ABSTRACT
In Brazil, the transition to corporate management of soccer clubs started in the 1990s. When the ‘Lei Pelé’ was enacted in 1998, expectations were very high that the Brazilian clubs would become modernized institutions capable of surviving in the recently developed soccer business. However, the results that clubs reported in their financial statements a decade later do not show the desirable evolution. This essay looks back at this modernization process while analysing the clubs’ results and their financial ratios with the aim of understanding their main difficulties and how successful they have been in trying to modernize.
