Korean business groups and performance of group-affiliated professional sport teams: Focusing on the Asian financial crisis

This study examines the impact of Korean business groups, chaebols, on the sporting performance of their affiliated professional sports teams using game data from 1983 to 2013. We investigated whether or not chaebol ownership of professional sports teams is more efficient than non-chaebol ownership in achieving athletic success on the field of play. Our empirical evidence found that the chaebol-affiliated teams are more likely to be the league winners or finalists than non-chaebol teams are. We also tested the relationship between the financial crisis in the wider economy that deflates firm resources and athletic outcomes in the affiliated teams. In the tests, which divide the sample period into three 10-year periods, the results of two sub-samples (1983-1993 and 2004-2013) were in line with previous results. We, however, identified an exception when chaebol teams did not play in more final matches of a league between 1994 and 2003, the time interval that includes the period of drastic restructuring of business groups during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.