IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/25806.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Free Ride, Take it Easy: An Empirical Analysis of Adverse Incentives Caused by Revenue Sharing

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel, Rascher
  • Matt, Brown
  • Mark, Nagel
  • Chad, McEvoy

Abstract

A fundamental belief in professional sport leagues is that competitive balance is needed to maximize demand and revenues; therefore, leagues have created policies attempting to attain proper competitive balance. Further, research posits that objectives of professional sport teams’ owners include some combination of winning and profit maximization. Although the pursuit of wins is a zero sum game, revenue generation and potential profit making is not. This article focuses upon the National Football League’s potential unintended consequences of creating the incentive for some teams to free ride on the rest of the league’s talent and brand. It examines whether an owner’s objectives to generate increased revenues and profits are potentially enhanced by operating as a continual low-cost provider while making money from the shared revenues and brand value of the league. The present evidence indicates that, overall, being a low-cost provider is more profitable than increasing player salaries in an attempt to win additional games.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel, Rascher & Matt, Brown & Mark, Nagel & Chad, McEvoy, 2009. "Free Ride, Take it Easy: An Empirical Analysis of Adverse Incentives Caused by Revenue Sharing," MPRA Paper 25806, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:25806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/25806/1/MPRA_paper_25806.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scully, Gerald W., 1995. "The Market Structure of Sports," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226743950, December.
    2. Rodney Fort & James Quirk, 1995. "Cross-subsidization, Incentives, and Outcomes in Professional Team Sports Leagues," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 1265-1299, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frederic Palomino & Jozsef Sakovics, 2000. "Revenue sharing in professional sports leagues: for the sake of competitive balance or as a result of monopsony power?," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 59, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    2. Rosen, Sherwin & Sanderson, Allen, 2001. "Labour Markets in Professional Sports," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(469), pages 47-68, February.
    3. Cyrenne, Philippe, 2001. "A Quality-of-Play Model of a Professional Sports League," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(3), pages 444-452, July.
    4. Allen R. Sanderson & John J. Siegfried, 2003. "Thinking about Competitive Balance," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(4), pages 255-279, November.
    5. Philip L. Hersch & Jodi E. Pelkowski, 2019. "The Consequences (and Nonconsequences) of Ownership Change: The Case of Major League Baseball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(1), pages 72-90, January.
    6. Wladimir Andreff, 2009. "Équilibre compétitif et contrainte budgétaire dans une ligue de sport professionnel," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 60(3), pages 591-633.
    7. Tina Heubeck & Jochen Scheuer, "undated". "Incentive Contracts in Team Sports - Theory and Practice," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2002-1-1042, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    8. Matthieu Llorca & Thierry Teste, 2016. "Dépenses salariales et performance dans l’industrie du football," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(2), pages 125-145.
    9. Andrew Zimbalist, 2003. "Sport as Business," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(4), pages 503-511, Winter.
    10. E. Woodrow Eckard, 2001. "Baseball’s Blue Ribbon Economic Report," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 2(3), pages 213-227, August.
    11. Frederic Palomino and Luca Rigotti., 2000. "The Sport League's Dilemma: Competitive Balance versus Incentives to Win," Economics Working Papers E00-292, University of California at Berkeley.
    12. Todd D. Kendall, 2003. "Spillovers, Complementarities, and Sorting in Labor Markets with an Application to Professional Sports," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(2), pages 389-402, October.
    13. Jeffrey G. Owen, 2003. "The Stadium Game," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 4(3), pages 183-202, August.
    14. Palomino, Frederic & Sakovics, Jozsef, 2004. "Inter-league competition for talent vs. competitive balance," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 783-797, June.
    15. Wladimir Andreff & Nicolas Scelles, 2015. "Walter C. Neale 50 Years After," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(8), pages 819-834, December.
    16. David G. Surdam, 2007. "A Tale of Two Gate‐Sharing Plans: The National Football League and the National League, 1952‐1956," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(4), pages 931-946, April.
    17. Young Hoon Lee, 2009. "The Impact of Postseason Restructuring on the Competitive Balance and Fan Demand in Major League Baseball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(3), pages 219-235, June.
    18. Michael Lewis & Yeujun Yoon, 2018. "An Empirical Examination of the Development and Impact of Star Power in Major League Baseball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(2), pages 155-187, February.
    19. Paul Downward, 2002. "Book Review: The Economics of Football," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 3(4), pages 374-377, November.
    20. Lenten, Liam J.A. & Geerling, Wayne & Kónya, László, 2012. "A hedonic model of player wage determination from the Indian Premier League auction: Further evidence," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 60-71.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    free riding; free ride; football; profit maximization; regression; owner incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:25806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.