Investor–fans? An examination of the performance of publicly traded English Premier League teams

Abstract

This paper considers the game-related performance of the publicly traded teams in the English Premier League. It is found that the price behaviour of the publicly traded soccer team market to be very insensitive to game outcomes in terms of both returns and trading volume. It is believed that the results point to a new type of investor in professional sports – these investor fans do not trade on information that may affect cash flows but, rather, appear to obtain value from mere ownership.