Sports Economics Review最新文献

We analyze the impact of professional sporting events on local seasonal influenza mortality to develop evidence on the role played by spectator attendance at sporting events in airborne virus transmission. Results from a difference-in-differences model applied to data from a sample of US cities that gained new professional sports teams over the period 1962–2016 show that the presence of games in these cities increased local influenza mortality by between 4% and 24%, depending on the sport, relative to cities with no professional sports teams and relative to mortality in those cities before a new team arrived. Influenza mortality fell in cities with teams in some years when work stoppages occurred in sports leagues. Health policy decisions, and decisions about the subsidization of professional sports, should take into account the role played by sporting events in increasing airborne virus transmission and local influenza and coronavirus mortality.

During the period of 2006–2008 Major League Soccer made a series of rule changes regarding roster structures and how clubs obtained players. These changes include: creating Designated Player roster spots, increasing the number of international roster spots, and allowing clubs to sign players from their academies. This work examines the impact of those rule changes on the MLS careers of players selected in the MLS SuperDraft. Statistical methods to compare two groups and regression models are used to examine possible impacts. There is a significant decrease in the probability of players selected after the rule changes going on to play competitive games in MLS. These results may impact how clubs choose to allocate resources for player recruitment.

In 2011 UEFA, the governing body of European football, introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulation (FFPR), consisting of a set of financial restraints to be met by clubs as a prerequisite for participation to its competitions. The aim of the FFPR was to introduce financial discipline into the clubs’ decision-making processes, and ultimately protect the long-term viability of the European football industry. The reform was criticized because of possible unintended detrimental consequences. In particular, Peeters and Szymanski (2014) provided a model-based ex-ante simulation analysis showing that the reform would increase the profitability of clubs, but also tilt the competitive balance in favor of the top teams, thus reducing the interest of fans and investors as one of the main attractions in sports is precisely that the best team does not always win. Exploiting an original dataset between the seasons 2007–2008 and 2019–2020, we provide an ex-post econometric evaluation of the effects of the introduction of the FFPR revealing causal evidence that largely vindicates those ex-ante predictions.

This paper uses the contingent valuation method to estimate the willingness to pay for hosting the Tour de France start 2022 in Denmark. Using a dichotomous choice format with a one-off tax payment, we estimate a total economic value between €12.8–26.0 million for the 2.788 million Danish households, with €14.7 as our preferred estimate. Spike models reveal that the likelihood of voting in favor of an earmarked tax to retain the Tour de France in Denmark decreases with the physical distance from the route. Moreover, we find a negative effect of living in one of the host municipalities (start or finish of a stage), ceteris paribus. This indicates that if non-use values are higher for residents living in a host municipality, they are offset by the negative externalities associated with hosting.

To gain insight into the age-performance relationship (APR) for cognitively demanding tasks, we analyse the APR for the task of playing chess from a theoretical and empirical perspective. We set up a game-theoretic model showing that for risk-neutral players who are homogeneous in their linear payoffs, the APR can be estimated with either players' game outcomes or their Elo ratings. This result is empirically substantiated with data on outcomes of games played at an annual international chess tournament (1970–2021), and with players' Elo ratings. Further, the findings support the estimation of the APR with Elo ratings using a model that controls for player fixed effects and period random effects, which is also in accordance with the theoretical model. Next, we show that on average chess performance peaks in grandmasters’ early-thirties and declines thereafter. Implications of the findings for a labour market characterised by an increase in cognitively demanding jobs and individuals working longer are discussed.

The most studied problem in sports scheduling, so-called traveling tournament problem (TTP), aims at finding schedules minimizing the total distance traveled by the teams. While minimizing all the traveling between games is efficient from the overall perspective, it overlooks the distribution of the travel among the teams. Consequently, some teams may end up better than others with respect to their individual goals, an imbalance which may affect teams’ often-limited resources or preparedness for the games. This article adopts a cooperative game theory framework to obtain tournament schedules where the distances traveled by the teams are allocated according to fairness criteria. The approach consists of three steps. First, the scheduling problem is reformulated as a transferable utility game. Second, by means of well-established allocation methods, an ideal distance distribution among the teams is determined. Third, we introduce fairness measures to produce a schedule which approximately resembles the ideal distribution. We also discuss the case of not pursuing fairness, but rather a compromise between fairness and minimum total distance. We illustrate the approach by a numerical example in one of the classic TTP data instances.

We define a measure of competitiveness that is based on full rankings and corrects for partitioning of the parties in exogenously defined clusters. We use the measure to study the change in competitiveness of Formula One racing during the period 1993–2019.

This paper demonstrates, by simple classical game theory, that the claim by Savulescu et al. (2004) of a safer and fairer sport with legalized doping is a highly unlikely outcome. This result, with added arguments related to adverse effects on both demand and supply for the sports product, should hopefully affect the debate on legalization of performance-enhancing drugs. The Nash equilibrium obtained in the analysis predicts more doping, and maybe more importantly, use of more dangerous performance-enhancing drugs. As a consequence, a legalization of performance.enhancing drugs may threaten the actual existence of professional sports markets.

We ask if the move to play elite football (soccer) matches without spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted online viewership. Using a new dataset from YouTube, we depart from the traditional ex ante approach to modelling football demand and investigate streaming preferences for known results in football. Our data is collected in real-time and considers English Premier League matches from 2019 to 2021 played both in front of crowds and behind closed doors. The results indicate increased viewership for matches played without crowds. The findings also allow a deeper understanding of direct demand for football as we identify motivators, including different pre-game and in-game characteristics as well as scheduling effects, that make fans curious to view content after the fact. The research adds to our understanding of the effects of the pandemic on fan viewer behaviour and speaks to broadcasting firms developing digital extension strategies.

Injury rates in thirteen U.S. women’s college sports and four U.S. girls’ high school sports are examined in this paper. The sports are categorized as high injury (H) or low injury (L) and differences in injury rates between the two are examined. Estimates are presented of the injury savings that would result if the H sports were changed to have injury rates similar to those in the L sports.