Sport as Business

Andrew Zimbalist

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2003, vol. 19, issue 4, 503-511

Abstract: There is both a popular and academic literature suggesting that owners of sports teams do not profit maximize. The alternative formulation entails either win or utility maximization, usually subject to a breakeven constraint. Another line of economic analysis holds that team owners do fundamentally profit maximize or that profit maximization provides a useful benchmark against which to assess actual performance. There has been some empirical work attempting to decipher the true objective function of team owners. These results are inconclusive. Objective functions, however, remain important because they affect both owner behaviour and league performance. In practice, owners' objectives vary by team, league, and country and are strongly affected by how the team relates to an owner's other assets. The next task for modelling the behaviour and performance of sports leagues is to take fuller account of the diversity of ownership objectives within a given league. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:oup:oxford:v:19:y:2003:i:4:p:503-511

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam

More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().