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This paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their seemingly casual nature, these values have featured in newspapers, transfer negotiations, academic research, and capital market communication – and have thus become reified.

The paper employs netnographic research methodology to collect and thematically analyze a wide range of user entries on the platform. These entries are studied using theoretical insights from the sociology of quantification and valuation.

The analysis reveals how values are constructed in constant interaction between value-proposing users and value-justifying “experts.” This dynamic form of relational valuation positions players relative to one another as well as to actual transactions on the transfer market. In the absence of authoritative guidelines, it is this possibility and affordance for interaction that enacts a coherent valuation regime. The paper further reveals the platform's response to a disruptive event, which risked bringing the user-expert dynamics to a halt, requiring intervention from the platform to repair its valuation frame.

The paper responds to increased scholarly interests in the valuation of professional athletes. It contributes to the extant literature on valuation, first, by analyzing the dynamic valuation work that feeds into the social construction of values and, second, by studying platform participation and user interaction in a socially engineered online space.

This research proposes analytical valuation models throughout football players' life cycles based on crowd valuations from social media to produce dynamic sporting human capital disclosures, and therefore, supplying further useful information to capture the intellectual capital (IC) of football clubs.

This work is carried out using an econometric model that includes 658 observations of crowd judgments versus their transfer fees, for the best footballers of the three major European Leagues between 2006 and 2018. To make the model more parsimonious, the set of independent variables that really add value has been found across the stepwise methodology.

The significant differences between both models are analyzed, integrating previous academic literature based on the existence of negotiation elements in prices, and in the capacity of crowdsourcing to explain assessments of football players, from a dynamic perspective, alongside a new variable: injuries, which has not been explained before.

The broader assessments from crowdsourcing should be integrated in intellectual capital disclosures (ICD), from a critical, novel and dynamic perspective, creating a virtuous cycle between managers and fans, to increase transparency of financial information for stakeholders and society.

This paper investigates the relationship between sporting performance and the market value of European football clubs, with a particular focus on the moderating effect of player transfers, fan engagement and coaching changes.

Using a Cross-Sectional Augmented Auto Regressive Distributed Lagged Model (CS-ARDL), we analyze a decade of data (2013–2023) from fourteen prominent clubs across ten European leagues.

Our findings confirm a strong positive correlation between sporting performance and market value in European football clubs. Furthermore, the research reveals that strategic player transfers and high fan engagement significantly amplify the positive impact of on-field success on a club's valuation. Interestingly, coaching changes do not exhibit a significant moderating effect on this relationship.

These findings carry significant economic implications for the football industry, underscoring sporting success as not only a driver of economic growth and social development but also a vital source of funding for clubs seeking to further invest in talent, infrastructure and fan engagement initiatives.

This study makes a novel contribution to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the intricate relationship between sporting performance, market value and the moderating roles of player transfers, fan engagement and coaching changes within the European football landscape. Moreover, the research offers unique insights into investor behavior and the factors influencing investment decisions, enriching our understanding of the complex dynamics driving the football market.

From the buying club’s perspective, the transfer of a player can be interpreted as an investment from which the club expects uncertain future benefits. This paper aims to develop a decision-oriented approach for the valuation of football players that could theoretically help clubs determine the subjective value of investing in a player to assess its potential economic advantage.

We build on a semi-investment-theoretical risk-value model and elaborate an approach that can be applied in imperfect markets under uncertainty. Furthermore, we illustrate the valuation process with a numerical example based on fictitious data. Due to this explicitly intended decision support, our approach differs fundamentally from a large part of the literature, which is empirically based and attempts to explain observable figures through various influencing factors.

We propose a semi-investment-theoretical valuation approach that is based on a two-step model, namely, a first valuation at the club level and a final calculation to determine the decision value for an individual player. In contrast to the previous literature, we do not rely on an econometric framework that attempts to explain observable past variables but rather present a general, forward-looking decision model that can support managers in their investment decisions.

This approach is the first to show managers how to make an economically rational investment decision by determining the maximum payable price. Nevertheless, there is no normative requirement for the decision-maker. The club will obviously have to supplement the calculus with nonfinancial objectives. Overall, our paper can constitute a first step toward decision-oriented player valuation and for theoretical comparison with practical investment decisions in football clubs, which obviously take into account other specific sports team decisions.

Virtual goods consumption has risen dramatically in recent years. Recognizing the benefits of virtual goods in generating revenue for online game companies, marketers strive to understand the motives behind virtual goods purchases. We investigated the direct and indirect effects of functional, emotional, and social values through player satisfaction on purchase intention toward virtual goods among online players.

In total, we surveyed 332 online game players utilizing a structured questionnaire. We employed a multi-analytic approach combining partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) to examine the proposed relationships.

The findings show that all dimensions of value and player satisfaction significantly affect the intention to acquire virtual goods. However, social value does not exert a significant effect on player satisfaction. Moreover, we confirmed that player satisfaction mediates the relationships between functional value, emotional value, and purchase intention. Furthermore, NCA results indicated that all predictors in the model are necessary conditions of purchase intention for virtual goods.

These findings contribute to an enhanced understanding of purchase intentions among online game players from a symmetric (PLS-SEM) and asymmetric (NCA) perspective by proposing a multi-analytic approach.

This article explores the value creation process from player sales in football to understand if the related capital gains correspond to significant increases in the stock value of selling companies. In addition, it aims to detect any potential drivers for higher (or slower) abnormal stock returns.

The authors analyze all the capital gains of the Italian and Portuguese listed football companies (the only ones for which, based on their annual reports, it was possible to trace the net book value for each player sold and, consequently, if any, the related capital gain) from 2012 to 2020 and use event study analysis to calculate the abnormal returns of the football companies' stocks. Moreover, the authors use a multiple linear regression model to identify the factors affecting investors' reactions and value creation process intensity.

The results show that, on average, the capital gains from player transfers in football are positive income components and produce statistically significant higher abnormal returns. In addition, the authors identified some relevant drivers related to their intensity which could guide the choices of corporate executives regarding future disposals of the multi-year performance rights of players in the roster.

This study considers only Italian and Portuguese football listed companies. It would be helpful to consider some of the companies from other countries which are also outstanding from the sports perspective, but, in practice, it was not possible due to the impossibility to trace the net book value of the single footballers sold in those clubs' public financial disclosure.

The value relevance of the capital gains from player trading activities should increase their importance, creating cascade effects on several activities generating value for football clubs (youth sector management, player scouting, technical improvement of the players). In addition, financial data show that the capital gains from player transfers are a basic income of European football clubs nowadays. Their executives consider these operations recurrent and continually search for more valuable transfers. Hence, it is reasonable to think that they (will) choose the players to sell considering both sports and financial aspects.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study exploring the effects of capital gains from player trading activities on professional football clubs' stock value. The results obtained are even more relevant if one considers the importance these income components have in the profit formula of professional football clubs nowadays, also because of the negative repercussions caused by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

The aim of this work is to explain the final negotiated prices for some of the most famous transfers of football players over the last twelve years (2007–2018).

The article analyses different values for forwards taken from the sports website Transfermarkt, developing a statistical model based on personal, performance, risk, environmental and popularity variables. From those values, the article finds an explanation for the final prices paid for 20 superstar players based on a combination of real option valuations, incorporating the players' life cycles and game theory.

The authors find that in a large percentage (70%) of the analysed cases, the price paid was higher than the intrinsic market value resulting from Transfermarkt, implying the existence of monopolistic rents, paid as “growth options” on prices from different negotiating conditions. On occasions, the final prices also exceed the value of the growth option, calculated under neutral bargaining conditions, highlighting the lack of economic viability of important transfers, leading to financial difficulties for the clubs involved.

The algorithm provides more flexibility and realism than previous proposals, based on the life cycle of football players, introducing the uncertainty and volatility of projections through Monte Carlo simulation, the capacity of clubs to bargain a price at any point of the contract and finally, the buyer's ability to transfer the player if his subsequent performance is not as expected.

Achievement is considered to be an important value for students. The purpose of this paper is to explore what achievement values were derived from playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), especially for high-engaged MMORPGs players.

The research employed two approaches to collect data: focus group and a web survey of online game players were conducted. Moreover, an addiction-engagement scale was used to ensure all participants were genuinely highly engaged MMORPGs players in data collection process. There are 12 highly engaged players were recruited as focus group members in Phase 1. The online survey yielded 315 responses, of which 267 were considered valid, and 177 of those were considered to be genuine highly engaged players in Phase 2. In the study, exploratory factor analysis was performed to reveal underlying structure of achievement values.

The result focussing on popular MMORPGs reveal that highly engaged players derived six achievement values from playing MMORPGs, including fantasy satisfaction, adventure, victory, socialization ability, self-actualization, and advancement of wealth and status.

In view of the prevalence of MMORPGs, it is imperative to draw attention to understand students’ achievement values derived from playing MMORPGs. By doing that, educators know how to bridge students’ achievement values to their academic performance.

Despite the advances in theory and practice about player behaviour in esports gaming literature, there is a lack of understanding as to whether esports are compatible with the values of Olympism and if they should be considered for future Games editions. The current study advances this line of research by examining esports player experiences, their effects on perceiving Olympic values, and the support towards the Olympics in order to verify if differences occur according to the cross-cultural environment.

Using a sample of 671 esports amateur gamers from three countries (Portugal, Brazil and Japan), structural equation models and a multigroup analysis were performed to analyse the differences in the hypothesized paths existing between the groups.

Results reveal that player in-game emotional experiences positively influence Olympic values perception across countries. The excellence and friendship values showed a positive effect on support intentions to the Games towards Portuguese and Brazilian players, while the respect value was the strongest predictor towards behavioural intentions in Japan. Cultural backgrounds and game genre in each country can explain player attitude towards the Olympic values shared on the online environment.

This study is able to provide a better understanding of how the Olympic values serve as a gratification in different cross-cultural environments according to the theory of uses and gratifications (U&G) and the theory of cultural dimensions. Complementarily, these findings can be used as valuable information for esports publishers and developers attempting to spread the Olympic values in the esports industry.

Football clubs invest in the implementation of scientific insights that improve the quality of youth academies. In the long run, clubs expect their youth academy investments to result in better trained players. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the impact of the attended youth academies' quality on the future market value of a player.

A dataset containing 94 players trained in 13 different academies has been constructed. The dataset contains characteristics of the players and information on the quality of their attended academies. The impact of the quality of the attended academies on players' future market values was estimated empirically through multiple regression analysis.

The quality of a youth academy has a significant positive impact on a player's market value, which in turn is correlated with higher future wages for players and transfer fees for clubs.

Clubs are advised to pay sufficient attention to investments in their youth academy. This will eventually lead to better trained players and higher revenues. Players in turn should strive to be part of the best academies that provide good training and the opportunity to become a top-earning player. For policymakers, such as football federations, the results imply that stimulating club investments in academies can lead to better national team performances.

The impact of the quality of a youth academy on an individual professional football player's career has never been quantified in the literature before. To this end, a new variable has been constructed using scientific assessments of youth academies.