A performance evaluation of professional football organisations in the Netherlands (2016)

In the football industry, you need to have ‘good’ losers (= profitable), in order to have winners and vice versa. A significant number of the Dutch football clubs have financial difficulties and are gradually unsuccessful on the pitch over the last five years. Therefore, knowledge of the optimal allocation of financial resources is incredibly important. Because there is also a gap in the literature concerning the efficiency level in the Dutch football industry, a study on this subject is valuable. To measure efficiency, the level of available resources and the achieved performances is important. This paper performs a Data Envelopment Analysis to study the pure technical and the scale efficiency level of 34 Dutch football clubs in the first and second division over the seasons 2010 until 2015. Additional analyses are performed to specify the source of the inefficiencies. This conclusion of this study is that Dutch football organisation should decrease the investments in youth academy and reduce the total size of the organisation. On the other side the wages should increase (budget allowing) to achieve an optimal efficiency level and potentially will achieve higher sports and financial performances.