Introduction: new research pathways in the soft budget constraint approach

The introductory chapter presents the main themes of the book and outlines the content of the following chapters. Following a brief introduction of prior applications of the Soft Budget Constraint (SBC) approach to the field of professional team sports, the chapter summarizes how this book provides new theoretical insights as well as applications to new empirical contexts. The chapter provides summaries of the book chapters, while in parallel introducing and discussing central aspects of the SBC-framework. The summaries show how each chapter uses and develops the framework while also showing the novelty of their contributions. In this way the chapter demonstrates the promising prospects of new research pathway in the studies of professional team sports, in particular football.