The Economics of Sports Programming

This study examines the relationship between a university's football heritage and its freshman retention and graduation rates. Our findings of a positive and significant relationship between a university's football success and both of these educational measures supports the hypothesis that athletics serve the institution's academic mission and provides students with a respite from the psychic costs associated with college life.

In this paper, we present and analyze a mathematical programming approach to expansion draft optimization in the context of the 2017 NHL expansion draft involving the Vegas Golden Knights, noting that this approach can be generalized to future NHL expansions and to those in other sports leagues. In particular, we present a novel mathematical optimization approach, consisting of two models, to optimize expansion draft protection and selection decisions made by the various teams. We use this approach to investigate a number of expansion draft scenarios, including the impact of "collaboration" between existing teams, the trade-off between team performance and salary cap flexibility, as well as opportunities for Vegas to take advantage of side agreements in a "leverage" experiment. Finally, we compare the output of our approach to what actually happened in the expansion draft, noting both similarities and discrepancies between our solutions and the actual outcomes. Overall, we believe our framework serves as a promising foundation for future expansion draft research and decision-making in hockey and in other sports.

Military sales again soared during the Korean War, and the company moved into liquid oxygen and hydrogen tonnage sales for rocket propulsion. In the late 1950s, the company enjoyed boom markets at home and grew rapidly via acquisition and joint venture in foreign markets. Domestically, Air Products abandoned its leasing concept and shifted its emphasis from equipment to gas sales, selling in bulk from on-site plants or distributing gases by tank truck or cylinder. Seeking new investment opportunities, the company moved into chemicals and eventually achieved some success in emulsion polymers, amines, and polyurethane intermediates. But diversification in the late 1960s and 1970s also wrought costly dead ends in agricultural chemicals, medical products, material sciences, molded plastics, and PVCs. This company's history parallels many broader developments in the postwar chemical industry-robust foreign expansion and the transfer of critical technical expertise from Europe; the key role of government contracting; unsuccessful experimentation with matrix management and unrelated diversification; the constraints and opportunities of environmentalism-but readers will need to make such connections themselves. Andrew Butrica deems Leonard Pool an "opportunist" and a "visionary," but he is much closer to the mark with the former (p. 80). Although Air Products and Chemicals is still a minor player in chemicals, it is now the world's fourth largest producer of industrial gases, with sales of nearly $3 billion. For most of its history, Air Products scurried at the heels of giants, joining their ranks only by judging and juggling its opportunities nimbly.

Military sales again soared during the Korean War, and the company moved into liquid oxygen and hydrogen tonnage sales for rocket propulsion. In the late 1950s, the company enjoyed boom markets at home and grew rapidly via acquisition and joint venture in foreign markets. Domestically, Air Products abandoned its leasing concept and shifted its emphasis from equipment to gas sales, selling in bulk from on-site plants or distributing gases by tank truck or cylinder. Seeking new investment opportunities, the company moved into chemicals and eventually achieved some success in emulsion polymers, amines, and polyurethane intermediates. But diversification in the late 1960s and 1970s also wrought costly dead ends in agricultural chemicals, medical products, material sciences, molded plastics, and PVCs. This company's history parallels many broader developments in the postwar chemical industry-robust foreign expansion and the transfer of critical technical expertise from Europe; the key role of government contracting; unsuccessful experimentation with matrix management and unrelated diversification; the constraints and opportunities of environmentalism-but readers will need to make such connections themselves. Andrew Butrica deems Leonard Pool an "opportunist" and a "visionary," but he is much closer to the mark with the former (p. 80). Although Air Products and Chemicals is still a minor player in chemicals, it is now the world's fourth largest producer of industrial gases, with sales of nearly $3 billion. For most of its history, Air Products scurried at the heels of giants, joining their ranks only by judging and juggling its opportunities nimbly.

The purpose of this paper is to test several competing hypotheses of the causes of improving competitive balance in major league baseball. Various researchers have previously attributed this improvement in competitive balance to the introduction of free agency, a narrowing of team market sizes, and a compression of baseball talent. Two models of competitive balance are presented and estimated in this paper, with results varying depending on the measure of competitive balance employed. If the degree of competitive balance is measured by the distribution of team winning percentages within a single season, none of the competing hypotheses is supported. If competitive balance is measured by the correlation of team winning percentages across seasons, however, all three of the competing hypotheses are supported.

In mid 2000s the tv rights income reaches a 873 million euro for the 2005-06 season, with the Serie A tv rights annual income to gradually increase from a 844 million euro for the 2009-10 season to an amazing approximate 1,4 billion euro for the 2018-21 season. All these years Lega Calcio experimented a lot in the designing and application of a tv rights selling mechanism and its accompanied tv rights income distribution model. The Greek Superleague followed similar paths with Lega Calcio, when for many years in early 2000s clubs could exploit their tv rights by themselves. Even later, in late 200s and after the establishment of SL and with the collective selling mechanism in use, this mechanism didn’t include all participating clubs. The study aims to show how could Greek Superleague higher management staff learn from the Serie A tv rights deal history and follow the league’s recent tv rights optimal collective selling practices.

The paper presents the implementations of Janos Kornai’s theory about Soft Budget Constraint (SBC) through the example of the special and popular topic of professional football. It shows the theory of Soft Budget and its application in professional sport. It illustrates the market and bureaucratic co-ordinating mechanisms and explains the specialities of the state and the market model of professional football through the transition of Central and Eastern European countries. The aim of the paper is to highlight the main differences of the operation of Western and Eastern European football and to present the application of the SBC theory in the two region. The research summarizes the main specialities of professional sport and football, the markets of professional football, the double objective and possible strategies of sport companies and return on investment in players. Professional football’s specialities in the post-socialist countries and current business results of CEE football...

Since the first initial public offering of a European football (soccer) club in 1983, more than forty other clubs have experienced a venture in the stock market. In this paper, it is investigated how much relevant and successful these experiences of listing and floating football clubs at the stock exchange have been. First, by showing that investing in the Dow Jones StoXX Football index is of little attractiveness in the perspective of an investor's efficient overall asset allocation. Then in examining the determinants of a football club's fair value and the relationship between stock performances and sporting results. Finally, an approach (alternative to the Anglo-American model of capitalism) of corporate governance, based on the concept of a soft budget constraint, is applied to European football clubs taking stake of their lasting financial deficits and debts. This alternative theoretical approach paves the way for an empirical testing of a vicious circle between negotiating higher TV rights revenues and player wage inflation.

The purpose of this study was to examine the classification of non-governmental sports organisations (sports NGOs) based on their financial data. Empirical taxonomy with Ward’s hierarchical clustering technique based on the variables acquired from financial statements of all 6,130 sports NGOs in Slovenia was used to cluster organisations into three financial design types: grassroots sports organisations, semi-professional sports NGOs, and professional sports NGOs. Clusters varied in magnitude and structure of financial items. The findings suggest that the business of grassroots sports organisations is very simple, while with semi-professional and professional sports NGOs it is more complex, and consequently such organisations are confronted with cash flow and even solvency problems. Total average revenues of grassroots sports organisations (€6,304) are approximately one tenth the size of the semi-professional sports NGOs and 192 times smaller than professional sports NGOs. As for th...

The purpose of this study was to examine the classification of non-governmental sports organisations (sports NGOs) based on their financial data. Empirical taxonomy with Ward’s hierarchical clustering technique based on the variables acquired from financial statements of all 6,130 sports NGOs in Slovenia was used to cluster organisations into three financial design types: grassroots sports organisations, semi-professional sports NGOs, and professional sports NGOs. Clusters varied in magnitude and structure of financial items. The findings suggest that the business of grassroots sports organisations is very simple, while with semi-professional and professional sports NGOs it is more complex, and consequently such organisations are confronted with cash flow and even solvency problems. Total average revenues of grassroots sports organisations (€6,304) are approximately one tenth the size of the semi-professional sports NGOs and 192 times smaller than professional sports NGOs. As for th...

This paper demonstrates theoretically and empirically that financial regulation is crucial to explain performance in European football competitions; clubs allowed to run deficits hire more playing talents and obtain better sportive results. An empirical study on the five major leagues corroborates the theoretical underpinning. The paper finally investigates the roots of financial regulation divergence in Europe and underlines the main issues regarding the UEFA financial fair-play rules.

Tel: 0034 988 36 87 13 Fax: 0034 988 36 89 23 email: abarajas@uvigo.es CARLOS FERNÁNDEZ-JARDÓN: University of Vigo Dpto. Economía Aplicada Campus Universitario Lagoas-Marcosende 36310 Vigo (Pontevedra) Spain Tel: 0034 986 81 24 91 Fax: 0034 986 81 24 01 email: cjardon@uvigo.es LIZ CROLLEY: University of Liverpool Management School Chatham Street Liverpool L69 7ZH UK Tel: 0044 151 795 3809 Fax: 0044 151 795 3007 email: lcrolley@liverpool.ac.uk DOES SPORTS PERFORMANCE INFLUENCE REVENUES AND ECONOMIC RESULTS IN SPANISH FOOTBALL?