Analysing the Performance of the English Premier League

Analyzing the Performance of the English
F.A. Premier League With an Econometric Frontier Model
CARLOS PESTANA BARROS
Technical University of Lisbon
STEPHANIE LEACH
Imperial College London
This article uses an econometric frontier model to evaluate the performance of football clubs present in the English F.A. Premier League from 1998-1999 to 2002-2003, combining sport and financial variables. A stochastic Cobb-Douglas production frontier model is used to generate football club efficiency scores.We conclude that the price of labour, the price of capital players the price of capital stadium, points gained, attendance, and turnover all play a major role in football efficiency and find that the efficiency scores are mixed. Keywords: England; Premier League; Cobb-Douglas frontiermodel; technical efficiency
In this article, we present an application of an econometric frontier model to the analysis of two different measures of success in the English professional football industry: sporting success and financial success. Using data on English Premier
League (also known as the Premiership) clubs obtained from the Deloitte&Touche
Annual Report on Professional Football Finance (2004), the article expands on previous research by comparing the efficiency scores of the clubs with a stochastic frontier model. Previous research on the efficiency of the Premier League has relied on data envelopment analysis (DEA; Barros & Leach, 2005; Haas, 2003b).
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AUTHORS 'NOTE: We thank two anonymous referees for the constructive and thoughtful comments provided on an earlier draft of the article. Any remaining errors are those of the authors. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Carlos Pestana Barros, Instituto Superior de Economia e
Gestão, Technical University of Lisbon, Rua Miguel Lupi, 20, 1249-078 Lisbon, Portugal: e-mail:
[e-mail].
JOURNAL OF SPORTS ECONOMICS, Vol. 7 No. 4, November 2006 391–407
DOI:

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