Redovisning av spelarförvärv – Aktivering eller kostnadsföring : En studie om allsvenska fotbollsklubbars val av redovisningsmetod och dess ekonomiska påverkan

Sammanfattning: Within professional football, their business today is run like corporations and in their balance sheets, the post intangible assets are growing from year to year. Since the end of the 1990s the economy for football clubs has grown rapidly when it concerns their income growth but also when it relates to their growth in income related to sales of football players. Through the influence of international accounting regulations have the football clubs the option to capitalize on transfer fees as intangible assets. To capitalize transfer fees as intangible assets when acquiring a football player means that the transfer fee is recorded as an asset in the balance sheet and is then written off after the length of the contract. The purpose of this study is to examine how the football clubs in Allsvenskan accounts for transfer fees and which influence the two different accounting methods, capitalizing or expensing, have on their result and equity. The football club’s equity is in focus in this review depending on the rules of the Swedish Football Association which claims that positive economic equity is required to receive a license. The study will examine football clubs that are part of the 2021 season of Allsvenskan and football clubs that have been participating in Allsvenskan during the last five years. This essay intends to contribute to the discussion on the choice of accounting method by studying a more economically results-oriented approach than what previously been researched and written about in essays. To examine the choice of accounting method was proven to be quite uncomplex in those cases where an annual account was readily present. However, the other part of the study was more complex, where we created our own analytical model to calculate the differences between capitalizing and expensing transfer fees as an accounting method. All information is assembled from the football club’s official annual reports. The study shows that most football clubs participating in Allsvenskan choose to capitalize on transfer fees and consequently account for them as intangible assets in their balance sheet. The study shows with its case, studies that during a 5-year period there is a difference in both result and equity between the two accounting methods. If one examines specific years in these cases the study shows that the economic outcome is quite different between the two accounting methods.