In recent years, there has been some dispute over the appropriate way to model decision making in professional sports leagues. In particular, Szymanski and Késenne (2004) argue that formulating the decision-making problem in a noncooperative game leads to radically different conclusions about...

This paper critically analyzes the rules of the UEFA financial regulatory system for football clubs known as Financial Fair Play (FFP). I argue that the objectives of FFP are not really fairness but financial efficiency and that the rules are unlikely to achieve efficiency. I also contend that...

Using a contingent valuation survey, this paper provides the first empirical test of the proposition that intangible impacts might justify hosting major sporting events on cost—benefit grounds. Respondents, drawn from London, Manchester and Glasgow, were asked for their willingness to pay...

This paper considers the financial crisis of 2008 and its likely impact on English football, notably the English Premier League. It mostly examines the history of financial instability and sporting stability, in the sense of club survival, that is characteristic of English football and possibly...

In this paper, we discuss from an economic perspective two alternative views of restrictions of competition by sports associations. The horizontal approach views such restrictions as an agreement among the participants of a sports league with the sports association merely representing an...

"Antitrust law distinguishes vertical and horizontal restraints. A horizontal restraint is one which exists between competing firms supplying rival products in a market, and a vertical restraint is one which exists between firms that jointly contribute to supplying a particular product in a...