Player Mobility and Competitive Balance Regulation in Professional Sports Leagues

Competitive balance regulation is more widespread in North American than in Europan sports leagues. The present paper addresses the question whether this observation can be explained with the help of differences in the degree of player mobility. Using an extended version of the workhorse contest model of sports leagues, the paper shows that the answer depends on the kind of competitive balance regulation. While player mobility may help to explain the difference with respect to salary regulation (e.g., salary caps), the choice of revenue sharing schemes turns out to be independent of player mobility.

Formation of a range of sports league services

The article discusses the features of sports league services. Special attention is paid to the factors that influence the formation of the nomenclature of sports league services, as a structured list of products offered that may be in the league’s assortment. As the main of such factors, consumers are singled out, which make it possible to divide the services of sports leagues into commercial and non–commercial. The development of these groups of the range of services of sports leagues occurs in different ways. The main sources of profit in the activities of professional sports leagues are the sale of tickets and season tickets for sports competitions, the sale of rights to television and radio broadcasts of competitions, advertising and sponsorship and licensing and commercial activities of clubs. The problems of the formation of the nomenclature of sports league services are highlighted — this is the lack of market conditions, competition and demand, as well as the lack of consumer orientation. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the proposal to form a range of sports league services based on the use of active marketing, analysis of the solvency of the main consumer groups, as well as the introduction of innovative services using digital technologies.

Current Perceptions of Diversity Among Head Team Physicians and Head Athletic Trainers: Results Across US Professional Sports Leagues

Background: Discrepancies in race, ethnicity, and sex among health care providers and their patients have been shown to affect the patient-provider relationship as well as the quality of care. Currently, minority and female representation among orthopaedic surgeons remains low. Given the large proportion of minority athletes and their degree of public visibility, professional sports serves as an important arena within which to analyze the diversity of health care providers. Purpose: To describe and evaluate the current level of diversity of head team physicians (HTPs) and head athletic trainers (ATCs), primarily in terms of race and sex, within men’s professional sports leagues in the United States. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: Five major US professional sports leagues were evaluated: National Basketball Association, National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and Major League Baseball. Publicly available data were collected to identify the HTPs and head ATCs for each team within these leagues. Two independent observers analyzed photographs and names of these individuals to determine his or her perceived race and sex, with disagreements being resolved by a third independent observer. Other physician data collected included graduate degree(s), specialty, and number of years in practice. Kappa coefficients (κ) were employed to evaluate interobserver reliability. Chi-square, Fisher exact, and t tests were used for statistical comparisons across leagues. Results: The κ values for perceived race were 0.85 for HTPs and 0.89 for head ATCs, representing near-perfect interobserver agreement. Minorities comprised 15.5% of HTPs and 20.7% of ATCs ( P = .24). Women comprised 3.9% of HTPs and 1.3% of head ATCs ( P = .017). The majority of HTPs were orthopaedic surgeons with medical doctorates. Female HTPs had significantly fewer years in practice compared with male HTPs (15.0 ± 4.9 vs 23.1 ± 9.6; P = .04). Conclusion: The lead physicians and athletic training providers for men’s professional sports teams demonstrated low rates of minority and female representation, denoting a highly visible area for discussing the role of increased diversity in health care.

Who Should Own the League? Transaction Costs and the Structure of NBA Ownership

Like many professional sports leagues worldwide, the National Basketball Association is organized as a cooperative of team owners. We argue that league ownership structures must balance two types of transaction costs: the costs to league owners of collective decision-making and the costs of contracting with stakeholders of the league, importantly players, owners, and potential investors. We compare the transaction costs of the current team owned league with the alternatives of investor and player owned leagues, finding that each ownership structure reduces some transaction costs while raising others.

Online Webcast Demand vs. Offline Spectating Channel Demand (Stadium and TV) in the Professional Sports League

This study investigates the online spectating behavior of sports fans. Due to the great mobility and low opportunity/switching costs, webcast sports fans’ spectating behaviors are distinct from those associated with traditional spectating channels such as stadium attendance or TV viewership. We explore the unique characteristics of online webcast demand in professional sports leagues by rigorously modeling all three spectating choices of sports fans. To consider the substitute relationship of the three spectating choices simultaneously, we employ a BLP (Berry–Levinsohn–Pakes)-style random coefficient model. For the analysis, we collect a comprehensive game-level dataset from the Korean Professional Baseball Organization (KBO) League fan samples from three different channels: online webcast viewership, stadium attendance, and TV viewership. We find that the demand for online webcasts is distinctive compared to that of traditional spectating channels. Notably, we find that the impact of team performance is three times stronger than that of TV viewership demand and that the impact of game quality is four times stronger than that of attendance demand. In contrast, a nonperformance variable is relatively less effective in attracting sports fans to online broadcasting. Furthermore, we find evidence of a strong retention effect of online webcast viewers. Our findings indicate that the previous spectating experience of online webcasts increases the next-time choice of sports fans for the webcast because the genuine spectating experience with distinctive webcast services (such as real-time interactive communication or various supplementary programs) can induce consumers to revisit the channel.

NFL team revenue distribution and revenue sharing: a median voter theorem

PurposeRevenue sharing is ubiquitous among North American professional sports leagues. Under pool revenue sharing, above-average revenue teams of a league effectively transfer revenues to below-average revenue teams. Herein, the authors find and prove that a league will vote into policy a pool revenue sharing arrangement if and only if mean team revenue is greater than presharing median revenue, where this condition is equivalent to the presence of positive nonparametric skewness in a league’s distribution of team revenues. This represents a median voter theorem for league revenue sharing.Design/methodology/approachThe authors consider the case of revenue sharing for the National Football League (NFL), a league that pools and equally shares national revenues among member teams.FindingsThe authors find evidence of positive and significant nonparametric skewness in NFL team revenue distributions for the 2004–2016 seasons. This distribution is observed amid annual majority rule votes of League owners in favor of maintaining the incumbent pool revenue sharing model (as opposed to no team revenue sharing). Distribution of revenues – namely the existence of outlying large market NFL teams – appears to consistently explain the historical popularity of NFL revenue sharing.Originality/valueThe median voter theorem uncovered in the case of NFL applies to all professional sports leagues and can be used predictively as well as descriptively.