Managing Sporting Success and Economic Efficiency in the Professional Football : Identification of Determinant Factors Through the Academic Literature

Football moves crowds, both fans and millions of euros. Football clubs are not any longer just sport teams that focus on winning competitions, but they have turned into complex business units with a high economic and social impact.The main purpose of this study is to conduct a review on the existing international academic literature for providing an insight into the management of sporting success and economic efficiency in the international professional football industry.Findings show that sporting success is influenced, on one hand, by human capital and positive results on an international competition level and, on the other hand by the financial support through sport organizations' related attributes and investments.Further, sporting success creates economic efficiency leading consequently to a higher profitability of football organizations.This paper can be helpful for managers, practitioners as well as academics, as currently does not exist any literature review on this topic