The governance of professional football clubs and the valuation of intellectual capital: the central role of relationship

Given the increasing interest in the subject about the corporate governance, we can interpret the theme of professional football clubs. Initially identifying the target-function and latterly defining the managerial motivations and the finalism that guides them in the perspective of business continuity. This paper makes a theoretical analysis on the function-target of the professional football clubs and on the sporting achievements, starting from the paradigm of objective rationality: the club owners are launched towards the profit maximization. However, this objective is completed through the maximization of sports victories. The club owners interested in winning the competitions, recruit the best players and spend all their revenues. The complexity of the governance action in the football club, is that on the one hand there are the needs of the property, basically oriented towards the reduction in costs and the achievement of the economic-financial balance; on the other hand there are the sports targets of the technical area (sports director, team manager, organizing manager, etc.). In this context, the model of objective rationality fails to grasp the centrality of relationships in the performance of the function of government of sport organizations. The role of the coach (now manager of technical resources) and of the sports director has changed over time: in addition to the political management of a team, these figures have to protect the interests of the property. Sometimes the target function of the sports results was supplanted by the economic obligation through the containment within certain limits of the difference between revenues and operational costs, the achieving of the break even point or of a minimum level of profit. Moreover, the figure of the sports director has described itself as essential to the intermediation between the companies and some external stakeholders. Depending on the characteristics of the property and on the presence of the coach and sports director, it is possible to outline different models of governance of professional football clubs. In this direction, the economic target and sports target seem to find a meeting point in the increase in value of intellectual capital, according to the approach of bounded rationality. In the light of what has been set out, we propose a model of governance whose strong point lies in the attitude to interpret the current evolutionary trends in a way that is more true to life in the sector where the professional football clubs work: the increase in value of immaterial resources that are available in the company concerns, in this case, the players’ park, the logo, the technical and organizational know-how, the knowledge of strategic management are prerequisites for the satisfaction of needs that guide the behavior of managers of football clubs.