Playing ball: evaluation, valuation, and accountants in Major League Baseball

Pier-Luc Nappert, Maude Plante and Matthew Bamber

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 2025, vol. 23, issue 1, 90-117

Abstract: PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how professional sport clubs value their players and the roles of accounting and accountants in the process. Additionally, it highlights the distinction between financialization and assetization.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on extensive qualitative data, notably 47 semi-structured interviews, professional baseball in North America was used as the empirical context.FindingsMajor League Baseball clubs have developed tools to evaluate and value players and their contracts. One of these tools, player asset value, is a financialized valuation that contribute to reconceive players as assets. Yet, assetization – the process of turning things into assets – entails more than financialization. It is mostly a mode of governance, conditioned by real actions. Moreover, clubs’ accounting executives are mostly estranged from the financialization–assetization process.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the emerging literature on accounting in the sport business. It is an industry where different value conceptions interplay. Clubs’ success depends largely on players performing on the field, and financial decisions on players are crucial. How accounting is involved in this industry and what matters from an accounting perspective are themes mostly overlooked.

Keywords: Financialization; Valuation; Sport; Assetization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/qram/article/23/1/90/13179 ... tion-and-accountants (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/qram/article-pdf/23/1/90/1 ... m-11-2024-0240en.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:qrampp:qram-11-2024-0240

DOI: 10.1108/QRAM-11-2024-0240

Access Statistics for this article

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management is currently edited by Lukas Goretzki and Thomas Ahrens

More articles in Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().