Study Reveals Bundesliga Success Has Nothing To Do With Club Budget

A German university study "revealed that success in the football Bundesliga has only a marginal correlation with the budget of an individual club," according to the SID. This is the finding of a study at the Macromedia University for Media and Communication in Stuttgart, Germany, which "evaluated the dependency of a club's on-field success to its off-field finances." Therefore, rich clubs in the Handball Bundesliga have "a bigger chance of on-field success than their counterparts in the German Hockey League (DEL), in which clubs' financial resources do not indicate on-field success." University Professor Andre Bühler said, "Football is a game, in which non-financial factors such as luck, misfortune, referee decisions or player's  has a bigger influence on the outcome than in handball. In handball, the differences between a good and not so good -- or expensive and cheap -- team is therefore substantially more obvious." The study took a look at clubs in Germany's top football, handball, basketball and hockey leagues, and analyzed their budgets and individual success over the past five years (SID, 9/27).