Accounting and transformative effects in professional football. A sociological ethnography of number- and databased practices of evaluation and critique

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Robert Schmidt
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421870369

The project investigates how performance measures and analyses in professional football are produced, distributed and used. Thereby an empirical desideratum in social studies of accounting, valuation and quantification is addressed. Based on ethnographic research and micro-sociological analyses, the actual ways of producing, circulating and using match data and performance measures as well as the controversies and conflicts regarding expertise and interpretability are explored. In doing so, the project aims for empirically advancing the concept of performativity of accounting. It also contributes to the sociology of sports and professional football by exploring the (retroactive) effects of match analyses and statistical evaluations on training, competition, the media landscape, marketing strategies etc. The empirical research design combines multi-sited ethnography and microanalytical methods derived from the field of workplace studies. It follows the data, discovers concrete sites of data production and critique (clubs, companies for match analysis, data editorial departments, fan blogs etc.) and depicts the trajectories of data and analyses. New insights into the reality-generating effects of number-based accounting are expected, which will be of great significance in the fields of valuation, datafication, digitalization and mediatization studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants