Determinants of foreign trade in football: The case of Turkey

International footballer transfers have reached significant levels in football, which has gained an economic structure with globalisation and has become a major industry. These transfers, which are important for both the economic structures of football clubs and the economies of countries as they affect many sectors constitute a large part of foreign trade in football. In this respect, the aim of the thesis is to determine the determinants of foreign trade in football that arise with international player transfers and to evaluate the effects of these determinants. To this end, during the period 2001-2019, exports and imports of Turkey Super League footballer have been adopted as the dependent variable and time series analysis has been applied. As a result of time-series analysis has been identified determinants of foreign trade in Turkey's Super League football as Turkey GDP, EU GDP, real effective exchange rate, the Financial Fair Play rules, applied to foreign footballer rules, the success of the Turkey national football team participating in the tournaments and the amount of imports from a previous era. Then, for the 2010-2020 period, in order to examine the club-based variables such as club revenues, league championship and participation in the UEFA Champions League, panel data analysis has been applied by using the data of Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş and Trabzonspor clubs which constitute the majority of the footballer imports of the league. As a result of the panel data analysis; while club revenues and real effective exchange rate have been determined as the determinants of imports in football, statistically significant results have not been obtained for variables peculiar to football.