Articles in this issue:

• What Drives the Value of Stadium Naming Rights? A Hedonic-Pricing Approach to the Valuation of Sporting Intangible Assets pp. 10-24

  Bill Gerrard

  Milena M. Parent

  Trevor Slack

  This study adopts a multi-attribute hedonic-pricing benchmark valuation approach to the determination of the observed market value of stadium naming rights. Using a sample of 112 naming rights deals covering both major-league and non-major-league facilities in North America over the period of 1979-2002, a hedonic-pricing model is estimated using regression analysis. It is found that the value of stadium naming rights is highly systematic and information-efficient. Naming rights value is principally related to variables reflecting the size of potential target audiences including the...Read more

• Pay and Performance in Professional Road Racing: The Case of City Marathons pp. 25-35

  Bernd Frick

  Joachim Prinz

  In a world of asymmetric information and non-trivial monitoring costs, the design and implementation of a compensation and reward system that maximizes the individual athlete’s performance is one of the critical variables affecting the reputation of a specific sports event. Assuming that the relationship between a race organizer and a professional runner can be characterized as a principal agent-relationship, we use detailed data from 57 city marathons to test various hypotheses derived from tournament theory. Controlling for a large number of other possible determinants of race quality,...Read more

• Stadium Alcohol Availability and Baseball Attendance: Evidence from a Natural Experiment pp. 36-44

  Andrew Chupp

  E. Frank Stephenson

  Ron Taylor

  Although conventional wisdom holds that alcohol availability increases baseball attendance, little evidence exists on the complementarity between attendance and alcohol availability. To address this gap in the literature, we examine the effect of Rome, Georgia’s November 2004 legalization of Sunday alcohol sales on a minor league baseball team’s attendance. OLS and Tobit estimates of an attendance model find no statistically significant effect of alcohol availability on attendance. In addition to analyzing the relationship between attendance and alcohol availability, we also perform back-...Read more

• Treatment of Travel Expenses by Golf Course Patrons: Sunk or Bundled Costs and the First and Third Laws of Demand pp. 45-53

  Matthew T. Brown

  Daniel A. Rascher

  Chad D. McEvoy

  Mark S. Nagel

  To attract golf patrons, sport managers must understand consumption patterns of the golfer. Importantly, the treatment of travel costs must be understood. According to the Alchian-Allen (1964) theorem, golfers treat travel costs as bundled costs (third law of economic demand) whereas classical consumer theory indicates that golfers treat travel costs as sunk costs (first law of economic demand). The purpose of this study was to determine if golf patrons treated travel costs as sunk costs or if they treated travel costs as a bundled cost. Data from a survey of course patrons in Ohio support...Read more