Greek football clubs’ efficiency before and after Euro 2004 Victory: a bootstrap approach

This paper examines the technical efficiency of Greek football clubs, taking into account the period before the Euro 2004 victory and the period thereafter. The first stage of analysis is based on a bootstrapped data envelopment analysis approach so as to determine Greek clubs’ efficiency scores during these two distinct time periods. The second stage of analysis investigates possible factors that may have affected the efficiency scores during the examined periods. Our findings reveal that Greek football clubs exhibit surprisingly lower efficiency scores after Euro victory. In effect and explained in the context of the Resource Based Theory, there appears to be no classification of types of football clubs into various divisions, viz. laggards, followers and champions. Finally, it is also found that clubs’ financial health appears to be a crucial factor for their performance in both periods. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014