Journal of Sports Economics

The lack of crowds at sports fixtures as a result of COVID-19 restrictions has allowed researchers a unique opportunity to examine the widely accepted convention of home advantage. This work takes a slightly different approach, by examining within game outcomes. Specifically using play-by-play data from the NFL, this paper asks whether the lack of crowds aided a Quarterback's ability to manipulate opposition defenses. Results suggest this was the case, though effects are not uniform by home and away team.

This study investigates differences in the preferences of daily ticket purchasers and season ticket holders, focusing on outcome uncertainty. Using unique game-level attendance data of both daily ticket purchasers and season ticket holders for every team in the Korean top-tier professional soccer league, we find heterogeneity in demand between daily ticket purchasers and season ticket holders with respect to outcome uncertainty, preference for home team success, team performance, geographical distance between competing teams, and weekend games. Our results suggest that season ticket holders do not care as much about their team's performance and outcome uncertainty as daily ticket purchasers do.

This paper provides a methodological contribution by illustrating the use of computer vision and machine learning methods to identify facial characteristics for the study of facial characteristics in economics. We analyze facial appearance premia for head football coaches at big-time college sports programs to illustrate this methodology. Specifically, we estimate facial attractiveness and aggressiveness premia using quantitative measures of these characteristics from a neural network approach applied to observable facial features. Parametric regression results show evidence of a salary discount for attractive employees along with evidence of an aggressiveness premium. Nonparametric gradient results provide similar qualitative implications.

This study attempts to estimate the impact of the announcements of hosts of large sporting events on domestic stock markets. The research problem is to establish a connection between the uniqueness of a sporting event and investors’ beliefs through stock price behavior. Using appropriate estimation windows, 13 different sporting events classified as large, including mega and major events, were tested. The obtained results show that, in principle, one day after the announcement of the host of a large sporting event, an average positive reaction of 0.22% is observed on national stock exchanges. The analyzed events were also classified as being neutral for capital markets or generating positive or negative reactions when the host country is announced to the public.

This paper investigates how crowds affect the timing of events during football matches. In theory, the presence of fans influences the urgency of the players on the field, and the magnitude of this effect grows during the match. Thus, crowds should lead to a faster increase during the match in goals scored, yellow cards, red cards, and penalty kicks. We test the hypothesis using a data set including pandemic ghost games and we find strong support for the hypothesis as it relates to goals, yellow cards, and penalty kicks but not as it relates to red cards.