Articles in this issue:

  • Kevin Alavy
    Alison Gaskell
    Stephanie Leach
    Stefan Szymanski

    This paper examines the relationship between the demand for English football on television and outcome uncertainty. It tests the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis by using minute-by-minute television viewership figures which avoids the problems encountered when estimating demand using match attendance. We find that although uncertainty matters, it is the progression of the match which drives viewership and as a draw looks increasingly likely, viewers are likely to switch channels. Games that end in victories have a higher average viewership than games that end in stalemates.Read more

  • Stacy L. Brook
    Sarah Foster

    Due to significant salary differences between male and female employees, NCAA institutions have been accused of gender compensation discrimination. However, we hypothesize that some of these compensation differences may be a result of market forces as opposed to overt discrimination. To test this hypothesis, we created a statistical model incorporating variables affecting NCAA school revenues and coaching performance, and use a linear regression to estimate the statistical impact each variable has on compensation. Our empirical findings do not find employer discrimination of NCAA...Read more

  • Wladimir Andreff

    A first European Conference in Sports Economics (ECSE) had been convened at the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne of the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, September 14-15, 2009. Out of about 60 submitted papers, 32 had been selected and sampled into eight topics and sessions: the economics of professional team sports leagues; economic dimensions of sport participation; sport financing and governance; professional sports and markets; the economic impact of sport mega-events; labor market in professional sports; sport efficiency; and regulation and competitive balance in professional...Read more

  • Egon Franck

    Based on the analysis of the specific environment in which football clubs compete, this paper presents a comparative institutional analysis of three paradigmatic structures of football club governance: privately owned football firms, public football corporations (stock corporations with dispersed ownership) and members’ associations with an own legal personality (Verein). Against the background that “spending power” is the main driver of competitive advantage for clubs in the overinvestment environment of European football, the governance structure of the privately owned football firm...Read more

  • Rodney J. Paul
    Andrew P. Weinbach

    The National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) are studied to ascertain the determinants of betting volume on an individual game-to-game basis. Actual betting volume was obtained and aggregated across three on-line sportsbooks for the 2008-09 season. Independent variables such as the quality of teams, television coverage by network, day of the week, time of day, month of the season, etc. are included in a regression model to determine the factors that influence betting volume. The results reveal betting behavior is much like fan behavior as key fan-attributes,...Read more

  • Eric Barget
    Jean-Jacques Gougout

    An economic impact assessment alone cannot justify public support for hosting mega-sporting events. A cost-benefit analysis in order to measure the net social utility for the population is also relevant. Nevertheless, if there is always a high demand of economic impact studies by public authorities before hosting an event, the cost-benefit studies are never made, so there is a high risk to make decisions that are not rational. In this paper, to take into account simultaneously the economic impact and the social utility of mega-sporting events, we propose a legitimacy test we illustrate...Read more