We analyze attendance of professional football matches in England finding that it is related to unemployment over a very long period of time. More unemployment leads to lower attendances. Distinguishing between leagues, we find that the relationship is larger for lower leagues, i.e. attendance...

We use data from the 24-hours Belluno run which has the unique characteristic that participants are affiliated with teams and run for an hour. This allows us not only to study the individual relationship between age and performance but also to study group dynamics in terms of accessions to and...

This paper studies the causes and consequences of in-season changes of the headcoach of association football teams. We exploit data from the highest level of Dutch professional football during 14 successive seasons. An in-season change of the head-coach depends on recent match results and the...

We study whether there is a racial bias in ratings of professional football players in Italian newspapers. We find that there is such a bias. Conditional on objective performance indicators black players receive a lower rating than non-black players. This is not a difference across the board but...

We examine the effect of the sending-off of a player on the goal-scoring rates in FIFA World Cup matches in tournaments from 1998 to 2014. We use a hazard rate framework in which the effect of a red card is modeled as a shift in the goal-scoring rate. A red card may harm the team that receives a...