How Fear, Exogeneous Shocks and Leadership Impact Change: The Case of Economic Models of the French Men’s Professional Basketball Clubs

Abstract

The financial situation of clubs is a major issue in professional sports. Their vulnerability can be explained by the structure of income (not diversified enough) or by the breakdown of expenditure (too much investment in sports talent). This state of affairs has prompted an interest in their economic models, specifically in the context of French clubs from 2008/2009 to 2019/2020. How did these clubs evolve over time, and how were they able (or not) to transform their economic model? Principal components and k-means analyses of financial data reveal four main types of economic models. Even if some clubs kept the same model over this period, many clubs also substantially changed their economic models. Interviews with professional clubs were performed to understand the factors underlying change and stasis as appropriate. Although visionary leadership partly explains the changes at certain clubs, exogeneous shock played at least as great a role. However, such external factors are not sufficient to overcome some clubs’ organizational inertia, often due to a fear of change that clubs rationalize in terms of their limited local potential. This paper could be helpful in assisting clubs to fight against attribution biases and to understand how to transform their economic models to become less vulnerable.