Does the quality of a youth academy impact a football player's market value?
Sport, Business and Management
ISSN: 2042-678X
Article publication date: 20 September 2021
Issue publication date: 2 June 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Football clubs invest in the implementation of scientific insights that improve the quality of youth academies. In the long run, clubs expect their youth academy investments to result in better trained players. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the impact of the attended youth academies' quality on the future market value of a player.
Design/methodology/approach
A dataset containing 94 players trained in 13 different academies has been constructed. The dataset contains characteristics of the players and information on the quality of their attended academies. The impact of the quality of the attended academies on players' future market values was estimated empirically through multiple regression analysis.
Findings
The quality of a youth academy has a significant positive impact on a player's market value, which in turn is correlated with higher future wages for players and transfer fees for clubs.
Research limitations/implications
Clubs are advised to pay sufficient attention to investments in their youth academy. This will eventually lead to better trained players and higher revenues. Players in turn should strive to be part of the best academies that provide good training and the opportunity to become a top-earning player. For policymakers, such as football federations, the results imply that stimulating club investments in academies can lead to better national team performances.
Originality/value
The impact of the quality of a youth academy on an individual professional football player's career has never been quantified in the literature before. To this end, a new variable has been constructed using scientific assessments of youth academies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Thomas Verlinden, Dirk Geuens, Jill Paulissen, Sunčica Vujić, Evy Onghena, Christophe Smet, Tom Vermeire and Trevor Heaver for their suggestions to improve the previous version of this paper. We are also very grateful to Ariël Jacobs and Jo Van Hoecke from Double Pass for their additional insights in the domain of youth football, as well as to the participants of the RBFA Knowledge Centre-UAntwerpen FBE seminar on 31 May 2018. All remaining errors are the authors'.
Citation
Balliauw, M., Bosmans, J. and Pauwels, D. (2022), "Does the quality of a youth academy impact a football player's market value?", Sport, Business and Management, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 269-283. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-02-2021-0011
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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