Professional sports leagues have witnessed the appearance of so-called "sugar daddies" - people who invest enormous amounts of money into clubs and become their owners. This paper presents a contest model of a professional sports league that incorporates this phenomenon. We analyze how the...

In the recent years, many clubs in the biggest European soccer leagues have run into debts. The sports economic literature provides several explanation for this development, e.g., the league structure (open versus closed league), club constitutions, ruinous rat races between clubs. While the...

In this paper, we discuss a manager's allocation problem. Two managers allocate their heterogeneous employees - each manager allocates two high types and two low types - in groups of two in order to compete for an exogenous contest prize in a two period model. There are three possibilities of...

This paper presents a two-period model of talent investments where two clubs compete with respect to a contest prize. We show that two qualitatively different types of equilibria are possible using a closed-loop approach with strictly convex costs: The large market club invests in both periods...

This paper presents a dynamic model of talent investments in a team sports league with an infinite time horizon. We show that the clubs' investment decisions and the effects of revenue sharing on competitive balance depend on the following three factors: (i) the cost function of talent...

The UEFA Champions League is an annual Pan-European football competition that takes place parallel to the domestic league competitions. The participation in the Champions League secures the teams large payments, which have steadily increased over the last decade. This paper develops a general...

This paper presents a two-period model of talent investments in which two clubs compete for a contest prize. We show that multiple equilibria are possible, using a closed-loop approach with strictly convex costs: The large-market club invests in both periods more than the small-market club or...

Abstract: In the recent years, many clubs in the biggest European soccer leagues have run into debts. The sports economic literature provides several explanation for this development, e.g., the league structure (open versus closed league), club constitutions, ruinous rat races between clubs....

Professional sports leagues have witnessed the appearance of sugar daddies - people who invest enormous amounts of money in clubs and become their owners. This paper presents a contest model of a professional sports league that incorporates this phenomenon. We analyze how the appearance of a...

This paper outlines how the theory of contests is applied to professional team sports leagues. In the first part, we present the traditional Tullock contest and explain some basic properties of the equilibrium. We will then extend this static contest to a two-period model in order to analyze...