Citation
Barajas, A.P.A. (2014), "Reinventing the economics of sport", Sport, Business and Management, Vol. 4 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBM-05-2014-0027
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Reinventing the economics of sport
Article Type: Guest editorial From: Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal, Volume 4, Issue 3
It is a pleasure to introduce this special issue, collecting a selection of papers presented at the IV Congreso Iberoamericano de Economía del Deporte (IV Iberoamerican Conference on Sport Economics) in Madrid in 2013 under the title “Reinventing the economics of sport”. During the conference, researchers from Spain, Portugal and several Latin American countries presented 54 scientific papers in fields related to the economy of sports and its management. The conference included the following research areas: economic impact of sports; financial balance in sports organizations; economic planning in sports; financial health of public and private sports entities; competitive balance in sports leagues; efficiency and sport betting; and marketing and new sporting models. All these topics are included in the scope of Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal.
The papers selected for this special issue, even though they analyze football and basketball, cover a wide range of topics such as productivity, efficiency, perceived quality, perceived value, satisfaction, human capital, contingent valuation and social networks.
The first paper, by Brosed-Làzaro, Espitia-Escuer and García-Cebriàn, aims to determine whether basketball teams perform at their potential limit or whether they should win more matches and then which are the aspects of the game that deserve the attention of the managers to organize the staff in an efficient way. The study measures the efficiency of the Spanish basketball teams (ACB League) and develops their productive activity for the achievement of wins as well as the evolution of total factor productivity between the seasons 2008/2009 and 2011/2012. This issue is relevant given that performing on the field efficiently is the best way to generate savings and this minimizes costs. Most of the papers on basketball focus on NBA so the paper by Brosed-Lázaro et al. contribute by applying DEA to European basket. Moreover, they have included the play offs in their analysis. This fact is relevant because the champion is the winner in that stage.
The second paper, by Calabuig, Crespo, Prado-Gascó and Núñez-Pomar, provides evidence of the validity and reliability of a brief and holistic questionnaire that allows managers of sporting events to obtain global information about the performance of the service delivered. Furthermore, the model confirms perceived value and satisfaction as predictors of future intentions of basketball spectators. The authors highlight the existing relation between service quality, perceived value, satisfaction and future intentions. His paper comes to corroborate that the perceived value is a precedent for future intentions.
The third paper, by Corral and Calero, focusses on the human capital policy and analyses whether the protection offered by some football teams to local players has a positive effect on the quality of the players from these regions. They conclude that the effect of protection on the productive factors in a competitive environment, like football, creates a positive influence on the development and growth of this productive factor. This is consequent to the fact that protection offers more chances to promote and improve productive capacity.
The work by Corral and Calero address a topic that is going to require more attention in the coming years. The human capital policy is closely linked to the “quota systems” where the governing bodies of different sports try to limit the number of foreign players or to impose a number of national players. For example, the Spanish basketball authorities have imposed the system known as “quota of Spanish formation players” that forces every club to hire every season five or six players formed in Spain. This kind of quotas could maybe, as Corral and Calero assert, improve the capacity but the next question to ask will be: which is the cost of that kind of measures?
The paper by Castellanos, Garcia and Sanchez quantifies the value of the intangible benefits associated with the existence of a professional football club in A Coruña (Spain). It is interesting to point out that two contingent valuation surveys were used to estimate and compare the willingness to pay in order to avoid a loss (team relegation) in two different contexts: economic prosperity (2003) and crisis (2012). The comparisons between the results from both surveys give rise to the conclusion that factors such as general economic conditions and the plausibility of the hypothetical disappearance of a football team influence the consumption of the public goods generated by the team and the value that city residents assign to them.
Finally, the paper by Araújo, de Carlos and Fraiz studies the use made of the social network, Facebook, by the main European football clubs, the response of the users and the interaction between clubs and fans. They assert that the European football clubs are using their official sites in Facebook as a bidirectional communication tool that makes the interaction with the fans easier. Previous studies have focussed on the presence of football in the web 2.0 in general but they do not pay much attention to the kind of contents offered in a particular social network and how users have responded to them.
Summarizing, this special issue reflects the variety of possible researches in sport management. Here there are five different topics analyzed from five different perspectives. Moreover, some questions have been answered but also some others have arisen and open new lines of research as: how to measure productivity in sports in order to improve the efficiency analysis? How to increase the perceived quality in order to increase the future consumption? Do the protective measures for talent have also positive effects or will they increase the salaries? Which would be the real financial support that clubs could expect from their fans? Or, how can the clubs manage better their social network to increase their value? Here there are some questions but, if the special is attractive, sure that each paper will stimulate the readers to try to answer them or find other lines of research.
Angel Barajas
Department of Accountancy and Finance, University of Vigo, Ourense, Spain
About the Guest Editor
Angel Barajas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Accountancy and Finance, University of Vigo, Spain. He is a Visiting Lecturer at the Universities in Germany, Russia and UK. He is currently the Director of the MBA in Sport at the University of Vigo and is a Researcher for the Spanish Economic Observatory of Sport. His research interests include investment valuation, intellectual capital and finance of sports.