IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v18y2017i5p448-470.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Performance Evaluation in the UEFA Champions League

Author

Listed:
  • Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi
  • Lucía Isabel García-Cebrián
  • Fernando Lera-López
  • Belén Iráizoz

Abstract

This article aims to evaluate the sports performance of teams that have participated in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League (UCL) during the last 10 seasons (2004-2005 to 2013-2014). Technical efficiency is estimated using well-known data envelopment analysis (DEA) approaches and a bootstrapped DEA model. To solve the problem of measuring sporting results as output in knockout competitions, we propose the use of the coefficients applied by the UEFA from UCL revenue distribution. The results obtained show first that there is a high level of inefficiency in UCL over the period studied: Only 10% of the teams seem to be efficient. Also, the teams have many problems in maintaining their efficiency during the seasons. Second, the champion is always efficient. Third, we identify two sources of inefficiency: waste of sports resources and the selection of sporting tactics. Finally, from a methodological perspective, the output measure proposed seems to be suitable to represent reliably the sports results achieved by clubs in this qualifying competition type. Furthermore, our results are robust when applying alternative estimation methods. Regarding the results, some management implications are discussed and suggestions are made to boost the efficiency in inefficient clubs.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi & Lucía Isabel García-Cebrián & Fernando Lera-López & Belén Iráizoz, 2017. "Performance Evaluation in the UEFA Champions League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(5), pages 448-470, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:18:y:2017:i:5:p:448-470
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002515588135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002515588135
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002515588135?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leopold Simar & Paul Wilson, 2000. "A general methodology for bootstrapping in non-parametric frontier models," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(6), pages 779-802.
    2. Carlos Pestana Barros & Albert Assaf & Fabio Sá-Earp, 2010. "Brazilian Football League Technical Efficiency: A Simar and Wilson Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(6), pages 641-651, December.
    3. Simar, Léopold & Wilson, Paul W., 2013. "Estimation and Inference in Nonparametric Frontier Models: Recent Developments and Perspectives," Foundations and Trends(R) in Econometrics, now publishers, vol. 5(3–4), pages 183-337, June.
    4. George E. Halkos & Nickolaos G. Tzeremes, 2013. "A Two‐Stage Double Bootstrap DEA: The Case of the Top 25 European Football Clubs' Efficiency Levels," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(2), pages 108-115, March.
    5. Manuel Espitia-Escuer & Lucà a Isabel Garcà a-Cebrià n, 2004. "Measuring the Efficiency of Spanish First-Division Soccer Teams," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(4), pages 329-346, November.
    6. Manuel Espitia-Escuer & Lucia Isabel Garcia-Cebrián, 2010. "Measurement of the efficiency of football teams in the Champions League," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(6), pages 373-386.
    7. Boscá, José E. & Liern, Vicente & Martínez, Aurelio & Sala, Ramøn, 2009. "Increasing offensive or defensive efficiency? An analysis of Italian and Spanish football," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 63-78, February.
    8. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    9. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Analyzing the Performance of the English F.A. Premier League With an Econometric Frontier Model," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(4), pages 391-407, November.
    10. Papahristodoulou, Christos, 2006. "Team Performance in UEFA Champions League 2005-06," MPRA Paper 138, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Performance evaluation of the English Premier Football League with data envelopment analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(12), pages 1449-1458.
    12. Fiona Carmichael & Ian McHale & Dennis Thomas, 2011. "Maintaining Market Position: Team Performance, Revenue And Wage Expenditure In The English Premier League," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 464-479, October.
    13. Zak, Thomas A & Huang, Cliff J & Siegfried, John J, 1979. "Production Efficiency: The Case of Professional Basketball," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(3), pages 379-392, July.
    14. Léopold Simar & Paul W. Wilson, 1998. "Sensitivity Analysis of Efficiency Scores: How to Bootstrap in Nonparametric Frontier Models," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(1), pages 49-61, January.
    15. Fiona Carmichael & Dennis Thomas & Robert Ward, 2000. "Team performance: the case of English Premiership football," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 31-45.
    16. Francisco González-Gómez & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2010. "Can We Be Satisfied With Our Football Team? Evidence From Spanish Professional Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 418-442, August.
    17. Richard A. Hofler & James E. Payne, 2006. "Efficiency in the National Basketball Association: a stochastic frontier approach with panel data," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 279-285.
    18. Torben Tiedemann & Tammo Francksen & Uwe Latacz-Lohmann, 2011. "Assessing the performance of German Bundesliga football players: a non-parametric metafrontier approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 19(4), pages 571-587, December.
    19. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    20. Dieter J. Haas, 2003. "Productive efficiency of English football teams-a data envelopment analysis approach," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 403-410.
    21. António S. Ribeiro & Francisco Lima, 2012. "Portuguese football league efficiency and players' wages," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(6), pages 599-602, April.
    22. Carlos Barros & Pedro Garcia-del-Barrio, 2011. "Productivity drivers and market dynamics in the Spanish first division football league," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 5-13, February.
    23. William W. Cooper & Lawrence M. Seiford & Kaoru Tone, 2007. "Data Envelopment Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-0-387-45283-8, June.
    24. Barros, Carlos Pestana & Garcia-del-Barrio, Pedro, 2008. "Efficiency measurement of the English football Premier League with a random frontier model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 994-1002, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Juan Manuel Maqueira‐Marín & Pedro Victor Nuñez‐Cacho‐Utrilla & José Fernández‐Menéndez & Beatriz Minguela‐Rata, 2022. "Fast‐track talent to compete in the short term. Looking at the soccer mirror: Atlético de Madrid FC versus FC Barcelona," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3479-3497, December.
    2. Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi & Belén Iráizoz & Fernando Lera-López, 2019. "Are football managers as efficient as coaches? Performance analysis with and inputs in the Premier league," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 303-314, January.
    3. Gábor Rappai & Diána Ivett Fűrész, 2024. "Domestic Competitive Imbalance as the “Price†of Surprise in the Champions League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(2), pages 231-256, February.
    4. Lucía Isabel García-Cebrián & Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi & Fernando Lera-López, 2018. "Efficiency in European football teams using WindowDEA: analysis and evolution," International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 67(9), pages 2126-2148, November.
    5. Roșca Vlad I., 2017. "The Europeanisation of Romanian football: What do UEFA country coefficients reveal?," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 12(4), pages 652-673, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlos Pestana Barros & Gaël Bertrand & Laurent Botti & Scott Tainsky, 2014. "Cost efficiency of French rugby clubs," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(23), pages 2721-2732, August.
    2. Andrés Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco González-Gómez, 2010. "Does playing several competitions influence a team’s league performance? Evidence from Spanish professional football," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 18(3), pages 413-432, September.
    3. Fiona Carmichael & Giambattista Rossi & Denis Thomas, 2017. "Production, Efficiency, and Corruption in Italian Serie A Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(1), pages 34-57, January.
    4. J. Brandon Bolen & Jon Rezek & Joshua D. Pitts, 2019. "Performance Efficiency in NCAA Basketball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(2), pages 218-241, February.
    5. Sergio Destefanis & Francesco Addesa & Giambattista Rossi, 2022. "The impact of COVID-19 on home advantage: a conditional order-m analysis of football clubs’ efficiency in the top-5 European leagues," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(58), pages 6639-6655, December.
    6. Francisco González-Gómez & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2010. "Can We Be Satisfied With Our Football Team? Evidence From Spanish Professional Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 418-442, August.
    7. Villa, G. & Lozano, S., 2016. "Assessing the scoring efficiency of a football match," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 255(2), pages 559-569.
    8. Kostas Kounetas, 2014. "Greek football clubs’ efficiency before and after Euro 2004 Victory: a bootstrap approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 22(4), pages 623-645, December.
    9. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2012. "Evaluating professional tennis players’ career performance: A Data Envelopment Analysis approach," MPRA Paper 41516, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "A non-parametric analysis of the efficiency of the top European football clubs," MPRA Paper 31173, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Ana Pérez-González & Pablo Carlos & Elisa Alén, 2022. "An analysis of the efficiency of football clubs in the Spanish First Division through a two-stage relational network DEA model: a simulation study," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 3089-3112, July.
    12. Lucía Isabel García-Cebrián & Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi & Fernando Lera-López, 2018. "Efficiency in European football teams using WindowDEA: analysis and evolution," International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 67(9), pages 2126-2148, November.
    13. Amar Oukil & Srikrishna Madhumohan Govindaluri, 2017. "A systematic approach for ranking football players within an integrated DEA‐OWA framework," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(8), pages 1125-1136, December.
    14. Isidoro Guzmán-Raja & Manuela Guzmán-Raja, 2021. "Measuring the Efficiency of Football Clubs Using Data Envelopment Analysis: Empirical Evidence From Spanish Professional Football," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440219, February.
    15. Fabíola Zambom-Ferraresi & Belén Iráizoz & Fernando Lera-López, 2019. "Are football managers as efficient as coaches? Performance analysis with and inputs in the Premier league," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 303-314, January.
    16. Boon L. Lee & Andrew C. Worthington, 2013. "A note on the ‘Linsanity’ of measuring the relative efficiency of National Basketball Association guards," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(29), pages 4193-4202, October.
    17. Fiona Carmichael & Dennis Thomas, 2014. "Team performance: production and efficiency in football," Chapters, in: John Goddard & Peter Sloane (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Professional Football, chapter 10, pages 143-165, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. S. Mohammad Arabzad & Mazaher Ghorbani & Arash Shahin, 2013. "Ranking players by DEA the case of English Premier League," International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 15(4), pages 443-461.
    19. Marcelo Machado de Freitas & Rafael Araújo Sousa Farias & Leonardo Flach, 2017. "Efficiency Determinants in Brazilian Football Clubs," Brazilian Business Review, Fucape Business School, vol. 14(Special I), pages 1-23, January.
    20. Artur Wyszynski, 2016. "Efficiency Of Football Clubs In Poland," OLSZTYN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 11(1), pages 59-72, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:18:y:2017:i:5:p:448-470. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.