Journal of Sports Economics

Drawing on a rational choice framework, this study investigates fans’ stated preferences for (more) environmentally-friendly stadium travel (bicycles/e-scooters) on game days. Data from fans of a German Football Bundesliga club were collected using an online survey in 2021 (n = 1,652). Travel preferences were assessed using the contingent behavior method. The results of regression analyses indicate that the likelihood of using environmentally-friendly transportation means increases with perceived benefits, while perceived costs decrease this likelihood. Specifically, perceived environmental benefits and being an environmental role model had a positive effect, while monetary, convenience, and time-related costs had a negative effect.

The existence of a home-court advantage is one of the most durable empirical patterns in all of sports. Yet, the mechanisms explaining its strength and persistence remain a mystery in large part because of well-known challenges with statistical identification. We use attendance restrictions in place during the 2020–2021 National Basketball Association regular season as an instrument in order to identify the effect of fans and crowd size on home-court advantage. We show that home teams win by 2.13 points, on average, when fans are present at games compared with 0.44 points when no fans are present. This equates to winning approximately 2.2 additional home games over the course of a regular season. In fixed effects instrumental variables regression models, we estimate that the marginal effect of an additional one thousand fans on home-court advantage is 1.7 points. We conclude that the mere presence of home fans, on its own, explains a larger share of home-court advantage than previously thought.

Previous literature leaves the impression that betting market inefficiencies are widespread. However, most studies rely upon limited data and ignore biases’ persistence. Our simulation-based analyses show (1) the impact of low sample sizes on the chance to detect markets that only appear to be efficient and (2) the frequency of observing inefficient periods within fully efficient markets. Afterwards, we (3) empirically analyze real-world football betting markets for 14 consecutive seasons. While inefficiencies occur in singular seasons, they are not persistent or systematic across leagues. Moreover, our simulation-based analyses suggest that statistically significant effects in single seasons are likely to be observed even under full market efficiency.

This paper contributes to the literature examining the impact of large-scale sport events (LSEs) on international tourist inflows from 1995 to 2019. Our proposed method involves the calculation of tourist potential and the analysis of actual-to-potential ratios before and after the event. This approach allows us to measure the effect of LSE on a particular hosting country rather than its average effect. Our findings demonstrate a strong “crowding-out” effect for international tourists, with only four out of 18 LSEs resulting in a positive effect on tourist arrivals in the host country.

Using the assignment of referees to European international association football matches played between 2002 and 2016, we ask whether judgments were biased according to the legacy of the Cold War. We find that referees from post-communist states favored teams from non-communist states, but there was no evidence of favoritism in the other direction. This out-group bias of referees born behind the Iron Curtain was statistically significant for relatively less important and more subjective decisions, namely the awarding of yellow cards for foul play. The bias was particularly large among referees from the former Soviet Union. It has also diminished over time, perhaps due to increased professionalism in European refereeing, or because memories of the Cold War era have diminished among active referees.