We empirically investigate if tournaments between heterogeneous contestants are less intensive. To test our hypotheses we use professional sports data from the TOYOTA Handball-Bundesliga, the major handball league in Germany.[...]

Following tournament theory, incentives will be rather low if the contestants ofa tournament are heterogeneous. We empirically test this prediction using alarge dataset from the German Hockey League. Our results show that indeed theintensity of a game is lower if the teams are more...

We analyze a two-stage game between two heterogeneous players.At stage one, common risk is chosen by one of the players. At stagetwo, both players observe the given level of risk and simultaneouslyinvest in a winner-take-all competition. The game is solved theoreticallyand then tested by using...