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on Sports and Economics |
| By: | Babatunde Buraimo; Jing Guan; J.D. Tena |
| Abstract: | Sports leagues are traditionally considered as natural monopolies. Therefore, understanding how different sports competitions interact is a fundamental economic question. In particular, it is unclear how a closed (or semi-closed) elite tournament affects the level of competition in domestic leagues. On the one hand, it facilitates access to more financial resources that can increase the gap between big and small teams at the national level. But, on the other hand, participating in more competitions could also imply more fatigue and lack of concentration on the domestic league, given the greater demand that is placed on playing talent. This paper studies the effect of participating in basketball’s Euroleague tournament on team performance in eight national leagues. We find that Euroleague participation harms national performance, reducing the probability of victory by around 9% in ‘big’ leagues (i.e. those with the strongest teams). However, no significant effect was found for the rest of the league.A potential transmission channel for this effect is the higher reduction in the number of days between matches. Overall, the present paper suggests that a superleague tournament could contribute to reducing the gap between big and small clubs, at least in the strongest national leagues. We discuss the political implications of this result. |
| Keywords: | OR in sports, basketball, Euroleague, difference-in-differences, heterogeneous treatment effects |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202306&r=spo |
| By: | Owen Croft; J.D. Tena |
| Abstract: | Research question: This paper studies the determinants of stadium attendance at matches in the highest tier of English women’s football, the Women’s Super League (WSL). The interest of such analysis is twofold. First, it represents an illustrative example to study the impact of brand expansions on consumers’ interest since many women’s football teams are multiproduct extensions of existing men’s teams. Our second contribution is to study the specific drivers of consumer interest in the WSL. Research methods: This paper models attendance demand for the WSL from the 2011 to the 2022/23 season, using a sample of 777 observations. The specification includes a rich set of controls capturing team and match characteristics as well as performance and economic indicators. We also control for home and away team fixed effects and employ year and seasonal dummies. Using such a framework, we assess the spillover effects of the men’s team performance on its women’s counterpart. Results and Findings: It is found that three groups of factors predict WSL consumers’ interest: (1) team and game characteristics such as, team performance, weather indicators and team rivalry, (2) success of the national team, and (3) performance and characteristics of the men’s team. Our results stand up to several robustness tests, such as controlling for previous attendance, match significance or fixture-specific dummy variables. 3 Implications: The analysis indicates a spillover effect from the performance of the men’s team on attendance at the women’s team’s matches. It has clear implications for the club’s stakeholders, as investment returns may differ if the spillover effects are considered. Our results also highlight the importance of the performance of the women’s national team in boosting WSL attendance. |
| Keywords: | Spillover, Attendance Demand, Women’s Football, England, Brand Extension |
| JEL: | Z2 L2 M3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202308&r=spo |
| By: | Elias Bouacida; Renaud Foucart; Maya Jalloul |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of external advice on the relative performance of chess players. We asked players in chess tournaments to evaluate positions in past games and allowed them to revise their evaluation following advice from a high or a low ability player. While our data confirms the theoretical prediction that high-quality advice has the potential to act as a “great equalizer, †reducing the difference between high and low ability players, this is not what happens in practice. This is in part because our subjects ignore too much of the advice they receive, but also because low ability players pay – either due to overconfidence or intrinsic preference – a higher premium than high ability ones by following their initial idea instead of high-quality advice. |
| Keywords: | decreasing differences, expert, advice, chess, control |
| JEL: | C78 C91 C93 D91 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:408394204&r=spo |
| By: | David Almog; Romain Gauriot; Lionel Page; Daniel Martin |
| Abstract: | Powered by the increasing predictive capabilities of machine learning algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) systems have begun to be used to overrule human mistakes in many settings. We provide the first field evidence this AI oversight carries psychological costs that can impact human decision-making. We investigate one of the highest visibility settings in which AI oversight has occurred: the Hawk-Eye review of umpires in top tennis tournaments. We find that umpires lowered their overall mistake rate after the introduction of Hawk-Eye review, in line with rational inattention given psychological costs of being overruled by AI. We also find that umpires increased the rate at which they called balls in, which produced a shift from making Type II errors (calling a ball out when in) to Type I errors (calling a ball in when out). We structurally estimate the psychological costs of being overruled by AI using a model of rational inattentive umpires, and our results suggest that because of these costs, umpires cared twice as much about Type II errors under AI oversight. |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2401.16754&r=spo |
| By: | Lindlacher Valentin; Gustav Pirich |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the economic impact of China’s “stadium diplomacy” in Sub-Saharan Africa. Exploiting the staggered timing of the construction in a difference-in-differences framework, we analyze the effect of Chinese-built and financed stadiums on local economic development. Employing nighttime light satellite data, we provide both an aggregate and spatially disaggregated assessment of these investments. We find that a stadium’s city nighttime light intensity increases by 25 percent, on average, after stadium completion. The stadium’s direct surrounding increases by 34 percent, on average, in its nighttime light activity. The effects can be attributed to the stadiums but are not only visible close to the stadium’s location. The effect remains strong when controlling for other local Chinese investments. Thus, we find evidence for beneficial effects of Chinese-built and financed stadiums on local economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa, contrasting with the widely held notion that China’s development finance projects constitute “white elephants”. |
| Keywords: | stadium diplomacy, regional development, nighttime light, local public infrastructure, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | O18 R11 O55 R53 Z20 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10893&r=spo |