Articles in this issue:

  • Gentry Julian and Joshua A. Price

    The National Basketball Association (NBA) changed the official game ball from leather to synthetic to start the 2006–07 season. The NBA argued that the synthetic ball was superior to the leather ball and would be beneficial to player performance. The Nation-al Basketball Association Players Association (NBAPA) argued that performance de-creased as a result of the ball change and filed an unfair practice labor grievance against the league. As a result, the league reverted back to using a leather ball in the middle of the season (after January 1). We test the claims of the NBA and the NBPA...Read more

  • Oliver Budzinski and Tim Pawlowski

    Despite the prominence and relevance of the uncertainty-of-outcome hypothesis (UOH) for professional sports worldwide, decades of empirical research have not been successful in establishing clear evidence for the importance of outcome uncertainty for stadium attendance and TV audience. In this regard, some recent papers were developed drawing upon a body of behavioral economic thoughts that might help to better understand the divergence between the UOH, competitive balance, and consumer choices. Since this literature has so far focused on different facets of behavioral economics, it is the...Read more

  • Leví Pérez
    Víctor Puente
    and Plácido Rodríguez

    The uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is revisited in this paper in the context of a more general demand analysis of free-to-air soccer games broadcast in Spain. Apart from analyzing some expected determinants of television viewers’ aggregate behavior, such as the quality of the game and the type of match broadcast, and other seasonal effects, an alternative approach based on bettor predictions of the possible outcome of a particular match is used to test this hypothesis. The empirical findings show that expected uncertainty of outcome may either have no effect on (soccer) TV audiences or...Read more

  • Vincent Hogan and Patrick Massey

    This paper analyzes teams’ responses to rule changes designed to encourage more entertaining play in Rugby Union’s Six Nations Championship using a data set of all scores in the competition since its inception in 1883. We find that increasing the value of scoring a try leads to more tries per match, and that this effect increases over time. We also find evidence that teams may be prepared to concede penalties, which are worth fewer points in order to prevent more costly tries. The switch to a winner-take-all format in 1994 and the introduction of professionalism in 1995 also led to more...Read more

  • Marc Rohde and Christoph Breuer

    Europe’s professional football clubs engage in intraseasonal races to win the league, qualify for Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) competitions, and avoid relegation. In these competitions, playing talent is a scarce good as players invest effort in the form of fitness and the risk of injuries. Thus, managers face incentives to adjust effort levels by means of changing the value of starting squads. This paper analyzes whether managers save efforts in the absence of financial incentives or ahead of more important games. The theoretical model extends previous papers from the...Read more