Paper Presentation II:
The Fans
Thursday, April 8, 15.15–17.15

Jirí Kotáb Czeck Republic

In the nineties of the last century there were founded organizations called supporter’s trusts. The main objectives of these organizations were to prevent football clubs to go bankrupt. And in these objectives supporter’s trusts were usually very successful. But do these organizations affect positively running of club which doesn’t have any critical problems with existence of the club? That is the main question of this article. Researcher has chosen sample of 20 most rich clubs from season 2007/2008 according to experts from accounting company Deloitte according to revenue of clubs. The main objective was to evaluate economical and sport performance in five consecutive previous seasons. Sport performance was measured by standings of clubs in the end of years in ladder of organization IFFHS – International Federation of Football History & Statistics. Economical performance is more difficult to measure. It was chosen that economical performance would be measured by several criteria.  First was the revenue range in season and its progression. Second was EBIT. Third was development of value of club and development of indebtedness according to renowned magazine Forbes. After analyzing these data clubs were divided into two parts- the first part of clubs – which have supporters trust or their organizational structure is dependent on fans ownership because in each different country the system of organization of football clubs is different and the second part of clubs in which fans could not participate on ownership or management of the clubs. These two groups where compared and construed. Results should answer us the main question of this article.