Over the Moon or Sick as a Parrot? The Effect's of Football Results on a Club's Share Price

Abstract: This paper considers the impact of match results on the stock returns of English football clubs. We propose that the magnitude of the response to a given result depends on the importance of the game, which is measured in two ways. First, we consider the extent to which the clubs are close rivals vying for similar league positions, as winning such games is particularly significant. Second, we argue that each individual game becomes more important for those clubs likely to be promoted or relegated as the season draws to a close, since a given match will have increasing information content concerning the final league position of the club. Using a fairly large panel comprising data for 19 clubs, we find that the unexpected parts of both the points and the number of goals ahead from the match do affect stock prices. There is also some limited support for the notion that stock prices are more affected by the results of important matches.