This special sssue contains five papers from the 7th European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) Conference on Sports Economics. This conference was hosted by the Center for Research in Sports Administration (CRSA; http://www.crsa.uzh.ch) August 27–28, 2015, at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. On the day prior to the conference, the CRSA organized a PhD course in sport economics. Paul Madden (University of Manchester) held an introductory lecture on theoretical sport economics before Brad Humphreys (West Virginia University) explained various methods for dealing with zeros in empirical data. The former and the current editors of this journal, Rob Simmons (Lancaster University) and Arne Feddersen (University of Southern Denmark), led a roundtable discussion on effective publishing strategies in sport economics. The PhD course was very successful with more than 25 graduate students participating.