Financial Restrictions and Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues

Konstantin Sonin and Vsevolod Grabar

No 13154, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: A dramatic surge in revenues from TV broadcasting and brand-selling forced modern football clubs, simultaneously involved in domestic and European competitions, to operate in a new environment. In response, the Union of European Football Associations introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulations, a set of financial regulations that affect all major European clubs. To assess the impact of financial restrictions (e.g., salary caps) on the default risk for individual clubs and competitive balance, we construct a game-theoretic model where clubs make decisions on the amounts they borrow and spend on the team. The impact of financial restrictions on competitive balance is positive; the total amount of debt also decreases at equilibrium. Finally, we show that financial restrictions create more incentives to invest in second-tier clubs compared to the situation in which there are no financial regulations.

Keywords: Uefa financial fair play; Competitive balance; Investment tournaments; Financial regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D63 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13154 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:13154

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP13154

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().