies of bailouts, administration and liquidation of professional sport teams. It includes contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in the field of sport economics, such as Wladimir Andreff and Stefan Szymanski.
The book is edited by Klaus Nielsen together with Rasmus K. Storm and Zsolt Havran. Klaus Nielsen is co-author of the introduction and the main author of the concluding chapter: Limits to softness in professional team sport clubs.
Professional Team Sports and the Soft Budget Constraint is published by Edward Elgar Publishing and is available to purchase online.
About the Author
Klaus Nielsen is Professor of Institutional Economics at the Department of Management at Birkbeck, University of London. He teaches modules in Innovation Systems, Networks and Social Capital and Research Methods in Management (Postgraduate). His research interests range from innovation, social capital and China to sport economics and sport management. Within the field of sport economics, he has been among the pioneers in the application of the soft budget constraint approach in journal articles and books. He has also contributed to the literature about elite sport systems, social and economic conditions of elite athletes and aspects of sport governance.
About the Discussant
Sean Hamil graduated with a BA in Economics and Politics from Trinity College, Dublin, then proceeded to the London School of Economics where he took an MSc in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management. Sean worked as a business analyst with the Henley Centre for Forecasting and then as a researcher for New Consumer, an educational charity focusing on corporate social and environmental responsibility. Prior to joining Birkbeck, he was a Lecturer in Business Management, specialising in business strategy, at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
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