Robert D. Macdonald

Do Teams Always Lose to Win? Performance Incentives and the Player Draft in the Australian Football League

This article examines whether the player draft used since 1986 in the Australian Football League has caused clubs to tank; that is, to seek to lose matches to obtain improved draft choices. A comparison of clubs’ performances in regular season matches played before and after introduction of the draft provides no evidence that clubs have engaged in tanking. The main potential explanations for the absence of tanking in the Australian Football League are the relatively low benefits to clubs from tanking and limited opportunities for them to engage in this behavior.

Collective bargaining simulation: the Federal Football League versus the National Association of Professional Footballers.

The last decade has witnessed two related phenomena, which provide the motivation for the development of this collective bargaining simulation. Within the industrial relations arena, enterprise or collective bargaining has replaced arbitration as the major process for wage determination and dispute resolution (Wooden, 2000). Over the same period, Australian sport has witnessed the rise of professionalism and the emergence of professional bodies intended to represent players in negotiations with sporting clubs, leagues and national associations (Dabscheck, 1996a; Dempsey, 1998). These two developments have, not surprisingly, made industrial relations an issue of central importance in the professional sports industry. This simulation, which is based upon the events in a fictional professional sporting league, is primarily intended to aid in the teaching of industrial relations issues with respect to professional athletes. However, the simulation provides a number of additional applications, most notably in the area of bargaining and negotiation.The simulation may also stimulate useful discussion in the areas of group and individual decision-making, the use of power, and balancing multiple stakeholder groups. The following notes provide the instructor with guidelines for operation of the simulation and suggest a number of discussion topics, so as to maximise the learning potential of the exercise.

Economic Theory, Policy and the Evolution of Governance in the National Basketball League

The Australian National Basketball League (NBL) first tipped off in 1979 and by the early 1990s, basketball was Australia’s fourth most popular spectator sport behind Australian football, rugby league and cricket. Yet the NBL was struggling soon thereafter and today it rarely rises above the level of niche spectator sport, in spite of high grassroots basketball participation and strong national teams. We review the evolution of NBL governance, especially the creation of a league competition organiser controlled by the NBL clubs and Basketball Australia in 1989; the merger of that entity, NBL Management Limited, and Basketball Australia in 2009, followed by the subsequent 2013 ‘de-merger’ and formation of a new competition organiser privately owned by the NBL clubs and other investors. More than 30 clubs have come and gone in 35 seasons. The current eight club NBL competition includes a mix of large- and very small-market clubs, private owners and public membership-based entities. Continual financial instability and power struggles between Basketball Australia and the NBL club owners/managers have resulted in a failure to devise a governance model that was a long-term, stable, efficient and profitable agreement between either the NBL clubs themselves, or between the NBL competition organiser and Basketball Australia.

Constitutional Voting Rules of Australian National Sporting Organizations: Comparative Analysis and Principles of Constitutional Design

In 2012 and 2013, four Australian national sporting organisations (NSOs), the Australian Football League, the Australian Rugby League Commission Limited, BA Limited (Basketball Australia) and Football Federation Australia Limited were also the national league competition organiser (NLCO) for their sport. All four NSOs are not-for-profit companies. We apply the model of optimal voting rules proposed by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock to the actual voting rules adopted by the NSOs. This model focuses on the minimisation of costs associated with voting. We find that the NSO voting rules largely conform to the model although there are exceptions. In particular, constitutional issues (amendment of the constitutions of the NSOs and company wind up) require the approval of a greater proportion of the members than electoral issues (election and removal of company directors). Those issues with the highest costs (such as the appointment and removal of NSO company members and national league clubs) are typically removed from the domain of voting by company members to strengthen the independence of the NSO from the company members.

Management Reference Points for Sporting Leagues: Simulating League Expansion and the Effect of Alternative Player Drafting Regulations

Effective resource management requires measures of performance, often in relation to targets, that attempt to balance conflicting management objectives. In financial situations conflicts can occur when balancing the need to save and spend, for biological resources it occurs between conservation and utilisation, and in sporting leagues it occurs through the desire for competitive balance. Recognising these conflicts, management must make decisions regarding the optimal state of a resource, and set target reference points accordingly. Dramatic and economically costly steps may be required when a resource is in a poor state, or when it moves beyond a limit reference point: a decision to declare bankruptcy, to close a fishery or forestry, or to provide financial support or other incentives to poor performing sporting clubs. In this chapter we define management reference points for a win-maximising sporting league through the use of a non-equilibrium simulation model. We show how management objectives can include reference points, time frames and probabilities, and how simulation models can assist decision makers to achieve such objectives. We then provide an example for a league that wishes to establish a new team, and demonstrate how models can guide choices among alternative strategies in relation to management reference points.