I ranking internazionali come rimedio alle asimmetrie informative negli sport individuali: il caso del ciclismo professionistico

Davide Tondani

Microeconomics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Recent studies in information economics demonstrated that asymmetric information existing between market agents induce a lost in efficiency as well as market failures. This paper aims to draw heavily from these theoretical intuitions in order to analyse the individual sports’ environment. The results suggest that the lack of information produces inefficiencies affecting negatively agents welfare, where, agents are sport teams, event promoters and sponsoring firms. By means of a model of signaling, this paper shows that in individual sports, the mechanism of rankings as that introduced in professional tennis or – more recently – in professional cyclism, is able to offset the informative asymmetry about the real abilities of the athlete (agent) and the other actors (principals) of the sport market. In particular, the analysis shows that the signaling mechanism implemented in professional cyclism since 1989 induced a process of convergence of main sponsors on teams supposed to enrol the best cyclists which take part into the main stages and one-day races. L’economia dell’informazione dimostra che in presenza di informazioni asimmetriche tra gli agenti, i mercati tendono a perdere efficienza e a fallire. La stessa teoria, applicata al mondo degli sport individuali, porta a concludere che la carenza informativa produce inefficienze che influenzano il benessere degli agenti di questo particolare mercato: organizzatori di eventi, sponsor, gruppi sportivi. Applicando un modello di signaling, questo articolo mostra come negli sport individuali i ranking di merito, come quelli introdotti nel tennis e più recentemente nel ciclismo professionistico, suppliscono all’asimmetria che intercorre tra l’atleta (agente) e gli altri operatori del mercato sportivo (principali) circa le sue reali abilità sportive. In particolare, si dimostra che il meccanismo di selezione implementato nel ciclismo professionistico a partire dal 1989 ha portato ad un processo di concentrazione degli sponsor con maggiori capacità di investimento pubblicitario sui gruppi sportivi comprendenti atleti con caratteristiche qualitative maggiori e partecipanti al circuito delle competizioni a tappe e in linea più importanti del calendario.

Keywords: information; economics; sport; signaling; ranking; asymmetric; information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 D80 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2005-10-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-spo
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 25. Published on 'Rivista di Diritto ed Economia dello Sport', vol.1, 2005(2)
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Journal Article: I ranking internazionali come rimedio alle asimmetrie informative negli sport individuali: il caso del ciclismo professionistico (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0510003

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