Like many professional sports leagues worldwide, the National Basketball Association is organized as a cooperative of team owners. We argue that league ownership structures must balance two types of transaction costs: the costs to league owners of collective decision-making and the costs of contracting with stakeholders of the league, importantly players, owners, and potential investors. We compare

Stefan Kesenne has died on June 21, 2021. Dr Kesenne was an emeritus professor at the University of Antwerp and the University of Leuven. He will be remembered as an inspiring, honest, and courageous man with strong ethical convictions. His groundbreaking research and unwavering support for the academic community will leave a permanent mark on the sports economics research landscape.

Our field experiment analyzes the influence of psychological traits on performance in sequential games. It uses handball penalties thrown under individual, team, or tournament incentives in the ABBA sequence. Considering the single moves of these games, player A and player B are taking turns in being the first-mover. We find no significant first-mover advantage. However, we observe that player A performs

American football season reduces the Monday labor hours of employed men by two-thirds of an hour. A similar effect is found for Friday labor hours. We term these effects the “hangover effect” and “happy hour effect.” Consistent with a wide class of labor market models, the labor supply effect varies over the business cycle, increasing in expansions. The hangover effect implies an intertemporal elasticity

In 1987, the Southern Methodist University (SMU) football program received the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA’s) harshest penalty, often referred to as the “death penalty.” SMU was caught committing two or more major violations of NCAA rules in <5 years. Therefore, under the repeat offender clause, their football program was terminated for the 1987–1988 school year, and they chose

This study investigates the determinants of voluntary and involuntary head coach turnovers using a large dataset of some 6,500 coach-game observations from Major League Soccer over 2004–2019. The duration analysis results show that team performance related to expected playoff qualification and performance expectations matter for both types of separations. Moreover, the findings reveal that coach reputation

The Union of European Football Associations is currently reviewing the away goals rule during extra time in the knockout rounds of the Champions League. We model extra time as a two-stage contest. Assuming a home-field advantage we analyze the effect of the away goals rule on the competitive balance between teams. Our analysis suggests that the away goals rule levels the competitive imbalance introduced

Understanding the market effects of Olympic host announcements is popular in academic research. Contrary to prior studies, announcing PyeongChang as the 2018 host had a positive effect on South Korea's Stock Market, with conservative estimates suggesting a peak of +3.8% during the 15 trading days post announcement (an increase equivalent to $34.962 billion). The degree to which firms benefitted varied

Major League Soccer (MLS) is the top-tier professional soccer league serving the United States and Canada. This study examines factors hypothesized to impact consumer demand for professional sports on team revenue in this nascent league. The estimates are consistent with positive returns to performance, novelty effects from newer teams, and varying impacts from roster quality and composition. Other

This paper examines the relation between crowd support and home advantage in men’s professional football in making use of a unique “natural experiment” induced by restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic: the so-called ghost games in the top three German football divisions at the end of the 2019/2020 season. We find that there is a reduced home advantage in the first division, whereas no change is

League regulators aim for an equitable competition where each team has an equal chance of winning the championship, termed competitive balance. It is generally assumed that closed leagues with stricter labor market regulations should demonstrate better competitive balance than open leagues with promotion and relegation. The aim of this research was to examine the competitive balance between and within

Models of reference-dependent preferences show that an individual’s utility depends on the difference between the outcome and a “neutral” reference point. Our paper investigates how distance from reference points affects future performance. We find that round numbers and personal bests motivate runners and that missing the goal by a small amount improves future performance. For those who achieve their

U.S. cities have recently experienced a boom in new sports facility construction. Although these facilities can provide benefits to local residents, they may also generate negative externalities, making dwellings near a facility less desirable. Using a hedonic spatial difference-in-differences model, we analyze the impact of proximity to the Staples Center, a sports and entertainment venue in downtown

We find evidence that being a foreigner decreases the chances of surviving (i.e., keeping the license) on the first season on the PGA TOUR. This phenomenon does not affect all foreigners equally—it is present amongst the non-elite group (those playing the second-tier tour), but we found no evidence amongst the elite group (those playing the first-tier tour). We discover that the international experience

The contribution of managers to the performance of football teams in the Italian Serie A is investigated. Previous results are extended by analyzing two measures of performance: the awarded points from winning matches (sport performance) and the growth of the market value of players (financial performance). Several empirical methods are employed: OLS regressions, Shorrocks-Shapley decompositions of

We investigate the hot hand using detailed data on free throws and field goals attempts for 12 NBA seasons. We find a small hot hand for free throws, which more than doubles for longer streaks of made free throws. Both offenses and defenses respond to field goals, but a made field goal does not change the probability that a player makes his next field goal attempt, and longer streaks of made field

It is common for elite players to represent their respective countries in international competitions. However, there is a potential cost to the club team derived from that situation (risk of injury, fatigue, psychological momentum, etc.). This paper evaluates the impact of players’ absence on European football teams’ performance by focusing on the Africa Cup of Nations as the case study. The results

We consider three professional sports and examine if there is a disparate return response to free agent signings with small versus big market franchises. After controlling for player ability, contract characteristics, and negotiation conditions, we find evidence of a more pronounced negative small market effect in response to both basketball and baseball signings, and a more pronounced negative big

The paper investigates the variety of peer effects on individual performance in a team sport. The individual performance of more than 5,000 soccer players, from 234 teams, between 2010 and 2015, is measured with the help of the FIFA video game simulator developed by EA Sports. The study reveals positive peer effects on individual performance although the marginal benefit decreases. Additionally, team

Contestants enter a risky contest when pursuing a sports career or choose a secure outside option. If contestants enter this contest but their sports career fails, they may have asymmetric career opportunities outside of sport. Greater opportunities reduce the risk of entering this contest. However, contestants’ incentives to exert effort decrease. Two types of equilibria exist if the initial pool

Because maximizing stadium attendance demand is of utmost importance, for both sports economists and sport management researchers, understanding the potential determinants of such demand better has become a priority in the last decades. Here, conducting a systematic scoping review, we map this previous research in terms of its characteristics, its nature, and its volume, thus offering a concise perspective

This paper empirically examines the determinants of Summer Olympic success during the period 1996-2016. By modifying the panel Tobit estimator using the Mundlak transform, the results find that population size and the host effect are the only statistically significant determinants of Olympic attainment. We also show that participating in front of a home crowd will stimulate athletic performance equally

This paper exploits a sharp regression discontinuity design to identify the causal impact of the Scottish Premiership League (SPL) “split” on spectator match attendance. We use data drawn from all 19 completed seasons for which this institutional arrangement has been in place. The causal effect of the “split” is to induce, for the last five rounds of games played in the season, a differential in average

Previous research examines head football coaches’ salary only using aggregate athletic department revenues. Using detailed football program fixed and variable revenues provided in the NCAA Membership Financial Reporting System data, head football coaches signing either new and modified contracts are able to capture both variable and fixed revenues when negotiating salaries. Additionally, for the two

This study uses Google Trends data to analyze the impact of the main events in the Tour de France 2019 on cyclists’ online popularity in 12 countries and at a global scale. A fixed effects panel model revealed a strong own-country preference. While online popularity increased with the duration of the Tour, race incidents strongly influenced online popularity. Besides the yellow jersey, winning a stage

We contribute to the happiness literature by analyzing the causal relationship between sports and happiness. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we find a positive correlation between sports participation and reported life satisfaction. This relationship is stronger at younger and older ages than in middle age, and for people in bad health compared to those in average

The 2011 NFL collective bargaining agreement introduced significant changes to rookie compensation, including a rookie wage scale. We test if the new rules changed how sunk costs affect utilization for drafted rookies. Our regression discontinuity results show a robust sunk-cost fallacy that is similar in magnitude to the one documented under the previous agreement. Second-round selections play significantly

We consider correlations between pairs of teams when deriving a win production function for professional baseball teams. Previous empirical studies derived win production estimates based on the assumption that the error terms were independent, but this is not reasonable given that a win is a relative output. The total number of wins per season is fixed: all teams share wins, in that a win for one team

This paper provides a novel contribution to studies of race and labor-market outcomes by using fantasy football statistics as a measure of performance across offensive skill positions and arrest data as a proxy for negative off-the-field behavior. We investigate whether the determinants of salaries and employment vary between 2005-06 and 2015-16, as the 2011 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) introduced

This paper contributes to the expanding literature that investigates the effects of the introduction of a three-points-for-a-win rule in football. To this end, it provides empirical evidence of the effect of the rule on Italy’s most prestigious football league. Our analysis uses data collected over a long period of time and relies on pooled regressions and a regression discontinuity design. The findings

This paper examines the relative performance and access to mounts of female jockeys in American horseracing, the only major professional sport where female and male athletes directly compete on a regular basis. We modeled the determinants of the probability for a jockey finishing a race “in-the-money”—placing first, second, or third, and the determinants for receiving mounts. Among other findings,

Professional teams and leagues claim new stadiums lead to economic development. To test this, we utilize data from the Census Bureau on net establishment and employment changes across 871 Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas from 2004 to 2012. Difference-in-differences and panel data techniques allow for a cross-sectional and time series comparison for both teams and new stadia in both professional

This paper compares the predictive accuracy and efficiency of college football point spreads for regular and bowl games. We find that the betting line spread is more accurate as a predictor of the eventual winner for college football games during the regular season than for the bowl games. Although the betting market is mostly efficient with regard to the favorite covering the spread, we do find several

This study examines how running performance (intensive runs, total distance covered) of football teams in previous games impacts betting markets as it relates to expected win probability. Theoretically, bookmakers could interpret team’s running performance as effort or fatigue, with sports science studies suggesting that distance covered reflects effort and intensive runs signal fatigue. Using data

Estimating the causal impact of sport or physical activity on health and well-being is an issue of great relevance in the sport and health literature. The increasing availability of individual level data has encouraged this interest. However, this analysis requires dealing with two types of simultaneity problem: (1) between exercise and response variables; and (2) across the different response variables

We examine loss aversion in the context of professional golf at US Open tournaments. In particular, we analyze data from two courses, Pebble Beach Golf Links and Oakmont Country Club, where they have hosted six and five US Opens, respectively. The United States Golf Association changed the par rating of a hole on each course from a par 5 to a par 4, without fundamentally altering the hole, in each

This paper uses a unique dataset containing more than eight years of daily data to examine the effect of the Super Bowl on hotel room rentals, rates, and room revenue in four recent host cities. The findings include (1) the net gain in rentals is considerably fewer than the gross number of rooms rented, (2) benefits are heterogeneous across cities, (3) the areas that benefit are not always those located

Using data from 2006 to 2019, we show that performance in the NBA Summer League can be used to predict regular season performance for NBA rookies. This result is indicated by general performance (win shares) and also by individual performance measures; for example, players who score more points than anticipated in the Summer League are also more proficient scorers as NBA rookies. Our findings suggest

Data from 16 years of NBA All-Star Games shows star power has two components. First, fans are drawn to live games featuring players whose current play is at a historically high skill level. Second, fans display attachment based on geographical proximity to a team, local superstar recognition, and team success. All-Star games are exhibitions with a roster of different levels of high skill level and

Seeding in tournaments is a process of creating a schedule based on performance in the recent past. It is used in many athletic disciplines to ensure that particularly attractive match ups do not occur until the later stages of the tournament. We exploit the discontinuous nature of the seeding system in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League as a natural experiment to estimate the causal

Does hosting a sports team boost the visibility of a city among tourists? I test this proposition by looking at the effect of playing soccer’s UEFA Champions' League on air travel. I compare routes across cities that had their teams randomly drawn into the same group in the first phase of the competition to routes across cities hosting teams randomly allocated to different groups. The average effect

Sporting leagues have various competitive balance measures including player drafts, where teams are awarded picks based on prior performance. Teams, however, have the option to either exercise this pick or trade it as they see fit. An analysis of this trading market in the NFL stated that players obtained through traded picks contributed more to their recruiters in comparison to their counterparts

Players selected in the annual Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft have a choice of whether to enter the system or pursue a career outside of professional baseball. As with any choice, there are opportunity costs associated with their decision. The purpose of this study was to analyze those opportunity costs by comparing draftees’ expected, non-signing-bonus income to the income of standard

This paper challenges the traditional seeding regime of round-robin tournaments that aims to create balanced groups. In particular, the design of the most prestigious European men’s handball club competition is compared to two alternative formats with equally strong groups via simulations. We find that it is possible to increase the quality of all matches played together with raising the uncertainty

This study looks at the impact of a university making a surprise (“Cinderella”) run in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. Our results suggest that surprise success in the tournament has little to no impact on the quantity of applications in subsequent years. However, we find that freshmen enrollments increase for private schools two academic years after a Cinderella run (with mixed results on the

The National Football League’s (NFL) television ratings decreased by approximately 8% during the 2016 season, then a further 10% the following season. These declines coincided with league-wide national anthem protests initiated by Colin Kaepernick at the beginning of the 2016 season. Existing research identifies many determinants of demand for sporting events, but athletes’ protests are seldom considered

Ranking mobility belongs to the indicators of dynamic long-term competitive balance, as it is based on season to season changes in league rankings. If the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis holds at the league level, ranking mobility might increase demand for league games. This assumption is tested by using panel regression models on data of 19 European domestic soccer leagues. Ranking mobility is found

The paper investigates home advantages in skeleton. Our study broadens home advantage literature by providing models and estimation strategy applicable to other individual sports with tracks or courses such as biathlon, cross country skiing, etc. We identified two sources of advantages: support from the crowd; familiarity with the track. In the Olympics and the World Championships, home advantage leads

We model a soccer match between two heterogeneous teams as a two-stage contest where each team chooses its attacking and defending effort for each half of the match. We characterize the optimal teams’ efforts as well as the optimal effort allocation between offense and defense. In contrast to the theoretical literature on soccer we show, for example, that the leading team may preempt its competitor

This article examines attendance at league soccer matches before and after hosting an international soccer competition (the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA European Championships). We find significant increases in attendance at clubs that host games in these tournaments. We find smaller but often significant increases in attendance at other league clubs, suggesting that these events may drive fan interest

We test whether human capital deterioration is a function of employer decision making with respect to workload allocation. We examine this question in the context of National Football League running backs, where the structure of nonguaranteed employment contracts has the potential to create divergent incentives for franchises and players. We empirically test how employer-assigned workloads impact changes

The last few years have seen a resurgence of very long, very expensive guaranteed contracts in Major League Baseball. Commentators who examine the outcomes of earlier long-term contracts generally conclude that teams greatly overpay in these situations. These assessments suffer from the use of perfect hindsight, however. In this article, we estimate the economic gain that could be anticipated at the

We estimate a system of demand equations for three aggregate characteristics of a football game—quality of the teams, outcome uncertainty, and schedule—based on the estimation of a hedonic price model for the ticket price of a football match using data from the Spanish football league. We conclude that all three characteristics are not inferior goods (quality as a luxury), and they are price inelastic

This paper assesses the effect of the crowd size on home team advantage, using a natural experiment occurred in Brazilian football. In 2015, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) quasi-randomly assigned games to be played under an alternative schedule on Sundays at 11 a.m. This measure significantly increased attendance in assigned games. Using this alternative schedule as an instrumental variable

There is significant debate about compensation of college athletes in revenue generating sports. In college football, the potential heterogeneity in player value has received little attention in the discussion. The relationship between player quality, team performance, and sport-specific revenue should inform any compensation scheme for college football players. In this article, we provide estimates

Kelly staking has been proven to maximize long-term bankroll growth of bettors with positive expected yield (profitable bettors). However, it demands for an estimation of the true probabilities for each event. Thus, many sport tipsters opt for simpler flat (unit-loss) or unit-win staking plans. We analyze under which assumptions these strategies correspond to the Kelly method and propose a different

This study provides an experiment to examine whether announcer gender impacts audience demand. With special attention to literature detailing the role of women in sports, sports economics, as well as uses and gratifications theory, this study provides an experiment wherein participants watched a sporting event announced by a man or a woman. Afterward, the participants responded to questions regarding

This study analyzes how the importance of a game, or characteristics of the previous game, impacts college football games. The results show that rivalry games are harder to predict, and the strength of the previous opponent influences the outcome of the game. If a team’s previous game was close, this negatively influences the team. There is no evidence that the previous game’s location or a team’s

Existing literature on the economic impact of sports facilities fails to consider whether new facilities positively affect existing businesses. To fill this gap, data on existing establishments in Sacramento, CA, active from 2004 through 2018 were collected. The outcome of interest is existing businesses’ survival time. Using an accelerated failure time model in a difference-in-difference framework

This research examines the impact of defensive coordinators and head coaches on team defensive performance in the National Football League (NFL). We find that elite and very poor defensive coordinators and head coaches can have meaningful impacts on their teams’ defensive performances. A team’s defensive performance is shown to improve with increased defensive coordinator tenure. Similarly, defensive