Do intangible investments matter? Evidence from soccer corporations

The aim of this research is to analyse the impact of intangible assets on firm’s sporting and financial performance.

The hypothesis of this research was developed through grounded theory and previous findings from the literature. This study adopted multiple regression method to analyse the impact of intangible assets on sporting and financial performance.

The findings indicate that intangible assets affect both sporting and financial performance. This is consistent with resource‐based view theory, which maintains that firms achieve a sustainable competitive advantage and superior financial performance by owning or controlling intangible strategic assets. By intangible strategic assets, it is meant the specific and valuable capability that belongs to the organisation.

The finding of this study is limited to a sample of UK listed soccer corporations. A possible opportunity of future research is to replicate the current study with other corporations and explore alternative measures of intangible assets.

The main innovation contained in this study relies on the measure of intangible assets. This paper employed players’ registration costs as a measure of intangible assets. To my knowledge this has not been addressed before in finance and accounting research.