WINS/LOSSES IN GAMES AND STOCKS: AN ANALYSIS ON A FOOTBALL CLUB’S STOCK PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Football, one of the most famous sports in the world, attracts millions of fans as well as investors in stock markets once the football club shares are publicly traded. The link between market and sport performance of a publicly traded football club (Galatasaray Spor Kulübü) are investigated by incorporating detailed game characteristics and sport performance measures into the analysis. Pair-wise T-tests are applied to explore whether the stock returns are significantly affected by game types (e.g., national versus international games, home and away matches) and game results. In addition, the analysis includes public announcements for transfers and cumulative team performance during the season. Then, by using the Ordered Logistic Regression method, the extent of the impact of game characteristics and performance on stock returns is identified. Findings reveal that investors actively respond to game results if the team is in the title race either in national or international leagues. We find an asymmetric market reaction to the team’s wins and losses during this period. Sport performance and stock returns have an insignificant relation once the team is eliminated from the international tournaments and missed the championship in the national league. At this stage, the club’s stocks are only affected by the stock exchange index (BIST 100) fluctuations. Our model has 67 percent accuracy rate for predicting returns on the club’s stocks. Incorporating the comparative sport performance of this team with respect to the two likely candidates for national championship significantly affects the estimates and improves the model accuracy rate to 78 percent.