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The market for soccer players in England after Bosman: Winners and losers

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Abstract

The Bosman judgement has changed the types of employment contracts which football clubs can write with players. This chapter analyses the effect of this on the equilibrium of the English football leagues. The English leagues are characterised by open entry and consequently intense competition in an economic as well as a sporting sense. While technology is expanding the size of the entire football market, the market for players is approximately efficient so that most of the football “rents” go to the players. If clubs already wrote contracts which were economically efficient, then Bosman would not affect the football league equilibrium. However, if some clubs are unable to write efficient contracts because of capital market constraints, then these clubs may be driven out of the market. The judgement is also likely to redistribute the rents among the players. The chapter discusses the financial impact so far using accounting data.

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... Moreover, as we shall see later, while there is distinctiveness in elements of these features, there are interesting parallels between the football context and those of other organisational types. For example, while football is renowned for promoting specific star employees (players) who are given enhanced status and preferential contractual terms relative to other employees (see Dobson and Goddard, 2011;Szymanski, 2010), there is an increasingly popular organisational literature that explores various ramifications of such differential treatment through, for example, talent management (see Gelens et al., 2013;Van den Brink et al., 2013). Similarly, the issue of power relations within and between internal and external groups is well documented in football including studies of the links between fans and their clubs (see Harris and Ogbonna, 2008) and research into the relationship between players and the clubs they represent (see Szymanski, 2010). ...
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