The impact of COVID-19 on the European football ecosystem – A Delphi-based scenario analysis

•Social-economic impact of COVID-19 crisis highly relevant for football ecosystem.•Experts see opportunities and threats for football ecosystem caused by COVID-19.•Stakeholder groups differ in assessment of consequences of epidemic disease.•Participants' deep-level characteristics/sentiments impact valuation behavior.•Expertise, level of optimism and affective wellbeing can be proxies for sentiment. COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on the world's society and economy. This also applies to European football; the continent's largest professional sports ecosystem has millions of employees in football-related jobs and even more people emotionally attached to the sport. To account for stakeholders' unprecedented level of uncertainty regarding regulatory, economic, social, and technological implications for their business, we systematically examine how COVID-19 will impact the future of the European football ecosystem in the short, medium and long term. We present a Delphi-based scenario analysis with 110 subject matter experts who assessed 15 future projections both on a quantitative and qualitative basis. We find that, for example, a salary cap for players would have the highest impact on the ecosystem, but it is unlikely to be implemented, while an increased awareness for social responsibility would be the most desirable effect of the crisis. To refine the results, we account for surface-level and deep-level characteristics of participants and find significant effects in both cases. We identify three different clusters of projections and discuss the potential threats and opportunities of COVID-19 for the European football ecosystem to contribute to the scientific discussion and to provide guidance for policy- and decision-makers.