Professional football clubs (2013)
as long as it adds value, urban regimes and decision making processes, a case study
The support of professional football clubs in the Netherlands have cost public bodies more than one billion euros during the years following the turn of the century. This raised the question: What are the reasons for governments to invest in the clubs? And why do they take so much responsibility for the clubs their mismanagement. Before elaborating on these questions another question raised: Who actually do invest in the football clubs? Many scholars (Stone, 1989; Henry and Paramio-Salcines, 1999; Dowding, 2001) impute this to the phenomenon of urban regimes. Urban regimes are a combination of public- and private parties who are willing to cooperate in order to influence the decision making processes of local governments (Stone, 1989). Other scholars (Fainstein and Fainstein, 1986; Elkin, 1987; Stoker & Mossberger, 1994) argue that the composition of characteristics of an urban regime can explain why local governments do support the existence of a local football club or not. The characteristics of the urban regime combined with the background aspects of a city should provide a better understanding of the support of local governments and led to the following research question: What is the influence of the composition of urban regimes with regard to the decision of local governments whether or not to support the existence of local professional football clubs?