Description

 

Sport has become omnipresent in our daily lives, which justifies a critical analysis of the socio-economic stakes it represents: are football players paid too much? How much do the Olympic Games cost? Is European football bankrupt? Is sport good for your health? Are we running out of volunteers? Is professional sport rigged? Beyond its economic dimension, it is essential to improve the consideration of the social dimension of sport, whose total value goes far beyond its market value. As the traditional instruments of orthodox economic calculation are ill-suited, a socio-economic analysis of sport is needed.

In 8 chapters and 43 short articles, this book offers a synthesis of knowledge with a presentation of the problems and controversies raised, also referring to numerous examples from field studies.

 

Sommaire

Chapter I – The sporting institutions

- Amateur sporting clubs: what economic model?
- European professional sporting leagues: institutions at the heart of a sporting logic?
- North American professional sports leagues: institutions at the service of a financial logic?

Chapter II – The financing of professional sport

- Stock market listing: a development lever for sports clubs?
- Club deficits: structural financial instability?
- Sports stadia (mega): what legitimacy for public funding?
- Financial Fair Play: a tool for regulating clubs' financial management?
- Naming: a new financial opportunity for clubs?
- Club owners: Capital at the service of sport?
- Televised sport: broadcasting rights and tele-dependence?

Chapter III – The Glorious Uncertainty of Sport

- Competitive balance: what challenge to a central concept of sports economics?
- Luxury tax: economic solidarity and uncertainty of outcome?
- Regulation: how to reconcile balanced sports competition with fair economic competition?
- Rookie Draft: allocating new talent, balancing competition and maximising profits?
- Salary cap: sporting regulation or financial regulation?

Chapter IV – The Professional Sport labour market

- Sports agents: what market power?
- Bosman ruling: market deregulation and destabilisation of competition?
- Segmentation: why is the professional sports labour market so highly segmented?
- Superstars: why does the winner take all?
- Tournament theory: can we guarantee the best performance of athletes?
- Third-party ownership: a controversial instrument?
- Transfers: must the system be reformed?

Chapter V – The Internationalisation of Sport

- Global public good: a choice between two models for a new global governance of sport?
- Macroeconomics of international sporting success: How to win medals?
- Globalisation of sport: the domination of an economic logic?
- Soft power: the political instrumentalisation of sport?

Chapter VI – The Economic Impact of Sport

- Opportunity costs: what policies should be applied to major sports projects?
- Sport employment: what assessment of the job creation potential of sport?
- Legacy: what is the long-term impact of mega-sporting events?
- Economic impact: developing a standard methodology?
- Economic weight of sport: a very imperfect assessment?

Chapter VII – The social functions of sport

- Volunteering: how to assess the value of volunteering in sport?
- Costs/benefit: towards the recognition of complementarity between quantitative and qualitative approaches to sport?
- Evaluation: what decision-making tools should be used at the heart of sporting policies?
- Externalities: how to define and internalise the effects of sporting events?
- The Future of Sport: What sport in a world of degrowth?
- Social utility: how can the social functions of sport be measured and recognised?
- Value: a new tool to help decision-making around the total economic value of the sporting spectacle?

Chapter VIII – Sporting abuses

- Doping: an attached product of competition?
- Economics of crime: what are the shortcomings of orthodox economic analysis of sporting abuses?
- Sporting exception: what are the specificities of sport?
- Taxes: an effective instrument to fight against the failures of sports markets?
- Winner's curse: can we avoid the "curse of the winner"?