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Since the appearance of Simon Rottenberg's seminal paper on the baseball players' labour market in the Journal of Political Economy (1956), the literature on the economics of professional team sports has increased rapidly, fuelled by major changes in the restrictive rules which had pervaded these sports, themselves a consequence of battles in the courts and the collective bargaining arena. These changes have not been limited to North America, to which most of the literature relates, but also apply to Western Europe and Australia in particular. This monograph surveys this literature covering those various parts of the world in order to draw out both theoretical and empirical aspects. However, to argue that the existence of what is now an extensive literature “justifies” such a survey on professional team sports clearly begs a number of questions. Justification can be found in at least two major aspects.

This work aims to analyse money prizes awarded in European football club competitions organised by UEFA and the impact of these prizes on club performance in National Leagues. In pursuing this objective, the authors discuss the overall effect on the competitiveness of national leagues. The ultimate goal is to provide valuable insights and useful indications relating to the future of National and European Professional Football Competitions, a topic of increasingly heated debate. The authors specifically address the possible creation of a European Super League.

In order to test the specific impact of UEFA money prizes on clubs' national performance, the authors applied two multiple regression models, with a sample of clubs participating in four out of the big five National Leagues in European Football over the period 2013–2108. The authors used a series of economic variables as control variables, in keeping with previous studies on similar topics as presented in the literature review.

The results of the analyses show that money prizes have a significant and specific impact on European club competitions organised by UEFA in terms of improving national sport performances for clubs participating in said competitions. More in detail, the authors found this degree of impact not only in the season when this money was awarded but also in the following season.

The originality of the paper lies in the empirical demonstration of the role of European competitions (via UEFA money prizes impacting clubs' national performances) in consolidating a general downward trend in competitive balance in the most important European Leagues.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate female National Football League (NFL) spectators’ preferences and feedback in regard to various customer service components of the NFL game day experience. The primary components with respect to female spectators’ choices, preferences, and feedback are as follows: apparel and other merchandise; food and beverage; restrooms and facility cleanliness; tailgating and parking; participants’ decision to attend an NFL game; and participants’ perceptions of the NFL. A core objective was to learn more about the female decision-making process and overall experience at NFL games.

All data were collected during the 2012-2013 NFL regular season. Four different data collections were conducted at two NFL stadiums to investigate the game day experiences of women at NFL games. Previous research was used as a basis for creating survey questions about the female game day experience. In this study, an open-ended questionnaire contained both quantitative and qualitative questions, both forms of data were collected and analyzed, and researchers made both quantitative and qualitative interpretations based on the data.

Findings and results indicated women are diverse customers. Sport organizations need to focus on the minor details that reflect how individuals experience a brand and product, as these sport organizations have the opportunity to enhance the female customer experience and retain existing female customers if the organizations systemically listen to and communicate with the female customer at NFL games. The NFL and individual NFL teams should include female spectators in the brand strategy process. Female customers of the NFL can be powerful brand loyalists and outstanding brand ambassadors.

This research study provides an investigation of the preferences and perceptions of women spectators at NFL games. One contribution of the current study is that researchers have accepted the challenge by some researchers calling for more complexity with researching gender and attempting to shift some of the ways in which women are viewed as fans and spectators. However, what is key with the approach in the current study is that researchers allowed the women to be heard with respect to their game day experiences, perceptions, and thoughts about their identity as a spectator.

The Egyptian Premier League (EPL) holds a prominent place in Egypt’s sporting culture and serves as the stage for some of Africa’s most competitive soccer clubs. However, the actual competitive balance in this league has come under scrutiny in recent years as the two historically dominant Cairo clubs, Ahly and Zamalek, continue to retain the EPL championship. A major concern is that the competitive imbalance of the EPL may actually be hampering the league’s progress and the progress of soccer in Egypt. In order to more closely assess this situation, the purpose of this paper is to use historical EPL performance data to conduct a series of competitive balance analyses on league results from 1948 to 2014. The findings revealed that competition in the league is almost nonexistent as Ahly and Zamalek continue to enjoy a number of direct and indirect financial benefits that are unrealized by their competitors. The dominance of these clubs has compromised the elements of match uncertainty and drama that are traditionally viewed as being important to the prestige and financial achievements of leagues and teams. Discussion is therefore offered for how the EPL could go about resolving some of its organizational and competitive balance issues.

This study adopted four basic measures of competitive balance to conduct descriptive analyses on EPL data that were collected from egyptianfootball.net and the Rec Sport Soccer Statistics Foundation. These analyses began with the EPL’s inaugural season (1948-1949) and extended to the conclusion of the 2014-2015 season. During this timeframe, seven seasons were canceled due to global and political tensions and four more went unfinished. Because these seasons were excluded, the total sample size consisted of 56 seasons, each of which contained between 10 and 24 EPL teams. The data were analyzed using variations of the following competitive balance measures: the range and standard deviation of winning percentages, the ratio of the standard deviation/Noll-Scully approach, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, and five-club concentration ratio.

The results confirmed that the league is largely imbalanced, leading the authors to recommend systemic and structural changes that could help promote competitive balance in the league. The call for competitive balance in the EPL was bolstered by a literature review of studies that advocated for parity in professional sports leagues. In the end, the researchers recommend the EPL to improve its organizational policies and consider a revised revenue-sharing system that would allow the small-market teams to survive and thrive.

The EPL holds a prominent place in Egypt’s sporting culture and serves as the stage for some of Africa’s most competitive soccer clubs. The primary purpose of this study was to perform a series of competitive balance analyses on EPL results from 1948 to 2015 in an effort to better understand the various degrees of competitiveness in the league during this time.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between general market demands and consumption levels of professional sport consumers. This study was accomplished through: (a) validating the theoretical constructs of general market demand variables by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis, (b) examining the predictability of general market demand factors to consumption levels of live and televised sporting events, and (c) investigating the relationships between sociodemographic and general market demand factors. Five hundred and twenty-five residents of a major southern US city were interviewed using a questionnaire that included eight sociodemographic variables, 12 market demand variables under three factors (Game Attractiveness, Economic Consideration, and Marketing Promotion), and 10 professional sporting event consumption variables. The factor structure of the general market demand variables was confirmed. Regression analyses revealed that market demand factors were positively (p < .05) predictive of professional sport consumption. Sociodemographic variables were significantly (p < .05) related to the market demand factors. The findings imply that professional sport teams should highlight the market demand variables and adopt differential marketing procedures for various sociodemographic segments in their marketing practice.

This study examined several factors related to the brand loyalty exhibited by fans of the Chicago Cubs major league baseball team. A total of 371 patrons of a restaurant located in Wrigleyville were surveyed prior to Cubs games at Wrigley Field. Working from a tripartite model of brand loyalty, it was predicted that, compared to less loyal fans, die‐hard (extremely loyal) Cubs fans would demonstrate different attitudes and behaviors regarding the Chicago Cubs. Several hypotheses were developed and tested using descriptive statistics, cross‐tabulations, and ANOVA procedures. Significant differences between the two fan groups were found in the areas of brand loyalty, baseball knowledge, childhood exposure to Cubs’ games, frequency of Cubs’ game attendance, and likelihood of purchasing Cubs paraphernalia. A variety of managerial implications are drawn from the results and future research suggestions are provided.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the efficiency of Greek fixed-odds (offline) betting market as offered by OPAP for the period 2016–2019.

Using a four-year data sample of OPAP's opening and closing odds for football matches from all over the world and applying linear probability and probit models, the market efficiency is examined and the existence of possible anomalies is investigated.

The main findings of research suggest that although the odds are dominated primarily by favorite-longshot bias and secondarily by draw bias, this mispricing cannot prove profitable. However, the opening odds, the margin levels and the market structure provide information that is not fully captured by the closing odds, giving bettors profit opportunities. Thus, findings show that the semi-strong market efficiency is questionable. Finally, competition reduces commissions leading to more efficient odds.

The conclusions of this study are useful for football betting market and, particularly, for government authorities, bookmakers and bettors. Findings can be extended in future research to prediction tasks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about the Greek football betting market. The contribution to the literature lies on the one hand in the examination of a monopolistic land-based betting market, which is being squeezed and threatened by the more competitive online betting market, and on the other hand in the simultaneous examination of the opening and closing odds.

In this invited professional insight paper the author draws parallels between recent debates on racism, Black Lives Matter and related research in sport and cognate domains.

Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) the paper contends that 1) sport is a contested site, 2) sport is a microcosm of society 3) “race” and everyday racism are central to our understanding of sport. It overlays this critique with a recognition of the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of racisms.

While the deaths of Black lives are being mourned it is argued that our attention can also become distracted by narrow manifestations of racism (overt). Such approaches leave key stakeholders efforts focused on the individual to the detriment of challenging systemic policies, practices and dispositions that entrench racism. The color-coded racism of past decades is still with us but in addition to this, our critiques and activism require continued surveillance of cultural, institutional and structural arrangements in the everyday that remain nebulous, complex and difficult to challenge.

This is a viewpoint paper. The author draws on previous original empirical work and current insights to draw parallels between sport, Black Lives Matter and broader social contexts. Due to limitations in the extant literature in regard to the section on cycling and ethnicity, examples are drawn primarily from the US and UK.

This focus on sport and leisure past times demonstrates that the Black experience of “race” and racism transcends social boundaries and cannot be perceived as restricted to narrow social domains.

Racisms are embedded in society and therefore its cultural products of which sport is a significant one should not be marginalised in antiracism efforts and activist scholarship.

This paper draws on the author's original published research and current insights. The paper makes a contribution to the development of critical race theorising to the sociology of sport, and broader ethnic and racial studies.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the optimal decision-making style in a fast-paced, complex, and dynamic environment.

Three decision-making attributes are explored: the use of intuition vs analysis, the proclivity to heuristics, and susceptibility to bias. The intuition/analysis is tested with a questionnaire that has been validated in prior research, while information on the two other dimensions is from an exploratory survey designed for this purpose. Responses to the survey questions provide some insight into the differential decision-making style of elite NHL hockey coaches’ vis-à-vis amateur coaches and news reporters.

The data suggest elite decision makers have no preference for intuitive or analytical settings, but exhibit a significantly higher perception of their ability to perform in both. While current literature shows sports athletes to be more intuitive, it appears coaches excel on the analytical dimension instead. This study finds that while elite hockey coaches have fewer biases overall, they tend in particular to be overly optimistic in comparison to amateur coaches and news reporters.

The main limitation in this paper is that the survey on heuristics and biases is exploratory, making these results less robust than the findings on intuition and analysis.

This paper is first to extend the decision-making literature to coaches, and among few papers that obtain insights from NHL coaches directly. The findings are likely to extend to corporate leadership as well, increasing the relevance of the results.

This study investigated how sources of information across social media platforms influence fantasy users’ sport consumption and enhance their performance expectancy. Specifically, we examined the effects of social media-related motivation on fantasy users’ playing skills, sense of competition and performance expectancy based on the uses and gratifications theory.

Data were collected from 453 fantasy sport users on social media platforms. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis to assess a measurement model and used serial mediation techniques to examine the relationship between social media-related motivation and fantasy sport users’ performance expectancy.

Results showed that social media-related motivation had significant and positive impacts on fantasy users’ playing skills, sense of competition and performance expectancy. Additionally, we found that fantasy users’ playing skills increased their sense of competition and performance expectancy. A sense of competition was found to positively affect fantasy users’ performance expectancy.

This study provided a valuable contribution to the existing body of knowledge on social media by investigating the influence of social media-related motivation on fantasy sport users. The findings reveal that sharing content-based information on social media platforms plays a vital role in attracting and motivating individuals to engage in fantasy sports. The updated information enhances the playing skills of fantasy users, fosters a sense of competition and improves performance in virtual sport.