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Explaining the Bankruptcy ‘ Crisis ’ in English Football Ownership Style and the Wage-Performance Relationship 1996-2003

Between 2001 and 2003, fourteen clubs in the English Football Association (FA) entered administration—the British equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This paper explores the changing landscape in the FA before and during the reported financial ‘crisis’ at the turn of the 21 century and examines the impact of increased television revenues. Through modeling managerial and ownership behavioral styles, the roots of financial hardship in the lower divisions are investigated. Analysis is focused on the well-established relationship between wage spending and league performance, and the importance of estimation residuals as a measure of overor under-performance is reconsidered. We find that attempts to explain acute financial crises on a league-wide level, while attractive, are often misled. In addition, the impact of administration applications on other clubs in the FA has likely been overstated. The findings in this paper are inconclusive, but help to elucidate the relative effectiveness of different techniques of inquiry, several of which are used here. Some findings imply that traditional assumptions of managerial behavior in sporting contests are inappropriate.