Player Transfers in Sweden - How Swedish Men's Elite Football Clubs Manage Multiple Institutional Logics

Abstract: Football has shifted from being a sport owned and played by the working class, to being the most commercialized sport in the world, with clubs buying players for hundreds of millions of Euros. In Sweden, this commercialization is affected by the 51%-rule, a rule stating that the members of a club have to own a majority of it. While this affects the monetary interests of Swedish football, Swedish elite football clubs are still subject to the institutional logic inferred by the increasing commercialization, a logic that in this paper is called business logic. In its core, football clubs are also subject to the institutional logic of inherently wanting to win football games, a logic that in this paper is called sports logic. This leaves the question of how these clubs manage the sports and business logic in specific decision-making situations. One situation where the interaction between these can be said to be very tense is during player transfers, where the Swedish clubs interact with the heavily commercialized clubs outside of Sweden, with investors expecting a return on their investments. Our findings show that clubs manage these tensions by extensive stakeholder management, having experienced executives with a background in both sports and business, and having strong cultural traditions forcing the clubs to act according to certain norms.