ABSTRACT
Since the rapid growth of revenues and costs in professional sport, modern sport clubs have become full commercial businesses, much to true sport enthusiasts’ regret. Although sport contests are still, ultimately, about gaining victory, one could wonder whether the advent of large monetary investments has not made realizing financial returns take precedence over sport successes. This chapter does not aim at evaluating this question from a normative, moral or nostalgic perspective. In contrast, the intention is to present a theoretical economic analysis of the question of whether it makes any difference that soccer clubs try to gain maximum profits – which is considered to be commercial enterprises’ main objective in microeconomic analysis – instead of trying to pursue maximum sport successes in (inter)national championships.
