This study explores market value depreciation among soccer players across the top five European leagues, addressing a critical gap in the sports finance literature by focusing on post-prime valuation dynamics. Leveraging a dataset from the 2023/2024 season, player market values and attributes...

We study the objectivity of officiating under extreme pressure by analysing additional time played at the 2022 FIFA World Cup and 2024 UEFA European Championship. Controlling for within-match events, rules should be applied consistently across both halves of a football match. However, we argue...

Team performance depends not only on the individual abilities of its members and cooperation between them but also on psychological factors such as confidence, rivalry, and perceived pressure. In a regular work environment, it is challenging to isolate the contribution of psychological factors....

While sports betting markets share similarities with traditional financial markets, they are more accessible for empirical research thanks to availability of high-quality data, straightforward betting procedures, and the finite duration of events. As a result, they are often analyzed for market...

The pandemic's impact on Major League Baseball (MLB) was especially dire. In 2020, a single player testing positive was enough to cancel the entire game, with a few teams sidelined for weeks. This paper looks at all free-agent contracts signed during the 2017-2023 off-season signing periods....

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to compare measurement scales of sports fans' motivations applied to women's football. Design/methodology/approach - A survey research approach was used to collect 574 valid responses from participants in Brazil and the USA. Three prominent scales - Sport...

Real living wages (RLWs) are an important ethical and moral policy to ensure that employees earn enough to live on. In providing ‘a fair day's pay for a fair day's work’, they set an ethical foundation for liveability. This article explores the ethics and moral economy of the RLW for...

In this article, we analyze how different representation models of professional football players affect their salaries in salary negotiations. We distinguish between self-representation, representation by relatives and representation by player agencies. Based on the principal agent theory and...

We study workplace performance effects triggered by team-internal rivalry. Specifically, we focus on duos of goalkeepers in professional soccer competing for in-season playing time. Using performance data from the most prestigious European soccer leagues and tournaments, we provide evidence for...

This study examines subsequent head coach opportunities for former National Football League (NFL) head coaches. Under a subsequent CEO career framework, survival analysis is used to examine the effects of race and market characteristics on subsequent NFL head coach opportunities for former head...

According to the German Football League's guidelines, football clubs are expected to contribute to sustainable development. This study analyzes football fans' interest in and willingness-to-pay for socially and environmentally sustainable merchandise clothing. Data from fans of a German Football...

We analyse changes in the National Football League (NFL) due to ghost games in 2020. The home bias disappears as expected. This also applies to semi-ghost games with significantly fewer spectators than regular games and to referee decisions regarding penalties.

In 1983 England's fifth-tier football competition introduced a two-points-for-a-home-win and three-points-for-an-away-win reward system. This system was abolished after three seasons. The anomalous point system may have been introduced to reduce home advantage but the reasons are not fully clear...

Professional sports are part of the entertainment industry; as such, its business is developed based on the perceived interest in sporting events, which in turn depends on features like: the (i) degree of competitive balance that determines the uncertainty of the outcome; the (ii) concentration...

This paper examines the long-term effects of early sports selection using a regression discontinuity design. I show that Swedish track and field athletes who qualified for a one-time appearance with the junior national team at age 17 are less likely to quit sports and more likely to improve...

Subjective evaluations in many contexts might be affected by decision-makers' social preferences. To explore this phenomenon, we use data from soccer referees' decisions. According to soccer rules, referees are expected to evaluate each episode independently, without taking into account previous...

The #BeActive campaign is a European Commission initiative to promote sport and physical activity across Europe and beyond. The highlight of the #BeActive campaign is the European Week of Sport (EWoS), which takes place every year 23-30 September. The goal is to encourage everyone to #BeActive...

The #BeActive campaign is a European Commission initiative to promote sport and physical activity across Europe and beyond. The highlight of the #BeActive campaign is the European Week of Sport (EWoS), which takes place every year 23-30 September. The goal is to encourage everyone to #BeActive...

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...

This study analyses the development of loan players in the German Bundesliga from 2010/2011 to 2021/2022, motivated by the increasing importance of player loans in professional football and upcoming FIFA rule changes to reduce loans. The study analyses 378 loan transfers and compares them with...

In US-based studies focusing on the impact of new sports stadiums on attendance, a recurring observation is the temporary nature of the initial positive effect, commonly described as a novelty or honeymoon effect. This paper revisits the attendance effects of new sports stadiums in a European...

Sports betting markets can be considered strongly efficient if expected returns on all possible bets on an event are equal. If this form of efficiency holds, then there is a direct mapping from betting odds into probabilities of outcomes of sporting events. We compare two regression-based...