How sport clubs survive despite financial mismanagement? – Book launch

The book discusses the theory of the soft budget constraint of János Kornai, one of the best-known Hungarian economists and former professor emeritus of our university, using the example of professional team sports. Exploring why professional team sport clubs are almost always able to survive despite financial mismanagement, inflated player salaries and persistent deficits, this book provides new evidence on how to explain this phenomenon. It looks at the context in which many clubs operate – the soft budget constraint – and how the clubs in this respect resemble state-owned enterprises in socialist countries or big banks in financial crises.

The chapters of the book present theoretical innovations as well as empirical evidence. In addition to several examples from Western Europe, there are also cases from Central and Eastern Europe. The book is edited by Klaus Nielsen, Rasmus Storm and Zsolt Havran and includes contributions from international sports economists such as Wladimir Andreff, Stefan Szymanski and Harry Arne Solberg. Our university is also represented by three colleagues from the Department of Business Economics and the Centre for Research in Sport Economics as authors, Dr Krisztina András, Dr Tünde Máté and Dr Zsolt Havran. The foreword of the book was written by Dr. Miklós Rosta, Associate Professor of our University. The book was published by Elgar Edward Publishing House.

Planned programme:

10:00 – 10:10 Greetings
10:10 – 10:20 Foreword – Dr. Miklós Rosta, Associate Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest
10:20 – 11:00 Editorial presentation on the topic and chapters of the book – Dr. Klaus Nielsen, Professor of Institutional Economics, Birkbeck University of London és Dr. Zsolt Havran, senior assistant professor, Corvinus University of Budapest
11:00 – 11:30 Author comments, questions from the audience.