Fake News Exposure and Financial Performance in Professional Football: A Panel Analysis of Listed European Clubs
Fake News Exposure and Financial Performance in Professional Football: A Panel Analysis of Listed European Clubs

Summary/Abstract: The study examined whether the information environment influences the financial performance of publicly listed European football clubs by incorporating variables associated with disinformation into the analysis of football business. The research contributes to the existing literature by linking two areas that are rarely studied together: fake news as an economic and reputational risk, and the financial valuation of professional football organisations. A weekly panel dataset was constructed covering the period 2016-2024 for publicly listed football clubs and football-related holding companies from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Denmark, comprising more than 7,500 club–week observations. The empirical analysis employs fixed-effects panel regressions with robust standard errors, complemented by robustness tests and multicollinearity diagnostics. The results indicate that the relationship between information environment indicators and club financial performance is less robust than suggested by part of the existing literature. After controlling for organisation-specific characteristics and broader economic conditions, exposure to disinformation does not exhibit statistically robust effects on stock returns or the economic valuation of clubs in the main model specifications. Similarly, social media usage and media literacy do not retain statistical significance in all estimated models. In contrast, the robustness analyses highlight a more consistent role for digital connectivity, suggesting that access to information and digital infrastructure may influence market reactions more directly than general perceptions of disinformation. The originality of the study lies in its empirical assessment of therelationship between the information environment and the financial performance of publicly listed European football clubs, using a multi-country comparative approach and an econometric framework that explicitly controls for organisational heterogeneity and macroeconomic conditions. The findings suggest that the economic impact of disinformation on football organisations is difficult to identify using aggregated national-level indicators and underscore the need for more granular measures of information exposure in future research.

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