Babatunde Buraimo

Uncertainty of Outcome or Star Quality? Television Audience Demand for English Premier League Football

Abstract This paper presents new evidence on the relevance of uncertainty of outcome for demand for sports viewing. Using television viewing figures for eight seasons from the English Premier League, we show that uncertainty of outcome does not have the hypothesised effect on television audience demand. Separating uncertainty of outcome effects by season, the results show that, at best, uncertainty of outcome had imprecise effects on audiences in earlier seasons, but zero effects in later seasons. Television audiences have evolved to exhibit preferences for talent. We suggest that the notion of a pure sporting contest in which uncertainty of outcome matters is no longer relevant and more important is the extent to which sports teams and leagues can increase the quality of the talent on show.

Insights for clubs from modelling match attendance in football

The paper employs data from 2884 matches in the English Football League Championship. It builds a model of determinants of attendance designed to yield results relevant to decision-taking at individual clubs. The model has two innovatory features. It controls for the market size of home and away teams precisely by including local population measures constructed from the application of GIS software and information on competition from other clubs. It incorporates these time-invariant covariates in a Hausman–Taylor random effects estimator to take explicit account of variables typically excluded in earlier studies based on fixed effects models. Unlike fixed effects results, Hausman–Taylor estimates permit assessment of the role of market size and quality of the playing squad in determining attendance. Results also quantify the reduction in attendance from televising a match and show that attendance diminishes when a match is played simultaneously with a televised game in a higher status competition.

From modern to postmodern: the development of football stadia in Europe

Football stadia have continually evolved since the building of the first ‘modern’ stadia in Britain in the late nineteenth century to reflect the demands of spectators and governing bodies, as well as the increasing profile of football itself. Their changing nature, however, has become more acute in the last two decades as economic reasons, coupled with safety and security concerns, have contributed to the abolition of many ‘modern’ stadia and, by implication, the development of more advanced arenas, described metaphorically as ‘postmodern’ stadia. Accompanying this ongoing process, various stakeholders, from governing bodies to managers and architects, have put more emphasis on fundamental issues. Such issues include innovative design, high standards of accessibility, safety, flexibility to adjust to all kinds of sporting and non-sporting events and above all, economic viability, all of which are addressed in the planning and operational process. This essay examines the metamorphosis that historic and new stadia have undergone during the past years.

Favoritism and Referee Bias in European Soccer: Evidence from the Spanish League and the UEFA Champions League

In this paper, we test for, and find evidence of, referee bias in favor of home teams in European football using minute-by-minute analysis to control for within-game events. The context for the analysis is Spains Primera Liga and the Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Champions League. We find that the award of sanctions by Spanish referees in the Champions League are not significantly different to those of the referees from other countries and as such are subject to the same sources of bias. In Primera Liga matches where the crowd is separated from the pitch by running tracks, we find that the probability of the award of a yellow card to the home team is higher and that of the away team is lower compared to matches played at stadia without running tracks. Similar results are found in the Champions League, where efforts are made to hire “neutral” referees. Referee behavior is also influenced by the size of the crowd in attendance.

An Analysis of Consumer Response to Corruption: Italy's Calciopoli Scandal

The Calciopoli episode affecting Italian football in the 2005–6 season serves as an opportunity for an empirical investigation into consumer (fan) behavior, following league-imposed punishments on clubs whose officials were found guilty of corrupt practices. Using a difference-in-differences estimation method, we find that home attendances for convicted teams fell by around 16%, relative to those clubs not subject to punishment. We show further that the fall in attendances resulted in non-trivial gate revenue reductions. Our results suggest that a sizeable number of fans of the punished clubs were subsequently deterred from supporting their teams inside the stadium.

The impact of televised football on stadium attendances in English and Spanish league football

Since the early 1990s, sports broadcasting has emerged to become an important part of the sports industry. This is particularly important in the case of European football because revenues generated from the sport broadcast market tend to dominate those generated from gate attendance, which has traditionally been the main source of income for football clubs and leagues. In this article, we examine the broadcast regimes of the English Premier League and the Spanish Primera Liga (Liga de Primera Division) and examine the impacts that televising games from these leagues have had on their respective match‐day attendances. We find that, although stadium attendances in both leagues respond to a series of factors in a similar manner, the effects of broadcasting on match‐day attendance vary across the two leagues. We examine the economics issues and policy implications of these findings.

Workplace Flexibility Practices and Corporate Performance: Evidence from the British Private Sector

This paper investigates the relationship between workplace flexibility practices (WFPs) and corporate performance using data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004. Disaggregating WFPs into numerical, functional and cost aspects enables the analysis of their relationships to an objective measure of corporate performance, namely workplace financial turnover. Furthermore separate analyses are presented for different types of workplace: differentiated by workforce size; ownership; age; wage level; and unionization. Results show that different types of workplaces need to pay attention to the mix of WFPs they adopt. We find that certain cost WFPs (profit‐related pay, merit pay and payment‐by‐results) have strong positive relationships with corporate performance. However, training delivers mixed corporate performance results, while the extent of job autonomy and the proportion of part‐time employees in a workplace have an inverse association with corporate performance. Given the limited existing research examining disaggregated measures of WFPs and objectively measured corporate performance, this paper offers useful insights for firms, policy makers and the overall economy.

Workplace flexibility practices and corporate performance

This paper investigates the relationship between workplace flexibility practices (WFPs) and corporate performance using data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004. Disaggregating WFPs into numerical, functional and cost aspects enables the analysis of their relationships to an objective measure of corporate performance, namely workplace financial turnover. Furthermore separate analyses are presented for different types of workplace: differentiated by workforce size; ownership; age; wage level; and unionization. Results show that different types of workplaces need to pay attention to the mix of WFPs they adopt. We find that certain cost WFPs (profit‐related pay, merit pay and payment‐by‐results) have strong positive relationships with corporate performance. However, training delivers mixed corporate performance results, while the extent of job autonomy and the proportion of part‐time employees in a workplace have an inverse association with corporate performance. Given the limited existing research examining disaggregated measures of WFPs and objectively measured corporate performance, this paper offers useful insights for firms, policy makers and the overall economy.

On the Positive Expected Utility of Combination Wagers

We demonstrate that a utility maximizing individual with an everywhere concave utility function may optimally wager on two or more outcomes in an event even though the expected returns to a unit stake are negative on all outcomes except one.

Attendance demand in a developing football market: the case of the Peruvian first division

ABSTRACT Research question: Most of the empirical research on football demand has focused on leagues in developed countries while those in developing countries have received comparatively limited attention. In the absence of more specific analyses of leagues in developing countries, an implicit assumption is that the demand for football across different economies is homogenous. However, such an assumption may lead to inappropriate policies. Therefore, decision-making and policies aimed at attendance and pricing in developing countries should be substantiated with empirical evidence reflecting their settings. Research methods: This paper models match level attendance demand and price in the first tier of the Peruvian football league from 2012 to 2016 inclusive. Using a sample of 1719 matches, two-stage least-squares estimation with instrumental variables is used. Results and findings: We find that attendance in the Peruvian football league is driven by market size, distance between teams and recent performance while local rivalry and price do not exert significant impacts. More importantly, attendance exhibits properties of an inferior good given its relationship with levels of poverty and associated correlation with income. Implications: The implications are that demand models for football in developing and developed economies generate different results as the impacts of some exogenous variables on attendance offer different outcomes. For example, the impact of price and income differ from prior expectations indicating that different approaches are necessary to managing football in developing countries including distinct policies on stadium accommodation.