This paper gives a first economic approach to pro cycling and analyses the changes induced by the newly introduced UCI Pro Tour on the racing teams? behaviour. We develop an oligopolistic model starting from the well known Bertrand and Cournot frameworks to analyse if the actual setting of the...

This paper provides an empirical analysis on the effectiveness of incentives when pay-offs were changed. Using data on Portuguese first division football matches the effects of the introduction of the so called three-point rule are analyzed applying panel count data techniques.

Despite still being younger than a decade, the theory of multisided market has offered numerous valuable insights for the analysis of non-ordinary industries in which a supplier serves two distinct customer groups that are indirectly interrelated by externalities. Examples include payment...

Despite still being younger than a decade, the theory of multisided market has offered numerous valuable insights for the analysis of industries in which a supplier serves two distinct customer groups that are indirectly interrelated by externalities. Examples include payment systems, matching...

Motivated by increasing supporter involvement in club governance in English football, the paper presents a simple model of a sports league in which club objectives are utility functions defined over profits, win percentages and fan (=supporter) welfare, formalising a seminal suggestion of Sloane...

In this paper an analysis of the determinants of attractiveness of the Formula One is attempted. Therefore the concept of competitive balance will be explained and applied. The principal item of this analysis will be the result that there is an optimal level of competitive balance which...

The competition rules and policy framework of the European Union represents an important institutional restriction for doing sports business. Driven by the courts, the 2007 overhaul of the approach and methodology has increased the scope of competition policy towards sports associations and...

This paper investigates firm survival in professional football, arguing that the relegation and promotion system in football leagues is very similar to firm exits and entries in traditional goods and service markets. Empirically, we use a dataset containing information on how long football teams...

The economic literature on professional sports leagues suggests supporters' utility depends on uncertainty of outcome (competitive balance) and the quality of play. Unlike soccer, where the Champions League is dominated by teams from larger countries, our analysis indicates that the ERC exhibits...

The paper analyses the impact of the relatively belated move to professionalism in Rugby Union. We use data on match attendance for 3,667 fixtures in European club Rugby over 15 seasons to estimate the effect of competitive balance on attendance. We find that (short- and medium-term) competitive...