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Football clubs are using insolvency as a business tactic, a new report has claimed.

Research published by the International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship shows that many clubs have gone into administration more than once and that there is little regard for creditors, particularly government agencies such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

John Beech, lead author of the report – which analyses “insolvency events” in UK football in the past 20 years – concludes that the inference is undoubtedly a willingness to enter administration as a business decision.

Beech, who is head of sport and tourism at Coventry University, said: “Among members of the Football League divisions 1 and 2, more than half have suffered an insolvency event in recent years. Because the process of entering administration is designed to help ailing businesses rather than hard-pressed creditors, it is seen as a relatively soft option by football's governing bodies."

The findings suggest that there are five basic triggers that lead to financial difficulty:

1. Clubs fail to cope with the financial consequences of relegation
2. Clubs fail to pay government authorities such as HMRC on time resulting in cashflow problems and as a consequence winding-up orders
3. Soft debts, such as those from wealthy benefactors, become hard debts, which clubs have not budgeted to repay
4. A loss of stadium ownership and the reduction in revenues that follows
5. Repeat offenders, which have difficulty recovering from the impact of earlier insolvencies, or which decide insolvency is an acceptable process to clear debt

Several high-profile club chairmen, including Barry Hearn at Leyton Orient, have complained that spending beyond their means equates to those clubs receiving an unfair advantage. They are, it is claimed, recruiting players by paying wages and transfer fees that they cannot realistically afford – and Hearn has called for harsher punishments to be introduced.

English clubs currently face a 10-point deduction and an insistence that they reach a Companies Voluntary Agreement (CVA) to repay creditors. The amount repaid varies, however, with direct football-related debts to players, leagues and other clubs set at 100 per cent by the football authorities. For other parties, however, the amount can be as little as 1p in the pound.

"The picture that emerges is thus one of a cavalier attitude to payment and a willingness to drift into confrontation," Beech added.

"There is very little evidence that winding-up orders have been fought and a mutually acceptable payment schedule negotiated. It suggests that clubs not only tend to be reluctant payers but also reluctant negotiators."

The research shows that 62.5 per cent of clubs in League 2 had suffered an insolvency event, whereas only 20 per cent of Premier League clubs had done so and only Portsmouth had while actually in the top flight.

"The overall impression of English football clubs is that they face insolvency at an alarming rate and too few have developed sustainable business models to avoid it, or even avoid a repetition of insolvency," the report continued.