Georgios Nalbantis and Paul Kühne

Despite the growing popularity of over-the-top (OTT) services and their advantages for non-mainstream sports, empirical research on the demand for OTT sports content remains limited. Our study addresses this gap, offering detailed insights into substitution effects and nuanced viewer preferences, with a focus on the German volleyball market. Econometric models reveal that, even with the rise of OTT services, fans still prefer watching games on traditional TV platforms when given the choice. The study uncovers intriguing dynamics in volleyball viewership, indicating that OTT viewers of...Read more

Alexander Dilger and Lars Vischer

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive restrictions and changes in many different areas of life, including professional sports. In football, many games were cancelled and then, with the unchanged maximum of three time-outs, five substitutions were allowed instead of three—initially temporarily, now permanently. We analyze the impact of this rule change on coaches’ substitution decisions, comparing 836 games with three possible substitutions and 1,000 games with five possible substitutions in the six seasons from 2017/2018 to 2022/2023 of the Bundesliga (first division of German men’s...Read more

Harry Arne Solberg
Ingar Mehus

This article, which is based on an empirical survey of Norwegian football fans, illustrates that frequent viewership of football on TV can make it difficult to maintain attendance levels at the stadium. Fans of clubs that were featured the most often on free-to-air TV channels attended fewer matches than others. Hence, regulations on televised football might be necessary to maintain attendance levels. Fans that had strong preferences for foreign football attended less frequently. This represents a challenge for football clubs in smaller nations, such as Norway, for example, since they are...Read more