Browsing by Subject "Earning management"

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    ’Creative accounting’ in the Spanish professional football League : An attempt to dodge the rules economic control?
    (Universidad de Murcia, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2025) Urdaneta Camacho, Rudemarlyn; Guevara Pérez, Juan Carlos; Martín Vallespín, Emilio
    Over the past decade, many studies have analysed the contribution of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP)regulations and the Reglamento de Control Económico (RCE) of the Spanish Football League (LFP) to thefinancial sustainability of clubs. However, compliance with the regulations may create incentives to adoptaccounting practices that seek to "dress up" the financial statements of clubs, deviating from the mainobjective of presenting a true and fair view of the entity. This study analyses the financial and non-financialfactors that lead to earnings management practices in Spanish professional football, to identify the impactthat the implementation of the LFP RCE has had on the quality of accounting information. Given theimportance of intangible assets in the football industry, as they represent the rights paid for the transfer ofplayers, the study uses Key’s (1997) model to consider this item to obtain discretionary accrual adjustments.Subsequently, panel data (FGLS) allows us to identify possible relationships between these adjustments andfinancial and non-financial variables.The results show that smaller and more leveraged first division clubs are more prone to manipulate their ac-counting information after the introduction of RCE. In contrast to previous studies focusing on large teams,the present study provides a comprehensive analysis of one of the most popular European leagues (theSpanish league), considering clubs of different sizes. In addition, the study opens a debate on the appropri-ateness of specific accounting parameters in the football industry, such as the treatment of intangible assetsrelated to player rights, which are one of the main items used by clubs to implement earnings management practices.