Regulatory Arbitrage in the Market for Player Rights: Evidence from European Soccer

Federico Ciliberto, Davide Scotti and Silvio Vismara

No 20534, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Firms facing accounting-based regulation can restructure transactions to meet formal constraints without reducing risk. We study this arbitrage in European soccer, where Financial Fair Play (FFP) rewards inflated capital gains from bilateral player exchanges (“cross-transfers†). Using transaction-level data from 20 European leagues (2015–2023), we identify 412 cross-transfers generating €1.37–€2.94 million in excess capital gains per leg, roughly €0.6–1.2 billion in aggregate. The premium is absent before FFP, and gains are positively correlated within pairs, consistent with coordinated inflation rather than liquidity trading. Arbitrage peaks at 8.5% of reported capital gains, declining after regulators adopted transaction-level scrutiny.

JEL-codes: G28 L51 Z20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20534 (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:cpr:ceprdp:20534

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20534

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().