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This comment addresses the opinion of the Advocate General (AG) of the European Court of Justice on the pending case European Super League versus UEFA/FIFA. It takes a critical perspective on selected aspects of the opinion's reasoning from a (sports) economics perspective. Highlighting the special characteristics of sports markets, the assessment of the AG Opinion raises questions such as (i) the (lack of) empirical evidence that the incumbent pursues and/or meets the legitimate objectives while the latter is still used as justifying reasons for anticompetitive conduct and arrangements (section III), (ii) the prohibitive entry barriers raised by the non-existence of a transparent and non-discriminatory authorization system preventing open competition for championships formats and organization by objective and effect (section IV), and (iii) the difficult search for a convincing theory of harm justifying the brutal enforcement of single-homing by the incumbent (section V).

Experts' voting behavior is conjectured to be more objective than peer voting (own group/peers) and public voters (everyone interested), who are supposedly influenced by all sorts of subjective aspects. We examine differences in voting behavior between these groups by analyzing the voting outcomes for all-star teams in American Football. This paper analyzes the impact of performance as well as non-performance markers and team effects on the voting outcome. It contains a comparative analysis across the mentioned groups to elaborate on differences. The econometric analysis uses unbalanced panel data of All-Pro and Pro Bowl player selections over 78 seasons (1951-2019). It applies panel probit regression to assess the impact of the markers on the outcome probability of winning one of the All-Star awards. We find that expert, peer, and public voting show similarities and are partially driven by the same performance and non-performance markers. However, none of the three analyzed voting systems is free from the influence of non-performance markers. We find exposure effects as well as effects from team affiliation in all of them, including in fact expert voting. Positive effects of team success are found in expert and, to a lesser extent, in peer voting. Team-specific effects are found in public voting, providing evidence for partisanship voting by fans. Our results shed doubt on the suspected objectiveness of expert voting. Furthermore, they fortify the notion of public voting being inefficient at identifying objective quality and extend the literature on voting biases among experts, peers, and the general public.

The controversy around the breakaway European Super League, set to conquer the UEFA Champions League, and the surrounding antitrust proceedings revive the academic discussion about the monopoly power of sport-internal governing bodies (like the UEFA), the justification for and limits of their powers, and potential abuses of their power. Against this background, we discuss how much monopoly is unavoidable in premier-level European football and how its powers can be limited and, thus, scope and incentives for power abuse may be reduced. We particularly find that championship management can be periodically assigned to third-parties (like the Super League organizers) by tender procedures, thus, creating a periodical competition for the market, fueling innovation incentives and strengthening the influence of fans' preferences.

This paper uses daily hotel occupancy data for the Indianapolis metro area from STR to estimate the effect of multi-day conventions on hotel demand. In addition to multi-day conventions, we hand collect data on other major events such as the Indy 500 and major sporting events. Hotel demand is an important part of the economic activity generated by multi-day events because hotel rooms are largely occupied by out-of-town guests and represent new local economic activity. We look at the effect of conventions and other large events in Indianapolis on average daily room rates, revenue per room, demand, occupancy, and total revenue. We find large and statistically significant effects for multi-day conventions on hotel demand with very little evidence of crowding out. A single day of a multi-day convention brings in approximately $928,000 in additional hotel revenue. Our findings contribute to the literature on the economic impact of large events such as conventions and sporting events that attract out-of-town visitors.

The Formula One Championship (F1) is one of the biggest sports businesses in the world. But, however, it seems to astonish that only very few scholarly articles analyze the F1 business. The aim of this study is to contribute to closing two gaps in the existing literature: it contributes (1) to the (sports) economic analysis of the F1 business and (2) to the literature on competitive balance in non-team sports. Like competitive balance in team sport leagues, also for F1 racing three dimensions can be distinguished: (a) race-specific competitive balance, (b) within-season competitive balance, and (c) between-season competitive balance. In addition to classical tools and data, some new and F1 specific indicators, like average lead changes or leading distance, are employed. Also, pitfalls induced especially by the used data source or calculation method are highlighted.

The collective sale of football broadcasting rights constitutes a cartel, which, in the European Union, is only allowed if it complies with a number of conditions and obligations, inter alia, partial unbundling and the no-single-buyer rule. These regulations were defined with traditional TV-markets in mind. However, the landscape of audiovisual broadcasting is quickly changing with online streaming services gaining popularity and relevance. This also alters the effects of the conditions and obligations for the centralized marketing arrangements. Partial unbundling may lead to increasing instead of decreasing prices for consumers. Moreover, the combination of partial unbundling and the no-single-buyer rule forces consumers into multiple subscriptions to several streaming services, which increases transaction costs. Consequently, competition authorities need to rethink the conditions and obligations they impose on centralized marketing arrangements in football. We recommend restricting the exclusivity of (live-)broadcasting rights and mandate third-party access to program guide information to redesign the remedies.

Practices and conducts in professional and even amateur sports can be subject to competition laws as soon as commercial activities are involved. From an economic perspective, this implies that both directly commercial activities like the sale of broadcasting/media rights and indirectly commercial activities like defining and enforcing the rules of the games can be hit by competition policy interventions. Setting and enforcing the rules of the game is an activity with commercial effects because it influences attractiveness and marketability of the sports in question. After discussing fundamental issues, this contributions reviews selected landmark cases in sports competition policy from an economic perspective. This includes the U.S. baseball antitrust exemption, access rules to Judo tournaments, sale systems of media rights in European football as well as a unique combination of long-run exclusivity contracts, skewed allocation of common revenues, and special influences on rule-setting by some competitors in Formula One motor racing. Eventually, the areas of state aid to football clubs and mergers in Danish football are sketched.

Financial regulation in sports is usually discussed in the context of representing an instrument against "financial doping". Notwithstanding the merits of this discussion, this paper takes the opposite perspective and analyses how market-internal financial regulation itself may anticompetitively influence sporting results. Virtually every regulative financial intervention distorts sporting competition to some extent and creates beneficiaries and losers. Sometimes, the actual winners and losers of financial regulation stand in line with the (legitimate) goals of the regulation like limiting financial imbalances or preventing distortive midseason insolvencies of teams. However, financial regulation may also display unintended side-effects like protecting hitherto successful teams from new challengers, cementing the competitive order, creating foreclosure and entry barriers, or serving vested interests of powerful parties. All of these effects may also be hidden agendas by those who are implementing and enforcing market-internal financial regulation or influencing it. This paper analyses various types of budget caps (including salary caps) with respect to potentially anticompetitive effects. UEFA's so-called Financial Fair Play Regulations are highlighted as an example. Furthermore, the paper discusses allocation schemes of common revenues (like from the collective sale of broadcasting rights) as another area of financial regulation with potentially anticompetitive effects. Eventually, the effects of standards for accounting, financial management, and auditing are discussed.

Recent allegations from participants of the FIA Formula One World Championship (F1) suggest that the promoter of F1 (possibly together with the sports association) violates European competition law in two ways. First, it alleged-ly abuses its market power by deducting an inappropriate high share from the rev-enues of the collective sale of media rights in order to boost the profits of its pri-vate equity parent company (vertical allocation of media revenue). Second, it alleg-edly forms a cartel with selected top teams at the detriment of smaller teams by providing both unjustified extra payments to these teams and enforcing a heavily biased horizontal allocation of media revenues, benefitting the cartel teams. Pro-fessional sports championships typically receive common revenue, for instance, from trademark rights and marketing, but often also from the sale of broadcasting and other media rights. This common revenue needs to be allocated in two ways: (i) vertical allocation between the sports authority and the participants, and (ii) hor-izontal allocation among the participants. Different professional sports champion-ships employ vastly differing schemes for both types of allocation. In this paper, we present an empirical assessment whether the current antitrust allegations against F1 may be valid. We employ concentration measures from empirical economics, like the Hirshman-Herfindahl-Index (HHI), the concentration ratio and the standard de-viation in order to assess different allocation schemes from different commercial sports. With the help of these indices we show that the allocation scheme em-ployed in F1 considerably differs from such used in other professional sports championships. We find the empirical picture to be consistent with an anticompetitive interpretation of F1 media revenue structures and policies. We conclude that there is merit in starting an in-depth antitrust investigation of Formula One motor racing, which would also represent an opportunity for the European Commission to cor-rect earlier mistakes.