Logic of appropriateness in football commercialization (2014)

This paper aims to investigate on the process of football commercialization in order to find possible examples of non-economic rationality behind what is nowadays identified as a lucrative business rather than a sport. In order to do so the paper firstly traces what the literature identified as the main drivers of football commercialization. Then relying on theoretical arguments offered by Neo Functionalism and New Institutionalism, football commercialization is presented under two contrasting interpretations reflecting different logics behind human and institutional agency: logic of consequentiality and logic of appropriateness. If the former describes football and related stakeholders as naturally inclined to develop under profit maximization rationales, the latter includes the possibility for human and institutional agency to follow logics of legitimacy rather than efficiency. Applying both interpretations to illustrative case of the UEFA Champions League the research will argue that football commercial development is not the outcome of pure economic rationality automatically vesting individuals’ action but rather the product of a complex interaction among different actors animated by different rationales. Main findings from the research report how the literature on football commercialization seems to ignore the presence of adaptation mechanisms led by football governing bodies to embrace external financial impulses inside the game dynamics in a socially legitimized way.