Economic agents react to incentives, and this holds true for professional football teams as well. Double round-robin and single-match elimination represent two opposite competition regimes, with incentives varying distinctly between them. At the level of individual matches, a single defeat needs...

Competition among cities for the elusive prize of a professional sports franchise has spawned a building boom in stadiums, arenas, and ballparks. Local, state, and federal taxpayers subsidize professional teams that use a publicly owned sports facility. Typically, the state and local subsidy is...

This paper examines long-term developments in stadium attendance in professional football in the Netherlands. As in many other European countries attendance had a U-shaped development with the lowest numbers in the mid-1980s. The developments in the Netherlands do not seem to have been affected...