The consumption and saving behaviour of professional football players – looking into a socio-economic problem

Abstract Unlike many top athletes in other Olympic sports, professional footballers in the first and second German football leagues generate disproportionately high incomes during their active sports careers. Due to these high incomes, it should be possible for players to save sufficient money during their sports career so that they can autonomously secure their lives afterwards. Despite their high incomes, however, not all players are able to build up sustainable assets. A study from the German players' union VDV shows that the surveyed players believe that about 20% of active professionals in Germany have financial problems regardless of the league that they play in, and they expect that every second player is threatened with financial problems after the end of his career. The paper aims to identify and systematically combine economic and sociological explanation mechanisms to analyse certain aspects of the saving and consumption behaviour of professional footballers. Finally, the methodological consequences for an empirical study are discussed and specific analytical units with research-guiding questions are derived.