The 2nd sportseconomics.org Workshop will be held on Friday 22nd of July 2016 at University College Cork. The purpose of this workshop is to discuss and stimulate interdisciplinary research ideas from those working in the areas of economics, sport, coaching, public health, management, and related fields from Ireland and abroad.

The keynote address will be given by Professor Rodney Fort, a Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan. Professor Fort is recognized internationally as an authority on sports economics and business. In over 100 articles and monographs, and 7 books, his work covers sports topics as diverse as sport itself.  His contributions have appeared in the American Economic Review, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Sports Economics.  He also serves on journal editorial boards and as a vice-president for the International Association of Sports Economists. Professor Fort is co-author of Pay Dirt, Hard Ball and 15 Sports Myths and Why They Are Wrong.  His best-selling textbook, Sports Economics, covering pro and college sports, is in its third edition. Professor Fort is a regular speaker on sports issues and has been a panelist at various universities including the Brookings Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.  He has testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust concerning competitive balance issues in baseball and he has been a keynote speaker at international sports congresses in, Germany, Brazil and Spain. In addition, Professor Fort has been featured on national television, cable news channels, and National Public Radio.

We welcome submissions from researchers wishing to present at the event. Abstracts (200-500 words) should be submitted before 30th April 2016 to [email protected]. The researchers name and institute or affiliation should be included in the email. A prompt response will be afforded to all submissions.

The event is free to attend and open to public audiences. Those interested in attending the workshop should complete the registration form here.

This event is kindly funded by the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland “New Foundations” Scheme. If you have any questions about the event or require further details please direct them to [email protected].
 
Further details on the workshop will be made available closer to the date.

Organising Committee: David Butler, Robbie Butler, John Eakins       

By David Butler

In their latest popular book ‘Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception’, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller provide an analysis of the economics of fraud. Akerlof’s lecture at Duke University provides an overview of the theory and Shiller’s TEDxYale talk introduces the idea further. Both are worth watching.  If you're stuck for time, Cass Sunstein offers a good review of the book which he titles Why Free Markets Make Fools of Us.

In short, Akerlof and Shiller claim that the free market acts as a double-edged sword. Despite the benefits, companies can take advantage of consumers and investors by using subtle forms of deception.  ‘Phishing’ connotes big companies suckering customers (the ‘phools’) into buying or investing in dubious products. They argue that phools can be informational victims where facts are distorted or framed a certain way to hook us in. Equally, our emotions can cause us to make bad decisions – emotional arousal may result in a purchase that is not in our long term interest. Examples include the sale of questionable financial investments, cigarettes, and shoddy housing to name but a few.   

Over the weekend I couldn’t help but think that gambling firms could take pride of place on this list of ‘phishermen’ after I viewed the array of betting products offered by the big gambling firms for football matches. While outright betting on football matches could be deemed fair, many big gambling firms clearly advertise what I would call ‘lemon bets’. These most often involve the consumer having to correctly predict multiple outcomes occurring.  For instance, ‘scorecast betting’ involves estimating which player will be the first goal scorer of a match and what the correct score will be – an extremely challenging task. Importantly, these bets are frequently advertised as ‘specials’ in the front window of bookmaker shops in Ireland and the UK despite the extremely low probability of them occurring. Bookmakers also allow customers to make their own product online, where they can combine any goal scorer with a range of score outcomes. The price offered usually appears to be attractive although statistically the predicted outcome is highly unlikely to occur. The conjunction fallacy comes to mind.

The portfolio of bets on offer by all big gambling firms is complex and exhaustive. Scorecasts are just one such example where, in my view, consumers can be ‘phished for a phool’. In Akerlof and Shiller’s scheme it will be likely that all big gambling companies will be forced to advertise these lemon bets to compete. A bad equilibrium will be the outcome.

In Ireland there is a noticeable increase in advertising by gambling firms and their presence on social media has grown dramatically. My opinion would be that the growth of gambling has been aided by the dawn of smart technologies where the computer in our pockets allows us access to 24/7 gambling. The increasing market value of several gambling companies (see the Paddy Power closing share price below 2000-2015) most likely reflects a shift in demand for the product. 

The question is whether informational campaigns are required to protect consumers further? Informational campaigns are provided for other addictive products such as alcohol and cigarettes in an attempt to prevent some form of behavioural market failure. And while our emotions and lack of information do not necessarily lead to a bad decision in terms of gambling perhaps customers need to be reminded that (i) the incentives that are at play - gambling companies are profit-making enterprises and (ii) the information asymmetry -  crucially,  the gambling firms have more information then me or you; they are statistical experts.

By Ed Valentine

Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher. Toni Kroos, Victor Valdes and David Silva. All are world champions in their respective sports. All were born in January.  While this might seem like a coincidence, a growing body of work into this area known as relative age effects now suggest when you are born actually matters!

Assuming a January 1st cut-off date, a person born in the earlier will generally have a physical advantage over somebody born later in the year. Take January and November for example. This ten month difference in birth dates at Under-12 level represents about 8% of the players total life time – a significant amount of time. Footballers generally, though anecdotally, reach their peak between the year 25 and 29. At this stage a 10 month difference counts for about 3% of total life time. Once players begin a professional career the difference in physicality and performance may be long eroded but the key point is the beginning of the career.

Data has been analysed across 30 different elite leagues around the globe and unsurprisingly the numbers favour players born in the first half of the year. There is one notable exception to this however – England. This is because the cut off for birthdays in junior level is taken in September rather than January. The average birth date of elite players in their respective leagues are all in the first six months of the year. In England it’s in the second half of the year.

Across Europe the average birthdate of a citizen is the 1st of July – more or less in the middle of the year. The average birthdate for a professional footballer across 31 of Europe's top leagues is the 9th of May. The data table demonstrates a relatively even spread of birthdates for Europe’s citizens. There are more than 10 percentage point’s difference between the numbers of professional footballers born in the first quarter of the year versus the last quarter with the trend throughout the year being downward.

The data collected further demonstrates there is a significant favourable variance weighted towards the first 6 months of the year. Those born in the final 16 weeks of the 52 are significantly under represented as the graph below shows. Again, this data covers players competing in topflight leagues from Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Rep., Denmark, *England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey and Ukraine

By David Butler

This website has a 'Follow the Pundit!' section where I keep tabs on two football experts who make systematic predictions for the English Premier League. After 260 predictions as of last weekend, the stats for Paul Merson and Mark Lawrenson make for pretty grim reading.  In short, they get more wrong then right and fall for some classic psychological biases.

Is this something unique to these pundits or to the Premier league? Probably not.  This year Ian Holloway, an English football manager and former player has been recruited by Sky Sports have to predict the score line of Football League Matches – this gives us a chance to look at the predictive success of an expert outside of the elite English division.  Ollie however gets on just as poorly as Merse and Lawro. On my count he has predicted 303 Football League (Championship, League 1 & League 2) matches this season. Just like our two Premier League pundits he calls one in ten correct scorelines, but usually gets more results wrong than right in the average week too.  

It’s critical for the sport that the expert’s predictions are imperfect, but keep the information above in mind the next time you hear a pundit predict a football result. How accurate are the experts? About as accurate as you or me!