nep-spo New Economics Papers
on Sports and Economics
Issue of 2021‒09‒13
five papers chosen by
Humberto Barreto
DePauw University

  1. On the axiomatic approach to sharing the revenues from broadcasting sports leagues By Gustavo Bergantiños; Juan D. Moreno-Ternero
  2. The impact of social pressure of differing audience size on referees and team performances from a North American perspective By Szabó, Dávid Zoltán
  3. Who benefits from support? The heterogeneous effects of supporters on athletes’ performance by skin color By Fabrizio Colella
  4. Submission Fees in Risk-Taking Contests By Mark Whitmeyer
  5. Can simple advice eliminate the gender gap in willingness to compete? By Kessel, Dany; Mollerstrom, Johanna; van Veldhuizen, Roel

  1. By: Gustavo Bergantiños (ECOSOT, Universidade de Vigo); Juan D. Moreno-Ternero (Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide;)
    Abstract: We take the axiomatic approach to uncover the structure of the revenue-sharing problem from broadcasting sports leagues. We formalize two notions of impartiality, depending on the stance one takes with respect to the revenue generated in the games involving each pair of teams. We show that the resulting two axioms lead towards two broad categories of rules, when combined with additivity and some other basic axioms. We complement those results strengthening the impartiality notions to consider axioms of order preservation.
    Keywords: resource allocation, broadcasting, sport leagues, axioms, impartiality
    JEL: D63 C71 Z20
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wpaper:21.14&r=
  2. By: Szabó, Dávid Zoltán
    Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic provides a natural experiment to comprehensively test the effect of crowds on both referees and players. Our aim is to examine this from a North-American perspective using data from three major leagues: National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL). In all three leagues in the 2020-2021 season, matches were played either under empty or partially loaded stadiums. We find that the audience size for NBA substantially affects referee decisions by increasingly favouring the home team as crowd size grows. No such effect is observed for NHL or NFL. Nonetheless, with increasing crowd size not only for NBA but also for NHL the home team’s performance gets significantly better. Regarding NFL, we have not found evidence that crowd size influences either referee decisions or home team’s performance. We verify that these findings also hold for the pre-COVID-19 pandemic period, when games were normally organized and crowd size only innately varied without any imposed restrictions. These results suggest that the effect of social pressure on the agents’ behaviour is activity specific, no general rules apply. Besides, we claim that out of these three leagues NBA is the most biased in terms of referee decisions.
    Keywords: Home Advantage, Social pressure, North American sport leagues, Attendance, Referee bias
    JEL: Z20
    Date: 2021–08–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cvh:coecwp:2021/04&r=
  3. By: Fabrizio Colella
    Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of supporters on the performance of soccer players by skin color using objective player performance data and an automated skin color recognition algorithm. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, one third of the games of the highest Italian soccer league 2019/2020 season were played in closed stadiums. I identify a significant increase in the performance of non-white players, relative to white players, when supporters are banned from the stadium. The effect does not differ between home and away games, and players playing in top versus minor teams, while weaker players are impacted more than others.
    Keywords: Performance, Racial Discrimination, Support
    JEL: J15 J71 Z22
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lau:crdeep:21.12&r=
  4. By: Mark Whitmeyer
    Abstract: This paper investigates stochastic continuous time contests with a twist: the designer requires that contest participants incur some cost to submit their entries. When the designer wishes to maximize the (expected) performance of the top performer, a strictly positive submission fee is optimal. When the designer wishes to maximize total (expected) performance, either the highest submission fee or the lowest submission fee is optimal.
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2108.13506&r=
  5. By: Kessel, Dany; Mollerstrom, Johanna; van Veldhuizen, Roel
    Abstract: As a recent literature has demonstrated, men and women differ in their willingness to sort into competitive environments. In particular, men are more willing than women to compete. We investigate whether it is possible to reduce the gender gap in willingness to compete through an information intervention that informs participants of the gap and advises them about the potential earnings implications. We find that this simple information intervention reduced the gender gap, both in a laboratory study at a German university and in a field study with Swedish high school students. Whereas some participants (primarily high performing women) benefited from the intervention, others lost out. We discuss the implications for efficiency and policy.
    Keywords: Gender Differences,Competitiveness,Advice,Experiment
    JEL: C91 D91 J16
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2021202&r=

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