{"title":"Economic analysis of the 12th man: Should the fans be paid?","authors":"Luc Arrondel , Jean-Pascal Gayant , Jean-François Laslier","doi":"10.1016/j.serev.2023.100017","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The paper provides a theoretical sports league model to study the pricing of tickets. It considers the trade-off between maximizing match day revenues, through high prices, and maximizing the support of the most demonstrative fans, through low prices. These spectators, the “ultras” contribute to the competitive level of the club along with team-level talent, and therefore indirectly increase the number of victories, hence the revenue from TV rights. We model the role of effusive spectators and show that, in a non-cooperative Nash equilibrium, it may be optimal for the club to subsidize their presence in order to take full advantage of the 12th man effect.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":101182,"journal":{"name":"Sports Economics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sports Economics Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2773161823000101","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The paper provides a theoretical sports league model to study the pricing of tickets. It considers the trade-off between maximizing match day revenues, through high prices, and maximizing the support of the most demonstrative fans, through low prices. These spectators, the “ultras” contribute to the competitive level of the club along with team-level talent, and therefore indirectly increase the number of victories, hence the revenue from TV rights. We model the role of effusive spectators and show that, in a non-cooperative Nash equilibrium, it may be optimal for the club to subsidize their presence in order to take full advantage of the 12th man effect.