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on Sports and Economics |
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Issue of 2014‒05‒17
five papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao Universidade da Beira Interior and Universidade de Lisboa |
| By: | Bjoern Bartling (Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Swizerland); Leif Brandes (Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK); Daniel Schunk (Department of Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We show that professional soccer players and their coaches exhibit reference-dependent behavior during matches. Controlling for the state of the match and for unobserved heterogeneity, we show on a minute-by-minute basis that players breach the rules of the game, measured by the referee’s assignment of cards, significantly more often if their teams are behind the expected match outcome, measured by pre-play betting odds of large professional bookmakers. We further show that coaches implement significantly more offensive substitutions if their teams are behind expectations. Both types of behaviors impair the expected ultimate match outcome of the team, which shows that our findings do not simply reflect fully rational responses to referencedependent incentive schemes of favorite teams falling behind. We derive these results in a data set that contains more than 8’200 matches from 12 seasons of the German Bundesliga and 12 seasons of the English Premier League. |
| Keywords: | reference points, expectations, experience, high stakes, competition |
| JEL: | C23 D03 D81 D84 |
| Date: | 2014–04–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1405&r=spo |
| By: | Juan Mendoza; Andrés Rosas |
| Abstract: | This paper measures the magnitude of referee bias using data from the Colombian professional soccer league. Our dataset contains more than 1,600 observations encompassing all first-division games played between 2005 and 2010. We use both OLS and Poisson regressions to estimate the effect of the score difference on the length of injury time added at the end of both the first and second halves of each game. Our main result is that there is statistically-significant referee bias favoring home teams. In particular, we find that referees extend injury time by approximately a quarter of a minute if the home team is trailing the half or the game by one goal. We also find that referees tend to end injury time half a minute earlier if the home team is winning by one goal. Our estimation controls for various determinants of injury time such as the number of player substitutions, the number of yellow and red cards, the occurrence of penalties or other unusual events during the game. We also consider fixed effects at the team and referee levels. We study how the size of the referee bias might depend on variables such as attendance, ranking difference, previous performance in the tournament, homicide rates in the city of the home team, as well as a measure of historical performance of each team. Our results are consistent with the hypotheses that social pressure or psychological motives, either conscious or unconscious, exert a significant influence on referees’ decisions. |
| Keywords: | Soccer, Referee Bias, Favoritism. |
| JEL: | M50 L83 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–09–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000416:011059&r=spo |
| By: | Pedro Godinho (Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra and GEMF, Portugal); Pedro Cerqueira (Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra and GEMF, Portugal) |
| Abstract: | In this study we analyse the link between stock returns and results in national league matches for 13 clubs of six different European countries. We assume that the stock prices should only respond to the unexpected component of match results, and we use betting odds to separate the expected component of the results from the unexpected one. We consider both the unweighted results (each match having the same weight in the model) and the results weighted by a new measure of match importance that we develop. We conclude that, when this measure is used to weight the unexpected component of the results, there is a significant link between the results and stock performance for 12 out of the 13 considered clubs. So, this link can be considered to be quite consistent. We also conclude that using this measure of match importance to weight the unexpected component of the match outcomes leads to an improvement in the results we achieve. |
| Keywords: | Stock returns; Football results; Football teams; Information in stock markets; MGARCH. |
| JEL: | G14 C30 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gmf:wpaper:2014-09.&r=spo |
| By: | Peter K. Hunsberger (Johns Hopkins University); Seth R. Gitter (Department of Economics, Towson University) |
| Abstract: | A recent National Labor Relations Board ruling declared Northwestern football players employees and gave them the right to unionize. This ruling is part of ongoing scrutiny of The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA's) model which labels college athletes as amateurs and limits player compensation to grant-in-aid (scholarships). Our paper estimates the marginal revenue product (MRP) of an elite college quarterback using revenue and game level playing data from eight and nine seasons, respectively. Similar to previous studies we show that MRP for elite quarterbacks far exceeds the average value of a scholarship. Our paper also provides two contributions by using a new quarterback rating system and creating an estimate of the expected value of a blue chip college quarterback recruit. The new system is the Total Quarterback Rating (QBR), a metric developed by the Stats & Information Group of ESPN. The measure has a strong win predictive ability and makes important adjustments to identify the quarterback's contribution. We find a one standard deviation increase in QBR adds about 3 wins per season, and each additional win increases a school's football revenue roughly $740,000 compared to the average quarterback, holding a variety of other determining factors constant, including school fixed effects. This suggests a superior quarterback to be worth millions of dollars a season. Teams recruit quarterbacks, however, ex-ante of the player revealing their college ability. Therefore, to estimate the value of a college recruit, we test for differences between quarterbacks rated as blue chip high school prospects and other QBs. We estimate that signing a blue chip quarterback is expected to produce roughly $429,000 dollars in total additional revenue for a college team compared to signing a non-blue chip quarterback. The results show that ex-post estimates of college player value may differ from ex-ante estimates due to the difficulty of predicting which high school players will excel in college. |
| Keywords: | College Football, College Sports Revenue, Quarterback. |
| JEL: | L83 J30 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tow:wpaper:2014-03&r=spo |
| By: | Andres Giraldo; Juan Mendoza; Andrés Rosas; Dayana Tellez |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effect of coach dismissals on team performance in the Colombian Professional Soccer League. We use 5,600 observations encompassing first-division games played between 2003 and 2010. Because firing a coach might depend on team performance, we use the number of remaining matches in the season and the stage of the tournament as sources of exogenous variation in the probability of a coach dismissal. We find that firing a coach does not have a statistically significant effect on team performance measured by the number of points, the goal difference, the number of goals scored or the number of goals allowed. We relate our findings to the existing literature. |
| Keywords: | Coach Change, Soccer, Team Performance. |
| JEL: | J4 J63 L83 |
| Date: | 2013–08–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000108:011054&r=spo |