Arne Feddersen

Determinants of demand for televised live football: features of the German national football team.

This study analyzes all 216 broadcasts of the German national football team from January 1993 to June 2008 to identify which factors ensure the success of televised sport broadcasts. The results reveal that demand depends mostly on the type of match and its importance in a tournament context. Viewers prefer a national team with established star players and high-quality opponents. Factors unrelated to the sport, such as the kickoff time or weather, have some influence, but coaches and holidays are insignificant. Forecasts based on the proposed model can aid television broadcasters, sports rights agencies, advertisers, and media planners in determining the value of a particular broadcast.

Trends in Competitive Balance: Is There Evidence for Growing Imbalance in Professional Sport Leagues?

The concept of competitive balance is a central aspect in the literature of sports economics. A popular argumentation of sport functionaries is that dominance of one or a few teams could lead to unequal incomes for the clubs, restrictions in the clubs’ ability to improve sporting performance and ultimately to a loss of attractiveness and loss of income for the league. Following this line of reasoning and alleging a negative trend in competitive sports functionaries often try to implement regulations in team sport leagues. The aim of this paper is to analyze for eight different leagues if there is such a trend existing. For an empirical test for trends in competitive balance of four European soccer leagues (ENG, ESP, GER, ITA) and four US Major Leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL), OLS regressions with a constant were carried out. For the entire observation period from 1969/70 to 2003/2004, of 48 trends ascertained, only 12 could be observed as being significantly positive (i.e. growing imbalance) with 19 significantly negative (i.e. growing balance). The remaining 17 trends were insignificantly different from zero.

Arenas Vs. Multifunctional Stadia – Which Do Spectators Prefer?

Large sports stadia construction follows two different general concepts: (1) Mono-functional arenas which are specially suited for one sport exclusively and which are characterised by the absence of an athletic track. (2) Multifunctional sports stadia which can be used for different sporting or cultural events. Officials of clubs often argue that the atmosphere in an arena is significantly better than that of a multipurpose facility and that spectators prefer such an atmosphere. Estimated panel regressions with fixed effects show a significant positive effect of a mono-functional soccer stadium on spectator demand. Controlling for other demand determinants in the German professional soccer league, Bundesliga, an isolated effect of around 4,800 additional spectators a game can be found. This translates into a substantial increase of about 18.7% against the mean value of 25,602 spectators per Bundesliga game.Construction of large sports stadiums follows two different general concepts: (a) monofunctional arenas that are specially suited for one sport exclusively and that are characterized by the absence of an athletic track and (b) multifunctional sports stadiums that can be used for different sporting or cultural events. Officials of clubs often argue that the atmosphere in an arena is significantly better than that of a multipurpose facility and that spectators prefer such an atmosphere. Estimated panel regression with fixed effects shows a significant positive effect of a monofunctional soccer stadium on spectator demand. Controlling for other demand determinants in the German professional soccer league, Bundesliga, an isolated effect of around 2,800 additional spectators a game can be found. This translates into a substantial increase of about 10.7% against the mean value of 25,602 spectators per Bundesliga game in the seasons 1963-1964 to 2005-2006.

Investment in Stadia and Regional Economic Development - Evidence from FIFA World Cup 2006

Using the case of the new stadiums for the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany, this paper is the first multivariate work that examines the potential income and employment effects of new stadiums outside of the USA. This study is also the first work on this topic that conducts tests on the basis of a (serial correlation consistent) Difference-in-Difference model with level and trends. As a robustness check, we use the “ignoring time series information” model in a form that is modified for nonsynchronous interventions. We were not able to identify income or employment effects of the construction of new stadiums for the FIFA World Cup 2006, which are significantly different from zero.

Wage and Employment Effects of the Olympic Games in Atlanta 1996 Reconsidered

We estimate the economic effects of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Our difference in difference model checks for serial correlation and allows for a simultaneous test of level and trend effects, but otherwise follows HOTCHKISS, MOORE, & ZOBAY (2003) in this journal. We were not able to reconfirm their finding that the Games had significant positive employment effects. We do, however, reaffirm their result of no significant wage effects.

How to Win the Olympic Games - The Empirics of Key Success Factors of Olympic Bids

This paper examines the probability of the success of city bid campaigns on the basis of quantified determinants for a total of 48 bids for the Summer Olympic Games between 1992 and 2012. Using a model comprising the distance of sporting venues from the Olympic Village, local temperatures and unemployment rates, we can correctly predict the decision for 100% of failed bids and 50% of successful bids.

Mega‐Events and Sectoral Employment: The Case of the 1996 Olympic Games

This paper contributes to the analysis of large sporting events using highly disaggregated data. We use the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, which are also outstanding as one of the very few large sporting events where ex post academic analysis found significant positive effects. This paper extends earlier studies in several ways. First, monthly rather than quarterly data will be employed. Second, the impact of the 1996 Olympics will be analyzed for 16 different sectors or subsectors. Third, in addition to standard DD models, we use a non-parametric approach to flexibly isolate employment effects. Regarding the Olympic effect, hardly any evidence for a persistent shift in the aftermath of or the preparation for the Olympic Games is supported. We find a significant positive employment effect in the monthly employment statistics exclusively during the staging of the Olympic Games (July 1996). These short-term effects are concentrated in the sectors of “retail trade”, “accommodation and food services”, and “arts, entertainment, and recreation”, while other sectors showed no such effects.

Sentiment Bias in National Basketball Association Betting

We develop evidence of bettors with sentiment bias in the betting market on National Basketball Association (NBA) games. We use measures of team popularity (arena capacity utilization and team all-star votes received) as proxies for the presence of biased bettors. Analysis of point spreads and bet outcomes for more than 32,000 NBA games played in 1981-2012 shows that bookmakers increase prices on games involving popular home teams, an outcome consistent with sentiment bias. These changes in prices do not translate into higher returns for bettors, suggesting that bookmakers shade point spreads to increase profits.

They come from near and far: the impact of spatial distance to event location on event attendance motivations

ABSTRACT To best reap the benefits that events provide for host communities and firms, understanding attendance motivations has become a hot topic for researchers and marketers. Most research has focused on tourists’ motivations, with less attention paid to local residents and even less to comparing the two. This paper empirically explores whether spatial distance plays a significant role across five dimensions of event attendance motivations. The findings reveal that the closer an attendee lives to the event location, the more important the dimensions “Socializing,” “Entertainment: Interest in the Event’s Theme,” and “Geographical Location of the Event” become in attending events. Conversely, the farther away an attendee lives from the event location site, the more important the dimension “Loyalty: True Fan of the Event” becomes.

Price setting and competition in fixed odds betting markets

In this chapter the authors show how bookmaker commissions, termed ‘over-round’, have fallen over time through greater competition, hence offering improved value for bettors. They take the English Premier League as their test case and focus on the two largest UK bookmakers. The findings are most interesting. First, over-rounds have fallen over time. Second, this reduction is attributable to the emergence of a betting exchange, Betfair, which has become increasingly popular in the UK. Third, perhaps surprisingly, the reduced commissions are not related to the growth of online bookmakers in the UK. Thus, it is increased competition from the betting exchange and not from online bookmakers that has exerted downward pressure on bookmaker over-rounds.