The link between team payroll and competitive balance plays a central role in the theory of team sports but is seldom investigated empirically. This paper uses data on team payrolls in Major League Baseball between 1980 and 2000 to examine the link and implements Granger causality tests to...

In a recent comment, Fort and Winfree claimed to clear up some confusion about the implications of contest theory and the game theoretic approach to modeling contests, following the earlier work of Szymanski and Kesenne. Among other things they claimed to show that the invariance principle can...

Szymanski (2004) explained that at a noncooperative Nash equilibrium for talent choice in a team sports league, revenue sharing will lead to a less-balanced distribution of talent (assuming teams have asymmetric revenue-generating potential). This proposition contradicts the well-known...

Financial distress is not an uncommon occurrence in English football. The number of clubs falling into financial difficulties has escalated, yet this coincides with an era when the revenues accrued to English football have reached unprecedented levels. This article examines the finances of the...

Football hooliganism, defined as episodes of crowd trouble inside and outside football stadiums on match days, is commonly perceived to have adverse effects on the sport. We are especially interested in the effects of football-related fan violence on a club’s potential for generating...