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Institute
The management of football clubs has increasingly become a complex endeavour due to their evolution into multifaceted enterprises and the rising complexity of stakeholder relationships. Clubs vary in their ability to navigate this complexity, making management quality a decisive factor in gaining a competitive edge. The 2024 edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework developed by ZÜLCH & PALME (2017), evaluating management quality across four key dimensions: Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization, and Leadership & Governance. These dimensions, as confirmed by leading football executives (CRUZ, SCHREGEL & ZÜLCH, 2022), provide an objective assessment of the critical success factors for professional football clubs.
The increased competition at the top of the Bundesliga in the 2023/2024 season has reinforced the business model of German football, underscoring that sporting success alone is not enough to come out as a top-tier club in this encompassing ranking. Achieving long-term competitiveness and stability requires a solid financial foundation, effective fan engagement, and strong leadership from club executives. As the league progresses beyond the pandemic era, these trends reflect a lasting and sustainable shift. With forthcoming changes in European competition formats and the associated increases in revenues, clubs are strategically position-ing themselves for enduring success. The FoMa Q-Score, acknowledged in both academic and practical spheres, continues to offer valuable insights. This tool enables clubs to benchmark their strategies against peer group clubs and beyond, ensuring they maintain or enhance their competitive standing.
In recent times, the management of football clubs has evolved into a notably intricate task, owing to their transformation into football enterprises and the influx of a rising multitude of stakeholders within the industry. The ability among clubs to handle this increased complexity varies, making the quality of management a key factor in whether they can cope with this complexity and have an advantage or a disadvantage in competition. This new 2023 edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework established by ZÜLCH & PALME (2017), which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization and Leadership & Governance, in order to perform a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the German professional foot-ball clubs’ management quality. As attested by senior executives of prominent football clubs, these dimensions possess the capability to objectively measure pertinent success factors of a professional football club (CRUZ, SCHREGEL & Zülch, 2022). Ultimately, the performance across all dimensions, collectively termed as the FoMa Q-Score, serves as an objective measurement of a club's managerial excellence. Consequently, the FoMa Q-Score has gained firm traction as a well-established management tool both in academics and in practical application, partic-ularly accentuated by the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its robust scholarly valid-ity was underscored by the inclusion of this tool in the esteemed "Sports, Business and Man-agement" journal in 2020. From a practical standpoint, it is evident that football managers with a vested interest have already started leveraging our findings, which comprehensively encapsulate the COVID-19 impacts on financial and non-financial aspects, as showcased in this latest, seventh edition. This enables them to discern actionable insights for benchmarking their club's frameworks, aiming to regain ground or uphold their competitive positions.
Managing a football club has become much more complex in recent years, as the clubs have turned into football companies and a growing number of stakeholders have entered the in-dustry. The clubs’ capabilities to handle the increased complexity vary, turning management quality into a crucial competitive (dis-)advantage. This new 2022 edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework established by ZÜLCH & PALME (2017), which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Per-formance, Fan Welfare Maximization and Leadership & Governance, in order to perform a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the German professional football clubs’ manage-ment quality. As confirmed by high-level football club executives, these dimensions are able to objectively quantify relevant success factors of a professional football club (ZÜLCH, CRUZ, & SCHREGEL, 2021). Ultimately, the performance in all dimensions, referred to as FoMa Q-Score, indicates a club’s management quality. Consequently, the FoMa Q-Score has become a well-established management tool in science as well as in practice in recent years, even more so in light of the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. The high scientific quality has been confirmed by the publication of this tool in the internationally renowned sports science journal "Sports, Business and Management" in 2020. From the practitioners’ perspective it can be observed that interested football managers are already making use of our findings, which now also re-flect the COVID-19 effects on financials and non-financials in this latest, 6th edition, and derive specific actions to benchmark their club’s setups in order to make up ground or defend their competitive positions.
Managing a football club has become much more complex in recent years, as the clubs 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 new 2021 edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework established by ZÜLCH & PALME (2017), which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization and Leadership & Governance, in order to perform a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the German professional football clubs’ management quality. As confirmed by high-level football club executives, these dimensions are able to objectively quantify relevant success factors of a professional football club (ZÜLCH, CRUZ, & SCHREGEL, 2021). Ultimately, the performance in all dimensions, referred to as FoMa Q-Score, indicates a club’s management quality. Consequently, the FoMa Q-Score has become a wellestablished management tool with high practical relevance in recent years, even more so in light of the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interested football managers can make use of our findings, which now also reflect the initial COVID-19 effects on financials (for months of Mar20 - Jun20) and non-financials (for the full season 2020/21) in this latest edition, and derive specific actions to benchmark their club’s setups in order to make up ground or defend their competitive positions.
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 new edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework established by ZÜLCH & PALME, 2017, which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Max-imization and Leadership & Governance, in order to perform a longitudinal and cross-sec-tional analysis of the German professional football clubs’ management quality. In fact, filled with meas-urable key performance indicators (KPIs), these dimensions intend to objectively quantify the rel-evant success factors. Ultimately, the performance in all dimensions, referred to as FoMa Q-Score, indicates a club’s management quality. 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.
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. In this new edition, we build on the framework established by ZÜLCH & PALME, 2017 which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization and Leadership & Governance, to perform a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the German professional football clubs’ management quality. In fact, 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. 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.
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 new edition of the FoMa Q-Score ranking builds on the framework established by ZÜLCH & PALME, 2017, which comprehensively assesses management quality along four dimensions, namely Sporting Success, Financial Performance, Fan Welfare Maximization and Leadership & Governance, in order to perform a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the German and French professional football clubs’ management quality. In fact, 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. 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.
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.