Articles in this issue:

• Value of Major League Baseball Ownership

  Rodney Fort

  The unwillingness of team owners to share their data prohibits a direct assessment of the value of professional team sports ownership. But insights into that value can be gleaned from actual team sale prices. First, throughout the entire modern history of Major League Baseball (MLB), the average real growth in team sale prices is twice the usual comparison value of 3% for the economy at large. Second, aggregated at the franchise level, the average rate of growth is about 1.6 times the 3% comparison. Third, the real growth rate an owner can expect from time of purchase to time of sale over...Read more

• The Efficiency of the UK Fixed-Odds Betting Market for Euro 2004

  John Goddard

  Stuart Thomas

  An assessment is made of the efficiency of four UK high street bookmakers?betting odds for the 2004 European football (soccer) championships, based on an analysis of match results data from 15 previous international tournaments. Pre-tournament probabilities for the outright winners of Euro 2004 are generated using Monte Carlo simulations. There is no evidence that the bookmakers underestimated the win probability of the pre-tournament outsiders and ultimate winners, Greece. However, the odds quoted for bets on the host nation team, Portugal, appear to understate the importance of home...Read more

• The Auctioning of TV-Sports Rights

  Harry Arne Solberg

  This article examines the effectiveness of auctions as sale procedures of sports rights. Although recent history contains several examples of auctions that have generated substantial revenues to owners of sports rights, staging an auction is no guarantee of success. The amount that bidders are willing to pay is influenced by a number of factors. Television companies or networks do not control all of the factors that influence their income from sports broadcasting. As a result, risk-aversive companies may choose not to submit bids. Sellers should stage open-bid procedures (preferably...Read more

• Developing a Profitability Model for Professional Sport Leagues: The Case of the National Hockey League

  John Nadeau

  Norm O'Reilly

  Escalating costs in professional sport, increased competition from entertainment alternatives, and a recent labor dispute in the National Hockey League (NHL) provide the impetus to study the underlying structure of team profitability. The current study takes advantage of this opportunity by developing and testing a profitability model for NHL teams based on the underlying premise that there are multiple determinants to franchise profitability. An extensive data set of more than 40 variables was extracted from the 2001-02, 2002-03, and 2003-04 NHL seasons to explore the complex nature of...Read more