Soccer Marketing

Soccer Management: The financial crisis of the Ecuadorian teams

 

Nowadays is hard to see a soccer team without looking inside of its administration, due to the last financial troubles that Ecuadorian soccer teams have suffered. The crisis that nowadays is exploiting with penalties and possible disqualifications of certain teams on the Ecuadorian league have being growing as a bubble made due to bad recruitments, unrealistic contracts and people in charge of the teams with lack of administration knowledge.

 

According to an article of the debt of the Ecuadorian teams, published in 2013, the authors Fernando Carrión and Pablo Samaniego stated, “the budget of the 12 teams registered for the League was approximately $60 million, but the debt that these teams dragged until that year reached nearly the 80% of the entire budget, without considering the monthly payments, trips, lodging and many other scenarios that normally during the year the Clubs needs to cover”.

 

Normally, that statistic mentioned above doesn´t matter to the administrators if they achieve championships; if not, the problems and the bubble will start exploiting as it is nowadays, giving a bad image of our tournament to the world. This situation is not occurring just in Ecuador, it is happening in the major part of the soccer leagues due to the different causes in mention.

 

If we focus on a solution, the government could be one. The intervention of the government in some cases has helped to surpass the drop. The participation of the government in national tournaments had succeeded in the past, like the one mentioned by Carrión y Samaniego (2013), “In Brazil, the Financial Department of State intervened with quarterly audits to the different soccer teams registered in the Brazilian League in order to get constantly involved of their situation and avoid bankruptcies of clubs”. If the Government could set some rules, regulate and audit the Ecuadorian clubs to prevent more financial chaos, why the same clubs not enforce it to do it for their benefit?       

 

 

By: Miguel Pinto C.

 

 

 

References:

• Carrión, F., Samaniego, P. 2013. Nueva Sociedad – Democracia y política en América Latina: “La crisis del futbol ecuatoriano entre el endeudamiento, la fragilidad institucional y la violencia”. Retrieved from: http://nuso.org/articulo/la-crisis-del-futbol-ecuatoriano-entre-el-endeudamiento-la-fragilidad-institucional-y-la-violencia/