Articles in this issue:

• The Effect of Foreign Players on Pay and Performance in Major League Soccer

  Simon Medcalfe and Rebecca Smith

  Over the last ten years, Major League Soccer (MLS) has attracted many overseas players. This study examines the role country of birth plays in salary determination, team performance on the pitch, and fan attendance in Major League Soccer for the 2007 through 2014 seasons. Players born in the U.S. earn less than equally productive foreign-born players. However, there is much heterogeneity amongst these foreign-born players. Players born in France, Gambia, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, and Costa Rica earn salary premiums relative to their productivity. Players born in Trinidad and Tobago earn...Read more

• Information Precision in Online Communities: Player Valuations on www.Transfermarkt.De

  Franziska Prockl and Bernd Frick

  The benefits of crowd wisdom/swarm intelligence in the form of superior decision-making and problem-solving skills have recently been analyzed and discussed by researchers from various fields. The goal of this paper is to identify the relevance of crowd wisdom for professional team sports leagues by analyzing, first, the emergence of crowd wisdom on a particular online platform (www.transfermarkt.de) and, second, by documenting the precision of the collectively gathered information. The authors evaluate the emergence and diffusion of information on...Read more

• Family Connections in Motorsports: The Case of Formula One

  Craig A. Depken

  II

  Peter A. Groothuis

  & Kurt W. Rotthoff

  Within-family career following is common in many occupations, including law, politics, business, agriculture, medicine, entertainment, and professional sports. For children who enter the same career as their parents there are several potential benefits: physical-capital transfer, human-capital transfer, brand-name-loyalty transfer, or nepotism. In Formula One (F1) auto racing, career following is also common; many drivers follow their father or brother into racing. Using a panel describing F1 drivers from 1950–2017, we find that brothers of drivers appear to benefit from human capital...Read more

• Home-Team Response to the Three-Point Victory Rule: New Evidence Using Double and Triple Differences

  Carlos Varela-Quintana

  Julio del Corral

  and Juan Prieto-Rodriguez

  Recent findings in sports economics have provided both theoretical and empirical support for the hypothesis that the three-point victory rule leads home teams to choose a more defensive playing style. The main aim of this paper is to test this hypothesis by analyzing line-ups, as well as yellow and red cards. To do so, we used a difference-in-differences approach in which the Italian and French leagues were the treatment group, and the German and Spanish leagues were the control group. In addition, we used a triple-difference model to analyze whether home teams responded differently from...Read more

• NCAA College Basketball Television Viewership: Does Preference for Outcome Uncertainty Change Throughout the Season?

  Byungju Kang

  Steven Salaga

  Scott Tainsky

  Matthew Juravich

  This paper estimates the relationship between outcome uncertainty and television viewership in NCAA Division I men’s college basketball. The results demonstrate mixed support for the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. Viewers prefer contests anticipated to be more certain, but also respond favorably to contests which have higher levels of within-game outcome uncertainty. The results also indicate that these preferences are not static across the season calendar. During postseason play, the preference for anticipated contest certainty is reduced, while the preference for within-game...Read more