Revenue management is widely adopted across industries—except in the sports industry. In the context of the present study, we contact every single football and soccer club belonging to the top league in Italy—one of the world’s most successful football nations—and obtain responses from close to half of all clubs. We find that one-third of all football clubs apply revenue management, far more than basketball clubs. Basketball clubs rely heavily on fixed pricing, whereas soccer clubs use variable pricing or revenue management. Study data also suggest that perceived barriers to revenue management include a fear of alienating customers or perceived high implementation costs; since experiences of revenue management implementation are overwhelmingly positive, this study suggests that the fears of revenue management implementation are overblown. This study advances research on the practical implementation of revenue management in non-traditional industries and provides an encouragement for executives working in other industries to implement revenue management.

收入管理在各个行业中被广泛采用——体育行业除外。在本研究的背景下，我们联系了意大利顶级联赛（世界上最成功的足球国家之一）的每一个足球和足球俱乐部，并获得了近一半俱乐部的回应。我们发现三分之一的足球俱乐部采用收入管理，远远超过篮球俱乐部。篮球俱乐部严重依赖固定定价，而足球俱乐部则使用可变定价或收入管理。研究数据还表明，收入管理的感知障碍包括害怕疏远客户或感知高实施成本；由于收入管理实施的经验非常积极，本研究表明对收入管理实施的担忧被夸大了。