Inside the NBA Bubble: How Black Players Performed Better without Fans

Mauro Caselli, Paolo Falco and Babak Somekh

No 1178, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: In the NBA, predominantly Black players play in front of predominantly non-Black fans. Using the 'NBA bubble', a natural experiment induced by COVID-19, we show that the performance of Black players improved significantly with the absence of fans vis-à-vis White players. This is consistent with Black athletes being negatively affected by racist pressure from mostly non-Black audiences. We dispel several alternative hypotheses. Beyond hurting individual players, fans' behavior causes significant economic damage to the NBA by lowering the quality of the game.

Keywords: discrimination; harassment; racism; performance; basketball; NBA; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 J15 J71 Z22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-lma and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Inside the NBA Bubble: how Black players performed better without fans (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1178

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