nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2010‒01‒16
four papers chosen by
Joao Carlos Correia Leitao
Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre and Technical University of Lisbon

  1. The Organization of Professional Sports Leagues: A Comparison of European and North-American Leagues from the Perspective of Platform Organization By Helmut Dietl; Tobias Duschl
  2. Efficiency of French football clubs and its dynamics By Jardin, Mathieu
  3. The Returns to Scarce Talent: Footedness and Player Remuneration in European Soccer By Alex Bryson; Bernd Frick; Rob Simmons
  4. A Stochastic Analysis of Some Two-Person Sports By Davy Paindaveine; Yvik Swan

  1. By: Helmut Dietl (Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich); Tobias Duschl (Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich)
    Abstract: In this paper, we compare European and North-American sports leagues from the perspective of platform organization. We find that European leagues can be characterized as open, not only in the sense of promotion and relegation, but also in the sense of attenuated/dispersed property rights and free access on all market sides. North American leagues, on the other hand, are organized as closed platforms with exclusive/concentrated property rights and high entry barriers on all market sides. This difference explains why European clubs outperform their North American counterparts in terms of revenue generation, i.e. value creation, and why North American clubs are much more profitable than most European clubs. European leagues are organized as open platforms, which invite and facilitate participation from all relevant market sides. The absence of concentrated property rights and the possibility of free market entry, however, limit the opportunities of value appropriation.
    Keywords: Sports leagues, organization, platform, network effects
    JEL: L83
    Date: 2009–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:wpaper:0119&r=spo
  2. By: Jardin, Mathieu
    Abstract: In the paper we evaluate the efficiency of French football clubs (Ligue 1) from 2004 to 2007 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with « Assurance Region ». Then, we study the dynamics of clubs’ performances. Contrary to previous works on other championships, best teams in competition or most profitable clubs are not the most efficient units in our sample. High average scores show that French First League is efficient. The first source of inefficiency in the Ligue 1 is linked to size problems and over-investments. Despite an average club performance stable over the period, we exhibit a deterioration of conditions in which clubs operate.
    Keywords: Ligue 1; efficiency scores; Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Malmquist index; over-investment
    JEL: L21 L83
    Date: 2009–06–23
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:19828&r=spo
  3. By: Alex Bryson; Bernd Frick; Rob Simmons
    Abstract: We investigate the salary returns to the ability to play football with both feet. The majority offootballers are predominantly right footed. Using two data sets, a cross-section of footballersin the five main European leagues and a panel of players in the German Bundesliga, we findrobust evidence of a substantial salary premium for two-footed ability, even after controllingfor available player performance measures. We assess how this premium varies across thesalary distribution and by player position.
    Keywords: salary, two-footedness, premium
    JEL: L83
    Date: 2009–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0948&r=spo
  4. By: Davy Paindaveine; Yvik Swan
    Abstract: We consider two-person sports where each rally is initiated by a server, the other player (the receiver) becoming the server when he/she wins a rally. Historically, these sports used a scoring based on the side-out scoring system, in which points are only scored by the server. Recently, however, some federations have switched to the rally-point scoring system in which a point is scored on every rally. As various authors before us, we study how much this change affects the game. Our approach is based on a rally-level analysis of the process through which, besides the well-known probability distribution of the scores, we also obtain the distribution of the number of rallies. This yields a comprehensive knowledge of the process at hand, and allows for an in-depth comparison of both scoring systems. In particular, our results help to explain why the transition from one scoring system to the other has more important implications than those predicted from game-winning probabilities alone. Some of our findings are quite surprising, and unattainable through Monte Carlo experiments. Our results are of high practical relevance to international federations and local tournament organizers alike, and also open the way to efficient estimation of the rally-winning probabilities, which should have a significant impact on the quality of ranking procedures.
    Keywords: Combinatorial derivations; duration analysis; point estimation; ranking procedures; scoring rules; two-person sports.
    Date: 2009
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2009_025&r=spo

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