Late conversion: the impact of professionalism on European rugby union

Vincent Hogan (), Patrick Massey () and Shane Massey

No 201118, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Rugby union only went professional in 1995, much later than other major team sports. League structures and arrangements regarding revenue sharing and salary caps differ between the three main European leagues. We consider the impact of these differences on competitive balance. In addition, unlike soccer, rugby does not require leagues to be organised along national lines, which has enabled the smaller rugby playing countries to establish a joint league. This has prevented a migration of all the best players to larger country leagues as has happened in soccer and resulted in a greater degree of competitive balance in European rugby competitions.

Keywords: Rugby; Economics; Rugby Union football--European Union countries; Professional sports--European Union countries; Professionalism in sports--European Union countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig and nep-spo
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3232 First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201118

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().