By Robbie Butler

We kick-off Day 2 of ESEA 2023 at 9am this morning. More than 150 presenters and co-authors from around that world have papers at our conference on the main UCC campus in Cork.

The conference is truly international. As well as a strong presence from Ireland, the UK and Europe, others have travelled from the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Columbia, Taiwan, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. 

Yesterday's afternoon sessions started with a keynote address from Prof. Jane Ruseski of West Virginia University and was followed by parallel session focused on the themes of Sustainability, Labour, Performances, Management and Ownership. 

Today's morning session turned to the themes of Officiating and Rules, Events, Competition Design and Competition. Our mid-morning session now focus on the Economics of Football, Participation, Volunteering and Funding, and Performance.

​Our quad is the location for this event and was looking fantastic this morning shortly before kick-off.

The Economics Department at Universidad de Los Andes is pleased to invite researchers to submit a paper for the first Latin American Sports Economics Conference. Submissions are welcome in any area related to Sports Economics. Papers on Latin American issues are particularly encouraged. Completed work and research in progress are equally admissible, but manuscripts already accepted for publication should not be submitted. The conference language is English, but we are open to outstanding research written and/or presented in Spanish (translation available).
The conference has as keynote speakers Dennis Coates (U. of Maryland) and James Reade (U. of Reading).

More information can be found here: https://economia.uniandes.edu.co/noticia/call-papers-first-latin-american-sports-economics-conference-lasec

By Robbie Butler

We are delighted to let readers know Fahy, R., Butler, D. and Butler, R. (2023). Broadcasting demand for Formula One: Viewer preferences for outcome uncertainty in the United States in Managing Sport and Leisure is now available online.

We explore the determinants of broadcasting demand for Formula One racing in the United States of America and pay specific attention to the relationship between outcome uncertainty and television viewership figures. Using implied probabilities derived from betting odds, we offer an approach to measuring outcome uncertainty that differs from those currently established in the Formula One broadcasting demand literature.

We do not find any evidence to support the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. On the contrary, viewers display a preference for less closely contested races. We find that scheduling and accessibility to live races are important determinants of viewership. Our results have practical implications and can guide the sport's administrators and television broadcasters seeking to understand a growing national market for F1 broadcasting.

​The full paper can be access here.

Our full catalog of peer-reviewed published papers can be found here. They include the economics of football, rugby, boxing, horse racing and Gaelic games. ​

By Robbie Butler

The 14th European Sport Economics Association (ESEA) Conference will be held at University College Cork, Ireland next week. The ESEA Conference is the annual gathering of the ESEA - a scientific association founded in 2010 that pursues the goal of promoting communications between scientists and practitioners working in the field of sports economics.

On Monday events kick-off with the annual PhD workshop. Candidates from Europe, North American and Asia will be in attendance and will receive direction and advice from leading academics in the field. 

The main conference starts on Wednesday with a keynote address by Professor Jane Ruseski (John Chambers College of Business and Economics) of West Virginia University. Professor Ruseski is an economist of international standing and will be the first female keynote speaker at the conference. Over 100 delegates are expected at UCC for the start and the two days that follow.

The conference will conclude next Friday with a keynote address by Professor Alex Bryson of (IZA Institute of Labor Economics) University College London (UCL). Prof. Bryson is Professor of Quantitative Social Science at UCL's Social Research Institute and also a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (London) and a Rutgers Research Faculty Fellow. 

By Robbie Butler

One of the highlights of the Irish summer racing season ended on Sunday evening in Ballybrit, Galway when You Oughta Know one the final race on the card for champion trainer Willie Mullins. It was Mullins' 10th winner of the week, and bookended the Festival perfectly for the trainer as he had also saddled the 1st winner of the week-long festival back on Monday.

Mullins has become the annual winner of the Leading Trainer Award at Galway - replacing the legendary Dermot Weld - and will continue to dominate the Festival in the years ahead. I noticed this trend some time ago and started to follow the Mullins' trained runners.

For the past 5 seasons, a even stake on all Mullins' runners during the Festival had proved to be a strategy that could successfully beat the market. Horses priced 9/2 or shorter were "win" stakes, while 5/1 or longer priced horses were backed each-way. 

In total 62 horses were run by the trainer. Things were going very well from Day 1 to Day 4 with a return of more than 30%. The last three days proved to be poor. By Friday, the return was still 6% but by the last race on Sunday evening, a 9% loss was the outcome. 

It may be that the trainer just had a slightly poorer meeting that previous years. An 11th winner may have returned a profit. a 12th win would almost certainly have done so. It could also be that the bookies have figured this strategy out and are pricing the horses accordingly. Or maybe it is both of the above.

By John Considine

This week, one of the more famous Irishmen in black passed away.  We are unlikely to see the likes of Jimmy Cooney again - a man who played and officiated at the highest level of hurling.
 
When Jim O’Sullivan published Men in Black in 2002, I would bet that the most-read chapter was the one on Jimmy Cooney.  When the book was published it was only four years since Cooney had taken charge of the most famous game, in a year of infamous games, at the close of an era of revolutionary change in hurling.  Interest in Jimmy Cooney might have been stirred by a game between Clare and Offaly but one cannot read that chapter without getting a greater appreciation of the man and the way events can spiral out of control.
 
The game is best remembered for the timing error by Cooney at the end of the game.  Unfortunately, others in various roles did not give Cooney the opportunity to rectify the error.  This was a systems failure.  However, I want to focus on another decision made by Jimmy Cooney during that faithful day.
 
A colleague of mine has a saying that “no good deed goes unpunished”.  He could have a point.  On that day in 1998, Jimmy Cooney had to make a decision regarding a sanction on Michael Duignan.  Here is a recording of the strike.  Cooney describes the incident in Men in Black and his reasoning/rationalisation.
 
“My first instinct when I saw it was, ‘send him off.’  But, as I came over to him – and this is the truth – I looked at the score and said, oh God, there are nine points between them and if I do this I’m only making trouble for myself.  It will be gone out of Offaly’s reach at so early a stage and they’ll only get negative in their hurling.  That was the way I ‘read’ it and I decided to leave him on.  But, it was probably a wrong decision.  It was.  He should have gone!  I saw the incident clearly.  If David Forde had stayed down I would have had no hesitation in putting him off, but David jumped up and ran off.”
 
Cooney’s decision was taken in, what he perceived as, the greater interest of the game.  The spirit of the game rather than the letter of the law.  Everyone wants some level of competitive balance.  Cooney was no different.  He erred on the side of competitive balance (and possibly player safety).  A human instinct.  Psychologists and (behavioural) economists might label it a bias in human decision making.  The bias, this compensating tendency, being a departure from some idealised benchmark.  Maybe it is the benchmark that needs adjusting.  This brings us to the man who spotted the evolution of that benchmark and another revolutionary ’98.
 
Ireland had its eighteenth-century revolution in 1798.  Not as successful or memorable as the French or American revolutions.  Those revolutions were celebrated.  The efforts of the United Irishmen less so.  This is best captured in ballad “Who fears to Speak of ‘98” written by the economist John Ingham Kells in the middle of the nineteenth-century – motivated by his view that contemporary nationalists were downplaying the revolution of 1798.  The Trinity College political economist was as perceptive of economic currents as he was of political currents.  A few decades later, John Ingham Kells was the first to notice the movement towards homo economicus.  An evolution in economics.
 
The claim that John Ingham Kells was the first to classify “economic men” is made by Joseph Persky in “The Ethology of Homo Economicus”.  The paper was published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.  At the time, the journal was a favourite for behavioural economists seeking to undermine the dominance of homo economicus.  Many of the articles published empirical evidence of decisions that departed from those predicted by the homo economicus construct.  The anomalies accumulated.  They were labelled bias and blunders.  Cooney’s decision not to send off Duignan would be seen as evidence of such a bias.  There is a need for a more systematic examination of these decisions.

By John Considine

This day 10 years ago this blog was first published.  It started with a post outlining a decade of Irish Exchequer expenditure on sport.  Below is a picture that extends some of that analysis.  In 2013, capital expenditure had been cut to the bone but was about to recover.  Except for the General Election year of 2016, it never returned to the Celtic Tiger era situation where it was larger than non-capital expenditure.  Non-capital expenditure received a significant increase in 2020 as the government sought to cushion sport from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Some of that change in expenditure is starting to unwind.

Over the decade, some of the contributors to this blog have embarked on a campaign to promote Cork as a location for sports economics.  The Butler Brothers have had some success as indicated by the arrival of the annual conference of the European Sports Economics Association in Cork next month.  It is a culmination of a decade of workshops in sports economics where willingness of those in the sports economics community to come to Cork played a big role.

A big thank you to all who have contributed to the blog.  My first post of 10 years ago was followed by posts by Declan Jordan, Robbie Butler, David Butler, Gary Burns, Paul O'Sullivan, John Eakins, Ed Valentine, Niall O'Sullivan, Chris Herlihy, Bill Keating, Sean O'Conaill, Elliot Dineen, Geraldine Ryan, Laura Donnellan, Sean O'Connor, Eoin Whyte, John Paul Clifford, Aidan Moynihan, Padraig MacConsaidin, Stephen Brosnan, Fiona Mullins, Brian Corcoran, Mark Fallon, Robert Reid, Farai Jena, Barry Reilly, Kathy Stout, Diarmuid Gillingham, Brian Cronin, Daragh O'Leary, Conor O'Shea, Jessica Considine, Johan Rewilak, Ronan Fahy, Colm Pearson, Colm O'Mullane, Cathal Buckley, Bill Gaine, David Duffy, Jane O'Sullivan, James Considine, Adam McCarthy, and Thomas Konecke.  

As is customary at this time of year, we will take our summer break. ​We hope all our readers have a very enjoyable summer 

We will return on Thursday 27th of July 2023 to mark the 10th anniversary of the first blog post!

By Robbie Butler

The ESEA Conference comes to Cork in August (see https://www.cubsucc.com/esea-home/). Part of the event includes the ‘Best Young Researcher Paper Award’, which is announced at the conference.

Graduate students are invited to submit a full paper (30 pages maximum in APA 7 style incl. references, tables, and figures) by the 15th of July 2023 to Dr Katrin Scharfenkamp (katrin.scharfenkamp@uni-bielefeld.de). You may also submit studies that were not initially submitted for presentation at the conference. (Please note that only the BYRPA winner will present the awarded study at the conference. No further papers can be accepted for presentation.)

For a paper to be eligible, all authors of the research paper must be graduate students, and the researcher must agree to present the paper at the conference. The award winner will be announced at the conference dinner.

By Robbie Butler

Just over a year about a wrote "Rep of Ireland Managers - Past and Present". It attempted to put some context on the performance of managers through time. 

To repeat It does not control for the opposition, venue, competition, etc. but is rather an overview of all games under each manager.

Last year's figure and this year's updated version appear below. The X-axis lists the number of games in charge, while the Y-axis counts the number of games each fails to win. In theory, the "perfect manager" would win every game so the line would be horizontal and at the bottom of the chart. Hence, the steeper the line, the poorer the results. 

Current manager Stephen Kenny has improved over the past year. With updates, the nine additional games include 4 wins - Kenny's best period in the dugout. The Dubliner is now level with Eoin Hand winning 9 of his first 32 games. 

A win in Greece on Friday will move Kenny ahead of Hand and close him in on John Giles record. Giles lasted 36 games, winning 12. Should Kenny fail to win however, he will be lock-and-step with Hand. Hand only lasted 39 games before getting the sack.