Routledge Handbook of Football Business and Management

Soccer is the world’s most valuable sport, generating bigger revenues, as well as being watched and played by more people, than any other. It is virtually impossible to understand the business of sport without understanding the football industry. This book surveys contemporary football in unparalleled breadth and depth.

Presenting critical insights from world-leading football scholars and introducing football’s key organisations, leagues and emerging nations, it explores key themes from governance and law to strategy and finance, as well as cutting edge topics such as analytics, digital media and the women’s game.

This is essential reading for all students, researchers and practitioners working in football, sport business, sport management or mainstream business and management.

Simon Chadwick is Professor of Sports Enterprise at Salford University Manchester, UK, where he is also Co-Director of the Centre for Sports Business. He is also a Founding Director of the China Soccer Observatory at the University of Nottingham, UK and regularly works with organisations in football across the world, including clubs, federations, commercial partners, event organisers and governments. He tweets: @Prof_Chadwick

Daniel Parnell is Senior Lecturer in Business Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Dan’s research is across three areas; policy and politics, management, and change (individual, community and organisational), across elite sport. He currently works with a number of professional sport clubs and national governing bodies in England and internationally. He has worked with several English Premier League and Football League Clubs, the Premier League, Football League, and the Football Foundation.

Paul Widdop is Senior Research Fellow in Sport Business at Leeds Beckett University, UK. His research explores social and economic networks on the consumption and production of Sport. He has published widely in areas of sport and popular culture including articles in Journal of Consumer Culture, Cultural Sociology, Cultural Trends, Political Behaviour, Electoral Studies, and Leisure Sciences.

Christos Anagnostopoulos is Associate Professor in Sport Management at Molde University College, Norway and at University of Central Lancashire, UK, where he also serves as the Co-Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship. His research interests lie in corporate social responsibility, governance, and more recently entrepreneurship and positive organisational behaviour in sport. Christos serves as an elected member-at-large at the European Association for Sport Management, as well as at the editorial boards of the European Sport Management Quarterly, Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, International Journal of Sport Communication, Journal of Global Sport Management and the International Journal of Sport Management.