Applying conditional DEA to measure football clubs’ performance: Evidence from the top 25 European clubs

This paper applies a probabilistic approach to investigate how the top European football clubs’ current value and debt levels influence their performance. Specifically, a bootstrapped conditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used in order to measure the effect of football clubs’ current value and debt levels on their obtained efficiency performances. The results indicate that football clubs’ current value levels have a positive influence up to a certain point. But as the current value increases the effect is neutral to football clubs’ performance. At the same time, the empirical evidence suggests that there is no influence on football clubs’ efficiencies associated with lower and medium football clubs’ debt levels while higher debt levels appear to have a direct negative effect.