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Project

Applications of competition policy to the sports industry.

The professional sports industry in Europe and the USA conducts several practices which appear to be textbook cases of anti-competitive behavior. Famous examples include sharing gate revenues, geographically splitting up markets and collective sales of TV rights, advertising and merchandise. Still, in many instances antitrust authorities have neglected to outlaw these practices. This research project bundles four contributions that look into some major competition policy issues in the sports industry. First, it examines how a league may use revenue sharing as a device to coordinate talent investments when sports fans are diversified. Second, the project evaluates how the choice of different contest success functions influences the results of previous contributions in the literature. In a third contribution it introduces a model of platform competition among clubs to investigate the effects of jointly selling advertising on sports consumers and advertisers. A final empirical contribution looks into the importance of factors that may impact on the distribution of playing strengths between teams in a league. This has great relevance to antitrust policy, as it is a crucial issue in the discussion around allowing collective sales of TV rights in Europe.
Date:1 Oct 2010 →  30 Sep 2012
Keywords:ECONOMICS, COMPETITION POLICY
Disciplines:Applied economics