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on Sports and Economics |
| By: | Babatunde Buraimo; David Forrest; |
| Abstract: | Matches in team sports are usually organised as leagues where there are end-of-season positive and negative prizes such as the championship, playoff qualification, and relegation. Most prior attempts to investigate how the significance of an individual match for these outcomes affects attendance or television ratings have failed to identify an effect. This paper argues that the explanation may be that most studies use ad hoc metrics which fail adequately to capture how important a match is. A recent development is to use metrics more rooted in sport analytics and research based on this approach has supported the notion that the size of the television audience is influenced by how much the match matters in the context of likely seasonal outcomes. Here, we extend the idea by applying it to modelling stadium attendance in four European football leagues. In each case, attendance is elevated as the match becomes more important from the perspective of the home club, whichever prize is considered. Matches which are important to the away club if it is a contender for the championship also raise expected attendance but this is not true for the negative prize of relegation. Implications for organisers of leagues are discussed. |
| Keywords: | sport analytics; Monte Carlo simulation; football; stadium attendance; match significance |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202505 |
| By: | Juan De Dios Tena; ; |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the causal impact of entry regulation on organisational behaviour and market outcomes by exploiting two natural experiments in professional football. It examines the consequences of transitioning between a promotion-and-relegation system and a closed league in Mexico’s Liga MX and South Korea’s K-League 1. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, the analysis compares the evolution of match-level outcomes in the treated leagues with those in suitable control groups—Brazil’s Brasileirão and Japan’s J-League. Closing the league in Liga MX reduced competitive balance—matches became, on average, less close—lowered stadium attendance by around 40%, and decreased global search interest by about 8 Google Trends points, while also making managerial replacements less effective. Introducing promotion and relegation in the K-League 1 increased competitive intensity and enhanced the efficacy of managerial changes. Together, these findings provide the first causal evidence on how league design shapes incentives and behaviour in professional sports, with broader implications for industries where performancebased entry rules influence organisational strategy. |
| Keywords: | Entry regulation, Promotion and relegation, Organisational behaviour, Professional football, Natural experiment, Difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | L83 L51 D22 C23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202506 |
| By: | van Ours, Jan C. |
| Abstract: | While sports betting markets share similarities with traditional financial markets, they are more accessible for empirical research thanks to availability of high-quality data, straightforward betting procedures, and the finite duration of events. As a result, they are often analyzed for market efficiency and serve as a field laboratory for studying financial markets. This study examines 24 seasons of English Premier League matches, revealing consistent non-transitive patterns in match outcomes among various triads (groups of three clubs). These empirical findings are difficult to rationalize and represent a notable anomaly. Bookmakers ignore the non-transitive patterns when setting odds. Faced with a trade-off between efficiency using historical information and maintaining consistency, they prioritize consistency. |
| Keywords: | Market efficiency |
| JEL: | C25 D01 Z2 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19973 |
| By: | Clochard Gwen-Jirō; Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez; Marco Henriques Pereira |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how managers leverage their professional networks (former employees) to influence three key dimensions: hiring, responsibilities, and performance. We use rich transactional data in professional football (soccer) in Europe: over 6k coaches, 80k players, and 100k movements. First, we find that managers rely heavily on their networks for hiring, particularly for non-star workers, and at a somewhat lower cost. Second, managers give network-hired workers more responsibilities, particularly in the first year. Third, network-recruited workers are significantly positively associated with performance. We conduct additional heterogeneity analyses and robustness tests, and discuss generalizability and implications for managers in other industries. |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1275r |
| By: | Talita Greyling (Centre for Well-being, Artificial Intelligence and Social Impact (C.WAIS) and School of Economics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Onur Polat (Institute of Informatics, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkiye); Stephanie Rossouw (Auckland University of Technology, Social Science & Humanities, Auckland, New Zealand) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the effects of wins and losses of men's and women's cricket, football and rugby teams using a real-time happiness measure derived from tweets over the daily period from January 2020 to June 2023. To prevent omitted-variable bias, we control for a wide range of high-frequency macroeconomic and financial variables. While our primary focus is on South Africa, we compare the results with Australia and New Zealand, where these three sports are equally popular. We use a quantile regression approach to examine the effects of wins and losses across the entire conditional distribution of happiness rather than only at the conditional mean. We find little evidence that wins or losses affect happiness in Australia or New Zealand. In contrast, combined wins across the three sports are associated with statistically significant increases in happiness in South Africa, particularly across the moderately low to high quantiles. While outcomes differ across sports, we do find commonalities across the three countries. Fridays and holidays significantly increase happiness across the entire conditional distributions, whereas new confirmed coronavirus cases and financial market uncertainties negatively impact happiness at certain parts of the conditional distributions. |
| Keywords: | Sports, Happiness, Quantile regressions |
| JEL: | C22 E70 Z2 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202619 |
| By: | Liana Bomm (Paderborn University); Bernd Frick (Paderborn University) |
| Abstract: | This study examines how technology-assisted systems affect decision-making under uncertainty, using Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology in professional football as an empirical setting. Drawing on career concern arguments and Social Information Processing theory, we analyze whether VAR improves referee performance by functioning as a cognitive support mechanism. Using data from 4, 284 Bundesliga matches between 2010/11 and 2023/24, we examine official Kicker grades as a multidimensional performance measure. The results show that VAR significantly improves referee performance, with the largest gains occurring when VAR is available but does not intervene. Performance differences across VAR situations decline over time, consistent with adaptation processes, while heterogeneity across referees remains limited. Overall, the findings suggest that VAR improves performance by enhancing ex-ante decision-making through additional informational support. From an organizational perspective, VAR can be understood as a specialized staff unit within a line-and-staff structure, challenging a principal-agent view of technology-assisted systems as monitoring devices. |
| Keywords: | Decision support systems; Information processing; Monitoring and control; Video Assistant Referee (VAR); Referee performance; Professional football |
| JEL: | D23 D83 L83 M15 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pdn:dispap:182 |
| By: | Nadine Chlaß (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena) |
| Abstract: | Sugden and Wang (2020) are among the first to model intrinsic concerns for equal op- portunities. Their study reports that after being subjected to unequal opportunities, people experience anger, resentment, and greed and all parties involved engage in socially wasteful destruction of resources. In this critique, I point out errors which compromise these findings. The authors study two players in a card game where one player is dealt more replacement cards (unequal opportunities); the highest card wins. These replacement cards must not change the expected outcome of the game if they are to have intrinsic value only. If this is true, however, replacement cards cannot induce distinct expected outcomes, which they must do if they are to constitute opportunities by the authors’ own definition. In short, if replacements do yield distinct expected outcomes, they must inevitably also have instrumental (material) value which confounds the treatment effect. The authors then elicit people’s emotional response to these unequal replacement options in a vendetta game, where players can take and partly destroy each others’ payoff. What remains unnoticed is that the vendetta game itself introduces unequal opportunities along every potential path of play. I append an earlier study which uses a different approach to identify the behavioral consequences of people’s intrinsic concerns for unequal opportunities: In a game which grants one party infinite opportunity and only little to her opponent, players’ departures from narrow rational self-interest are explained by two redundant instruments for equal effective opportunities (Chlaß et al., 2019, Chlaß and Riener, 2015/2025). The party with greater opportunity compensates her opponent; the op- ponent requires to be compensated or else sets all parties’ payoff to zero. |
| Keywords: | equality of opportunity, decision rights, autonomy, power, common value auction, market for lemons, information asymmetry |
| JEL: | C91 D02 D44 D63 D82 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–07–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2026-009 |
| By: | Galvin Kuan Sian Lee (UM - University of Malaya = Universiti Malaya [Kuala Lumpur, Malaisie], Taylor’s University) |
| Abstract: | The rapid expansion of mobile gaming has driven the widespread adoption of in-app purchases (IAPs) as a dominant monetisation strategy. While this model enables scalable revenue through free-to-play experiences, it also raises significant behavioural, ethical, and regulatory concerns. This narrative review synthesises recent empirical and conceptual literature to examine the psychological and structural mechanisms that influence IAP behaviour, with particular emphasis on monetisation strategies, emotional engagement, and ethical implications. The findings reveal that monetisation systems such as loot boxes, premium upgrades, and psychological pricing often exploit reinforcement schedules and cognitive biases, leading to compulsive spending and reduced user trust. Emotional experiences such as flow, enjoyment, and hedonic satisfaction play a mediating role, influencing both purchase decisions and long-term retention. Furthermore, the ethical boundaries of these practices remain ambiguous, as many monetisation features mimic gambling structures and lack transparency. The study highlights a need for greater regulatory alignment, ethical design practices, and platform-level accountability. It also proposes future research directions involving trust, consumer autonomy, and the role of game context in monetisation outcomes. This review contributes to both marketing and game studies by advancing an integrated understanding of how design, behaviour, and monetisation intersect in mobile gaming environments. |
| Keywords: | Player Trust and Engagement, Ethical Gaming Practices, Game Design Psychology, Mobile Game Monetisation, In-App Purchase Behaviour |
| Date: | 2025–05–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05608965 |