Professional Team Sports and the Soft Budget Constraint

Edited by Rasmus K. Storm, Head of Research, Danish Institute for Sports Studies, Denmark and Adjunct Associate Professor, NTNU Business School, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, Klaus Nielsen, Professor of Institutional Economics, Birkbeck University of London, UK and Zsolt Havran, Senior Assistant Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary

• Contents:Foreword xviiMiklós RostaAcknowledgements xxObituary, János Kornai (1928–2021) xxiKlaus Nielsen1 Introduction: new research pathways in the soft budgetconstraint approach 1Rasmus K. Storm, Klaus Nielsen, and Zsolt Havran2 Soft budget constraints and institutional logics in EuropeanFootball 12Bernt Arne Bertheussen and Harry Arne Solberg3 Hardening the soft budget constraint in professional teamsports: why is it so hard? 33Wladimir Andreff4 Budget constraints in French professional football:contrasting situations 77Nadine Dermit-Richard and Aurélien François5 Heterogeneity of budget constraints in Hungarian andPolish football 103Karolina Nessel, Zsolt Havran and Tünde Máté6 The soft budget constraint syndrome in Hungarianprofessional football from a Central and Eastern Europeanperspective 130Zsolt Havran and Krisztina András7 Is there evidence of softness in the budget constraint infootball? Some evidence from English clubs 155Stefan Szymanski8 Limits of softness in professional team sport clubs 172Klaus Nielsen, Christian Gjersing Nielsen and Rasmus K.StormIndex

‘A new strand of literature has developed which applies the soft budget constraints approach to the problems encountered in the European sports industry. Some of the most important authors of this new field, but also a prominent critic, have contributed to this volume, which is a highly recommended read for sports economists and sports managers.’