Henning Zülch, Moritz Palme

• Managing a football club has become much more complex in recent years as they have turned into football companies and a growing number of stakeholders have entered the industry. The clubs’ capabilities to handle the increased complexity vary, turning management quality into a crucial competitive (dis-)advantage. This study establishes a new framework which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization and Leadership & Governance validated by interviews with industry experts. Filled with measurable key performance indicators (KPIs), these dimensions intend to objectively quantify the relevant success factors. Ultimately, the performance in all dimensions, referred to as FoMa Q-Score, indicates a club’s management quality. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exploratory study which derives and measures relevant key criteria for managing football clubs and illustrates the findings for the German Bundesliga in a transparent and understandable ranking. Football managers concerned can make use of our findings and derive specific actions to benchmark their club’s setups in order to make up ground or defend their competitive positions.