Effects of Football Match Results of Croatian National Team on Stock Returns: Evidence from Zagreb Stock Exchange

This paper observes short term effects of football match results by focusing on the Croatian national team and stock returns on the Zagreb Stock Exchange. Existing literature identifies psychological factors affecting investor’s sentiment around sporting events on different stock markets. There does not exist any study focusing on the Croatian stock market. Thus, this paper extensively observes such effects for the first time in the literature. Event study methodology, a usual approach of investigating such effects, is used on a sample of 60 stocks on the Zagreb Stock Exchange for the period from 2014 until the end of 2018. The results indicate no significant effects of winning or losing a football match, even when controlling for game being friendly, competitive tournament or qualification one; as well as after controlling for investor’s expectations based upon betting odds. This means that no profitable trading strategies could be obtained around the football match day on the Zagreb Stock Exchange in the observed period for the stocks investigated in this paper