The European football (soccer) market increasingly funnels rents to superstar players and intermediaries while weakening competitive balance. We trace this dynamic to two forces: (a) technological innovation that globalized broadcasting and magnified superstar returns, and (b) legal rulings...

Team production is increasingly important for economic outcomes, yet the factors driving team performance remain poorly understood. This paper examines the influence of psychological factors on team performance using data from the top divisions of the five major European football leagues, with a...

Football referees possess substantial discretion in allocating stoppage time, a decision that is comparatively opaque yet potentially consequential for match outcomes. This paper examines whether stoppage time allocation contributes to home advantage in contemporary European professional...

In this paper, we estimate a translog production function for Major League Baseball (MLB) teams that uses factor inputs for hitting, pitching and defence over the 1960-2024 MLB seasons. The computed elasticities of substitution suggest that hitting and pitching are used in fixed proportions,...

Decisions informed by past events can be distorted when outcomes partially determined by chance are misinterpreted as purely skill-based. This can lead to outcome bias, where decisions are evaluated based on results rather than the quality of the performance that produced them. Outcome bias is...

Expectations about future events can be influenced by prior outcomes of similar events, even when those outcomes were partly determined by chance. When such randomness is overlooked in decision-making, outcome bias may arise. This paper investigates the presence of outcome bias in consumer...

Purpose This study analyzes the impact of sports social media on a country regarding three international events connected to the brand Spain. It examines (1) the use and importance of various social media platforms in sports events and (2) identifies the countries generating the most social...

This study examines the determinants of away fan attendance in Germany’s top three football divisions over six seasons and assesses its impact on match outcomes. The analysis reveals that, after conditioning on home and away teams, distance and kick-off time are the most important predictors...

Our study aims to identify the effects of the fulfilment of sport consumption motives on the components of fan commitment and their effects on loyal fan behaviour. Utilising a sample of 707 business psychology students, we measured the fulfilment of sport consumption motives, fan commitment and...

This paper examines the causal impact of the working environment on worker performance and explores the underlying mechanisms. Specifically, we use games from the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) as our research sample and exploit the "neutralvenues policy" induced by COVID-19 to address...

This study examines how advanced sports technologies, initially designed for elite athletes, are being applied in everyday contexts. Despite the proliferation of wearable and AI-powered tools, the sports management literature has largely overlooked how these innovations transition from...

Sleep deprivation imposes significant public health and economic burdens. While researchers studying events like daylight saving time have quantified the impacts of population-wide sleep shifts, less is known about the consequences of acute, voluntary, and recreation-driven sleep loss. This...

One of the beautiful things about football is that it brings people from all over the world together to share their love of the game. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of football on happiness using the number of points a country has in FIFA. To achieve this, we specify and estimate...

We propose a fundamental valuation model for sports clubs and stadia using discounted (adjusted) revenues. We argue that a sports club is a "quasi firm" that aims to balance budgets, achieve an efficient allocation of financial resources, and maximize revenues. Under this objective the sports...

This study investigates the presence and variation of home bias across different hierarchical levels in German men’s football. Based on an extensive dataset comprising 357,530 matches from the 2023/2024 season—collected via a Python script—the analysis includes match outcomes, attendance...

This paper examines the impact of temperature on soccer team productivity using match-level data from ten countries across three continents. The results show that temperature affects multiple performance metrics, often in non-linear ways. Specifically, attacking efficiency is enhanced in warmer...