Sports Economics Review最新文献

This study empirically tests a version of the match-level uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH) using data from second leg games in the now defunct European Champion Clubs' Cup. The data used cover the playing seasons from its inception in 1955/56 to 1991/92. The context within which the analysis is conducted is deliberately selected to reflect an era when the organization of European soccer was more austere in nature and less affected by the influence of commercialization. The motivation for the focus on second leg games is that these are interpretable as ‘one-off’ sporting contests. This enables the goal difference from the first leg to provide a measure of outcome uncertainty for the second leg match. The empirical analysis yields strong and compelling support for this variant of the UOH.

This study looks at the financial performance of top English football clubs to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our analysis focuses on English Premier League (EPL) and English Football League (EFL) clubs that have participated at least once in England’s highest league, the EPL. Using panel data methodology from 36 clubs between 2005 – 2021, we quantify the impact and severity of Covid-19 on top English football clubs’ financial performance. We find statistically significant evidence that profitability deteriorated during the pandemic with EPL clubs more reliant on matchday revenue the most impacted. Both financial stability and indebtedness deteriorated during the pandemic but the deterioration was not statistically significant. EFL clubs were the most impacted by reduced financial stability and increased indebtedness. These findings are vital for football’s regulators as it provides empirical evidence on the stability of the industry and also provides insights football club owners on strategies they can adopt to survive during external shocks to the industry

We analyse the distribution of results that leads to the lowest level of concentration of within-season points, as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, in sports leagues where individual matches cannot result in ties. Typically, the minimum concentration level is considered to be when teams have equal shares of points, but this may not always be feasible. We develop appropriate expressions for the minimum concentration measure in such scenarios and evaluate the accuracy of using the equal distribution assumption. The error involved in using this assumption is a decreasing function of the number of teams in the league and increases the closer the level of competition is to perfect balance. Use of the incorrect minimum concentration can lead to substantial overestimation of the normalized concentration index.

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.

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.