Search

We propose a model where two sports leagues compete for sporting talent, and at the same time consider the competitive balance in their domestic championships. The allocation of broadcasting revenues by the league-governing body acts as an incentive for teams to invest in talent. We derive a strategic league authority’s optimal sharing rule of broadcasting revenues across teams in the league. While a weighted form of performance-based sharing is the best way of attracting talent, cross-subsidization from high- to low-payroll teams is required to improve competitive balance. The optimal sharing rule is then a combination of these two “sub-rules”. We show that the distribution of broadcasting revenues in two first divisions in European men’s football, the English Premier League (EPL) and the French Ligue 1 (L1), corresponds to the optimal sharing rule we discuss. We propose a new method to assess empirically the cross-subsidization impact of the sharing formula. As the impact of cross-subsidization is greater in the EPL than L1, we conclude that ensuring domestic competitive balance seems to be a more important target for the EPL than for L1.

The idea that competitive balance increases the utility of fans, and therefore their spending and the revenue of professional clubs, lies at the heart of sports economics in general and the economics of football in particular. This notion of competitive balance is often invoked to explain the decisions of professional leagues to change the rules of competitions or the distribution of TV rights. However, the empirical literature shows that the relationship between competitive balance and fan demand is far from obvious. In this paper, we examine the idea of competitive balance as perceived by football fans. In the case of Ligue 1, it is mainly explained by medium‑ and long‑term uncertainty, while in the case of the Champions League it is more a matter of long‑term suspense. But uncertainty over the outcome is far from being the only factor explaining the demand for football since around 30% of fans report that they would always be willing to attend or watch games even in the hypothetical case that there is no suspense left., Arrondel Luc, Duhautois Richard. Are French Football Fans Sensitive to Outcome Uncertainty?. In: Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, n°513, 2019. pp. 5-26.

International audience; The Tour de France is the most popular and prestigious bicycle race in the world. Since the 1980s, it has also had increasing economic success. Is such economic success related to improvements in competitive balance among riders, i.e. the degree of parity among opponents and the resulting difficulty to predict the competition’s end result? We compute several measures of static (annual) and dynamic (year-to-year) competitive balance for the yellow jersey from 1947 to 2017, both among the top five riders and among team leaders. Our main result is that competitive balance in the Tour de France has not improved much since 1947: the time performances of top riders and team leaders have not become closer to each other – or harder to predict from one year to the next. Therefore, the increasing economic success of the Tour since the 1980s cannot be attributed to improvements in the race’s competitive balance. Other factors must have been driving the increasing demand for the Tour, including better-quality television broadcasting of the event.

The purpose of this study is to answer the following question: to what extent does the market of the professional football clubs trigger a lack of competitive balance? Based on a crossed view between the geography of sports and the sport economics, this research deals with 18 domestic leagues and the European Cups from 1975 to 2005. The results show that, in a context of commercialisation and deregulation of the activity, most of the big market teams strengthen their dominant position on a national as well as on a continental scale. Since sport experience is associated to the preservation of the uncertainty of outcome, such a report raises political issues: Does this phenomenon correspond to a reorganization of the parity which could lead to the creation of a closed league based on the North American model?; Ce travail a pour objectif de répondre à la question suivante: dans quelle mesure le potentiel local des clubs de football professionnel est-il est un facteur de segmentation sportive? Positionnée dans le champ de la géographie et de l’économie du sport, cette recherche porte sur 18 championnats domestiques et sur les Coupes européennes de 1975 à 2005. L’analyse révèle que dans un contexte de croissance des enjeux financiers et de dérégulation de l’activité, les clubs des plus grandes villes renforcent leur position dominante aussi bien à l’échelle nationale que continentale. Le spectacle sportif résidant dans le maintien de l’incertitude du résultat, un tel constat soulève des enjeux de politiques : n’assiste t-on pas à une recomposition des solidarités qui pourrait se concrétiser par la mise en place d’une ligue fermée sur le modèle nord-américain ?

International audience; It is often supposed that the stakeholders of a national football league draw more satisfaction from their sport if the league is balanced, that is, if a large number of clubs have a reasonable chance of winning. This is the so-called Competitive balance hypothesis. This hypothesis can be challenged, however, in the context of international competition like the European champions league. It could be that the utility of national leagues' stakeholders would be higher if the probability of victory for their nation's club at the international level were higher. If this were the case, a league's governing body intending to maximize the quality of the national league by making use of redistributive schemes would face a trade-off between national competitive balance and international performance of the national representative club. We propose a simple microeconomic framework to model this trade-off. If a non-cooperative game exists among the national league governing bodies, whether it is a Nash or a Stackelberg one, this game would result in inefficient redistributive policies. We find ‘soft’ empirical evidence of such a competition among the big 5 football leagues in Europe. This result supports the idea of the creation of an international regulatory body. We derive the conditions under which the international regulatory body should ensure that the leagues' governing bodies implement redistributive schemes guaranteeing the respect of the national competitive balance. We also emphasize the risk of experiencing a drop in the quality of leagues if one of them becomes too big relatively to the others, what we call the tragedy of the wealthy.

International audience; The chapter goes as follows. In the first section it is demonstrated how the Tour de France is a high quality product. This is a result from its accurate design, its management, its economic model and its finance structure, both in comparison to other mega-sporting events and with reference to tournament theory. It is not easy to assess the competitive balance in the Tour de France since, as was demonstrated in chapter 10, it is at the same time an individual and a team sport contest. After reviewing some results published in literature so far, a new metrics for evaluating competitive balanced in the Tour de France is presented in section 2. Finally, the Tour de France cannot ignore doping as a potential threat to fan attendance and TV viewing. We therefore discuss the issue of doping and a new procedure to deal with doping in section 3.

International audience; This paper analyzes the impact of the French 75% income tax rate on the attractiveness of the French soccer league. The concerns are less about its financial implications for clubs than about the possible decrease in its attractiveness. A classical model of professional team sport leagues is employed to measure the Nash equilibrium competitive balance and the stock of talent to assess the effect of the new taxation. We then propose two hypotheses corresponding to specific situations in the French soccer league: “social and fiscal disparities between clubs” and “sugar daddy” behavior. The new model predicts a polarization of the league and an exodus of talent, which could be mitigated by revenue sharing.Text available onhttps://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/24067/1/aIJSF11_3_Scelles_etal.pdf or http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/625412/

International audience; In 1964, Neale suggested, in addition to competitive balance, a league standing effect that was never tested per se with empirical data. A model that explains fan attendance in the French football Ligue 1 over 2008-2011 is presented. It takes on-board point difference with the closest competitor chasing a different sporting stake, and positive and negative changes regarding the different sporting stakes. Econometric testing exhibits a negative impact of point difference (i.e., a positive impact of the possibilities of changes), a positive impact of positive changes, and no significant impact of negative changes.

The issue of Competitive Balance is a central issue in the literature on the economics of professional sports. The basic idea is that the managers of professional sports leagues must maintain a certain level of competitive balance in their league if they want it to remain attractive (Rottenberg (1956), El Hodiri & Quirk (1971), Fort & Quirk (1995), Vrooman (1995), Kesenne (2000), ...). An important part of literature is also devoted to the mechanisms to restore a satisfactory level of competitive balance: salary caps, luxury taxes, draft rules, gate revenue sharing... Although some authors challenge the idea that a decrease in competitive balance necessarily leads to a weakening of fan interest (Szymanski (2001)), all agree on the need to measure adequately the balance. As mentioned by Zymbalist (2002), the most commonly used index is the standard deviation of win percentage. But other indexes can be used as the ratio of the actual to the idealized standard deviation of win percentages, the Gini coefficient of win percentages, the Hirshman-Herfindahl index of competitive balance, the Concentration Ratio, the ratio of the top to bottom win percentages, the index of dissimilarity...

International audience; Competitive balance constitutes a founder concept of professional sports economics. It postulates a central link between uncertainty of outcome and public demand. The most used measure in the literature is "Noll-Scully" approach. It confronts teams spread in the standing between observed reality and theoretical ideal in taking into account the number of matches. The object of this contribution is to discuss "Noll-Scully" approach pertinence. Following a summary of the literature, the 2nd part approaches the obstacle points that are its purpose (to integrate the influence of the number of matches) and its formulation (to incorporate a theoretical ideal value). Then the article positions the discussion on an alternative measure able to avoid the gaps of "Noll-Scully" approach.; L'équilibre compétitif constitue un concept fondateur de l'économie du sport professionnel. Il postule un lien central entre l'incertitude du résultat et la demande du public. La mesure la plus utilisée dans la littérature est l'approche « Noll-Scully ». Elle confronte l'écart dans le classement des équipes entre le réel observé et le théorique idéal compte tenu du nombre de matchs. L'objet de cette contribution est de discuter la pertinence de l'approche. Après un aperçu de la littérature, la 2e partie aborde les points d'achoppement que sont son objectif (intégrer l'influence du nombre de matchs) et sa formulation (incorporer une valeur théorique idéale). L'article oriente ensuite la discussion sur une mesure alternative susceptible d'éviter les lacunes de l'approche « Noll-Scully ».

Manuel qui couvre tous les thèmes importants en économie du sport regroupés en 12 chapitres: . importance économique du sport dans la comptabilité nationale . le marché de la pratique sportive . les marchés mondiaux de la performance et des spectacles sportifs . les évènements sportifs mondiaux et les équipements sportifs . les marchés mondiaux dérivés du spectacle sportif . le marché mondial et l'industrie des articles de sport . l'économie des sports individuels et la théorie des jeux . la théorie économique des ligues de sports d'équipe professionnels . la régulation économique des ligues sportives professionnelles . le marché mondial du travail sportif . analyse économique des dérives du sport mondial (dopage, corruption, etc.) . la gouvernance du sport mondial et la crise économique

This article contends that a new research avenue is open to comparative economics which is the economic comparison between American (closed) and European (open) professional team sports leagues. It starts with sketching the major institutional differences between the two leagues systems. Then it surveys the American modelling of competitive balance in these sports leagues that objects pro-competitive balance regulation as being non Walrasian when (American) teams are profit maximising. A next step is to cover how the Walrasian model has been adapted to European open leagues and their regulation of win maximising clubs under a hard budget constraint. Such approach has recently been outdated by models where win maximising clubs operate with a flexible supply of talent in a non cooperative game, given the globalization of the labour market for sporting talent (namely after the Bosman case). Finally, the article ploughs into a new research path advocating for a disequilibrium model where clubs would have a "soft" budget constraint rooted in their weak governance, and empirically tests a vicious circle between TV rights revenues and wages in French football that may explain the aforementioned disequilibrium.

In spite of its extent, competitive balance literature lets unexplored leads. It cares about a too restric-tive view according to which only outcome uncertainty explains demand and only the reach of competitive balance generates outcome uncertainty. Our article consists of developing a model which makes possible to mitigate competitive balance lacks. To do it, we conceptualize competitive intensity, initially proposed by Kringstad and Gerrard, as a dimension integrating outcome uncer-tainty – including in situation of imbalance between teams – but also sports stakes and reversals. The will is to approach in a best way the attractiveness of sport-spectacle. Extended competitive intensity model has two scales: intra-match and intra-championship. The subject of the article is the theoreti-cal and methodological elaboration of the model. Consequently, key notions are defined (state of the score at intra-match level, strategic ranks at intra-championship scale). They condition the model which bases on objective choices in terms of thresholds of outcome uncertainty and raises manage-rial implications., En dépit de son étendue, la littérature sur l’équilibre compétitif laisse des pistes inexplorées. Ceci tient à une vision trop restrictive selon laquelle seule l’incertitude du résultat explique la demande et seule l’atteinte d’un équilibre compétitif génère une incertitude du résultat. Notre article consiste à développer un modèle permettant de pallier aux manques de l’équilibre compétitif. Pour ce faire, nous conceptualisons l’intensité compétitive, initialement proposée par Kringstad et Gerrard, comme dimension intégrant non seulement l’incertitude du résultat – y compris en situation de déséquilibre entre les équipes – mais également les enjeux sportifs et les rebondissements. La volonté est de mieux approcher l’attractivité du spectacle sportif. Le modèle de l’intensité compétitive étendue se décline selon deux échelles: intra-match et intra-championnat. L’objet de l’article réside dans la construction théorique et méthodologique du modèle. Dès lors, des notions-clés sont définies (état du score au niveau intra-match, places stratégiques à l’échelle intra-championnat). Elles conditionnent le modèle qui repose sur des choix objectivés en termes de seuils d’incertitude du résultat et soulève des implications managériales.

Affiliation EA 4260 - Intitulé actuel : Centre d’Etude des Stratégies et des Actions Motrices et Sportives (CESAMS) mais entre 2008 et 2011 autre intitulé : Information Organisation et Action (IOA).; International audience; This article deals with the optimisation of the sport leagues product thanks to adequate rules. It features a new model called intra-championship competitive intensity which measures outcome uncertainty and reversals in the standings of a sport league. The model depends on the league product design and, in particular, on the number of sports stakes in the standings. Intra-championship competitive intensity was calculated in French football Ligue 1 (league without playoffs) and basketball Pro A (league with playoffs) over the period 2004-2009. The results show that Pro A intra-championship competitive intensity surpassed Ligue 1's, whereas the latter benefits from a better competitive balance. Then, we propose a product design which maximises intra-championship competitive intensity and marketing and sponsoring efficiency in the European context. This design needs specific marketing actions to be optimised.