The paper analyses UK data, collected from the Family Expenditure Survey, for over 6000 households. The focus is on participation in, and level of expenditure on, the national lotto game. Controlling for standard demographic, socio-economic and income variables, and some non-standard lifestyle...

Manipulation of on-field events for betting gain appears to be a growing problem in football and other sports. It can be linked to developments in the betting environment and is a potential threat to the football industry to the extent that it may deter fans, sponsors, and broadcasters from...

Much of the high taxation on UK national lottery products is hypothecated to 'Good Causes' distribution funds which make grants for projects in fields such as sport, the arts and heritage. We examine the distribution of grants across 376 local authority areas in England and Wales. The proportion...

This articles uses an attendance demand model with panel data on more than 4,000 games to examine economic problems of fixture congestion in English Football League schedules. We find that televised, midweek Champions League matches involving English Premier League clubs have substantial adverse...

Many small town professional clubs operate on the border of viability and threats to their survival are often real. But their activities may generate benefits that they are unable to capture in ticket sales; for example they provide a focus of interest even for some residents who do not attend...

This article seeks to establish the extent of displacement effects across gaming products. This is a particularly difficult question to address with precision. To date, many studies have looked at policy changes such as the introduction of a new product into the market to assess the severity of...

The paper investigates potential bias in awards of player disciplinary sanctions, in the form of cautions (yellow cards) and dismissals (red cards) by referees in the English Premier League and the German "Bundesliga". Previous studies of behaviour of soccer referees have not adequately...

"We apply a novel daily time series data set of daily turnover from one of Britain's leading bookmakers to analyze potential substitution between lottery play and bookmaker betting. We find some evidence that bettors do substitute away from horse race, soccer and numbers betting when the...

The paper reports the results of an exercise to forecast national team medal totals at the Beijing Olympic Games, 2008. Forecasts were released to the media before the competitions commenced. The starting point was an established statistical model based on a regression analysis of medal totals...