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The paper aims to revisit the debate on the priorities of football clubs in talent hiring with respect to maximizing sporting performance or economic profitability. Based on the degree of media exposure of the clubs, we examine whether the clubs’ objectives include, in addition to the classic twofold choice, the aspiration of club managers to gain popularity through media exposure.

This paper applies structural equation modelling (path analysis) techniques to re-examine what is the more realistic description of football club owners’ decisions when hiring talent. Our database comprises teams from the first division of four top European football leagues: 80 observations per season during the pre-COVID period spanning from 2009/10 to 2017/18.

The results suggest that, when recruiting players, in addition to considering the two classic objectives (wins and profits), club owners also seem to aim expanding the media exposure and popularity of their clubs. Our study reveals that, to explain talent-hiring decisions in football, the ability to attract media attention is as crucial as sporting performance could be. Furthermore, by examining the direct, indirect and total effects on annual revenue, we found that our media visibility index performs a mediation effect connecting sports performance and revenue.

An innovative feature of our analysis is the use of the MERIT media visibility index, which jointly captures the on-field and off-field players’ skills. The consistency and robustness of the results derive from the various specifications of the estimated models.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree of persistence in four precious metal prices (i.e. gold, palladium, platinum and silver) during the last four US recessions.

Using daily price data for gold, palladium, platinum and silver running from July 2, 1990, to March 21, 2022, and dating of business cycles in the USA provided by NBER (2022), the paper uses fractional integration to test the degree of persistence of precious metal prices.

The empirical analysis shows the unrelenting prominence of gold in relation to other precious metals (palladium, platinum and silver) as a hedge against market uncertainty in the post-pandemic new era.

Two are the main contributions of the paper. Firstly, the authors contribute to the commodity markets and finance literature on precious metal price modelling. Secondly, the authors also contribute to the literature on commodity markets and business cycles with a special focus on recessionary periods.