Professional Sports Leagues Research Articles

Prognostic imaging markers for sports-related concussion: a review

As professional sports leagues have begun to recognize the detrimental short- and long-term impact of concussions, understanding the severity of concussions has taken on increasing importance. The ability to understand the microstructural and functional brain pathology of sports-related concussions (SRCs) has improved due to advances in neuroimaging. Advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques can now clearly show brain damage caused by concussions; however, little is known with respect to the link between brain damage and the long-term effects. This overview summarizes the potential association between advanced imaging findings and prognosis of SRCs. We found that diffusion tensor imaging, quantitative susceptibility mapping, neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging, perfusion weighted imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, positron emission tomography, and functional MRI are promising technologies for providing objective prognostic information in patients with SRCs. Additional research is warranted to investigate the early imaging diagnosis of long-term effects, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy and post-concussion syndrome.

A League to Call Their Own—Premier Rugby 7s: Developing a Digital Strategy to Engage New Fans

The Premier Rugby 7s case challenges students to consider a digital marketing strategy for a start-up professional sport league. Unlike many major sports in the American marketplace, the case presents Rugby 7s—a relative newcomer to the sporting marketplace—as the newest professional sport. In this case, marketing consultants are faced with the challenge of designing a digital marketing strategy for a “new generation” of sport fans. Drawing upon the tenets of traditional marketing, readers will explore the development of target markets, the challenges in introducing a new sport to fans, how to capitalize on new media trends, and how to differentiate their product in a crowded marketplace.

Player Mobility and Competitive Balance Regulation in Professional Sports Leagues

Competitive balance regulation is more widespread in North American than in Europan sports leagues. The present paper addresses the question whether this observation can be explained with the help of differences in the degree of player mobility. Using an extended version of the workhorse contest model of sports leagues, the paper shows that the answer depends on the kind of competitive balance regulation. While player mobility may help to explain the difference with respect to salary regulation (e.g., salary caps), the choice of revenue sharing schemes turns out to be independent of player mobility.

Formation of a range of sports league services

The article discusses the features of sports league services. Special attention is paid to the factors that influence the formation of the nomenclature of sports league services, as a structured list of products offered that may be in the league’s assortment. As the main of such factors, consumers are singled out, which make it possible to divide the services of sports leagues into commercial and non–commercial. The development of these groups of the range of services of sports leagues occurs in different ways. The main sources of profit in the activities of professional sports leagues are the sale of tickets and season tickets for sports competitions, the sale of rights to television and radio broadcasts of competitions, advertising and sponsorship and licensing and commercial activities of clubs. The problems of the formation of the nomenclature of sports league services are highlighted — this is the lack of market conditions, competition and demand, as well as the lack of consumer orientation. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the proposal to form a range of sports league services based on the use of active marketing, analysis of the solvency of the main consumer groups, as well as the introduction of innovative services using digital technologies.

Better Together? Examining the Impact of Official Secondary Ticketing Partnerships on Consumers’ Attitudes and Behaviors

Abstract: To overcome the negative stigma due to their association with ticket fraud and price inflation, research has suggested secondary ticket market companies partner with professional sport leagues and teams. Moreover, such a partnership can increase revenues of the ticket market companies. However, additional research is needed to explore how official partnerships influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. Relevant findings clarify the mechanism through which official partnerships affect secondary ticket providers’ financial success and provide insight into consumers’ attitudes toward the ticket resale industry while informing the literature on the effectiveness of sponsorships. Thus, utilizing a multi-study design, the current research examines consumers’ perceptions of official partnerships and assesses their impact on purchase intentions. Also, given historical negative perceptions of the secondary ticket market, the current study investigates the mediating effects of perceived risk and the moderating effects of ticket price.

Current Perceptions of Diversity Among Head Team Physicians and Head Athletic Trainers: Results Across US Professional Sports Leagues.

Background:Discrepancies in race, ethnicity, and sex among health care providers and their patients have been shown to affect the patient-provider relationship as well as the quality of care. Currently, minority and female representation among orthopaedic surgeons remains low. Given the large proportion of minority athletes and their degree of public visibility, professional sports serves as an important arena within which to analyze the diversity of health care providers.Purpose:To describe and evaluate the current level of diversity of head team physicians (HTPs) and head athletic trainers (ATCs), primarily in terms of race and sex, within men’s professional sports leagues in the United States.Study Design:Cross-sectional study.Methods:Five major US professional sports leagues were evaluated: National Basketball Association, National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and Major League Baseball. Publicly available data were collected to identify the HTPs and head ATCs for each team within these leagues. Two independent observers analyzed photographs and names of these individuals to determine his or her perceived race and sex, with disagreements being resolved by a third independent observer. Other physician data collected included graduate degree(s), specialty, and number of years in practice. Kappa coefficients (κ) were employed to evaluate interobserver reliability. Chi-square, Fisher exact, and t tests were used for statistical comparisons across leagues.Results:The κ values for perceived race were 0.85 for HTPs and 0.89 for head ATCs, representing near-perfect interobserver agreement. Minorities comprised 15.5% of HTPs and 20.7% of ATCs (P = .24). Women comprised 3.9% of HTPs and 1.3% of head ATCs (P = .017). The majority of HTPs were orthopaedic surgeons with medical doctorates. Female HTPs had significantly fewer years in practice compared with male HTPs (15.0 ± 4.9 vs 23.1 ± 9.6; P = .04).Conclusion:The lead physicians and athletic training providers for men’s professional sports teams demonstrated low rates of minority and female representation, denoting a highly visible area for discussing the role of increased diversity in health care.

The Global Business of Sport in a Brave New World: Conceptualising a Framework for Alternative Futures.

In July 1991, Sports Illustrated published a special issue featuring two articles that prognosticated about what sport would look like 10 years later. As the world entered the 21st century, Sports Illustrated writers, Oscar Johnson and Ron Fimrite, offered their visions of sport in the year 2001. Their analysis highlighted how a range of economic, social and technological changes in society would impact on how sport is structured, produced and consumed, but also offered insights into the future of the major professional sport leagues in North America. It has been 30 years since they publicised their views and, while technology continues to impact sport, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced the world to pause and to consider a range of deep, soul-searching questions about the nature of society, including sport. Against this background, we consider the opportunities and challenges for sport in the 21st century. The paper is divided into three sections including: (1) a reflection on the meaning, value and significance of sport including its privileged position in society, or what we refer to as “sporting exceptionalism”; (2) a brief overview of a case study that illustrates the challenges facing the global business of sport; and, (3) a framework for conceptualising alternative futures in the global business of sport, drawing on examples from women's sport.

Fantasy sports and gambling regulation in the Asia-Pacific

Fantasy sports competitions allow sports fans to become their own managers, to select and organize fantasy teams from existing real-life players in professional sports leagues. The performance of their fantasy teams is dependent on the actual on the field performance of these real-life players. As betting in professional sports is strictly regulated worldwide, fantasy sports offer a form of proxy sports bet. However, a gray area exists whether fantasy sports competitions involve chance (or luck) rather than pure team selection skills. If any form of chance is involved, fantasy sports will be subject to gambling laws and thus may be deemed illegal. With the US Supreme court recently clearing the way for legality of fantasy sports in its largest market, the focus shifts to the industry’s major growth market—Asia-Pacific. This paper reviews the state of fantasy sports and gambling regulation in the Asia-Pacific region. A 21-country analysis is undertaken, offering five insights for fantasy sports industry stakeholders. Based on our findings, we propose a Nevada-model regulatory framework for the Asia-Pacific fantasy sports market.

Gamification through fantasy sports – Empirical findings from professional sport leagues

PurposeIn this paper, Fantasy Sports (Hereafter FS) is conceptually classified as a concept of gamification for professional sport leagues. From a sporting perspective, FS is often criticized because such online activities may be at the expense of physical activities. Otherwise, gamification can ultimately lead to economic advantages for sport leagues. To further empirically analyse this supposed juxtaposition, an empirical study is presented.Design/methodology/approachIn the empirical study, participation and non-participation in a sport league-related FS league are analysed and the study uses a divided sample (N = 319) for a one-factor Welch-ANOVA. FS effects on sport practice (engaging in doing sport) and usage (engaging with sport) of FS players as well as on gaining and retaining fans are investigated.FindingsResults demonstrate that participating in gamified FS experiences increases sport usage while not harming general sport practice. Furthermore, FS participation increases consumption capital as well as sport fans' loyalty and word of mouth (WOM) towards the league brand. Building on the results, league brands should foster gamified FS applications to retain their fan base and acquire new fans.Originality/valueThe authors’ theoretical contribution indicates the importance of FS as a gamified application and essential marketing tool for professional sport leagues. By introducing the terms sport practice and usage, the authors bridge the traditional logic of sport consumption with innovative approaches around engagement in and with sports. The results refute the prejudice that FS leads to less physical activity due to time substitution or displacement.

Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19

Home advantage in professional sports is a widely accepted phenomenon despite the lack of any controlled experiments at the professional level. The return to play of professional sports during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to analyze the hypothesized effect of home advantage in neutral settings. While recent work has examined the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on home advantage in European football, comparatively few studies have examined the effect of restrictions in the North American professional sports leagues. In this work, we infer the effect of and changes in home advantage prior to and during COVID-19 in the professional North American leagues for hockey, basketball, baseball, and American football. We propose a Bayesian multi-level regression model that infers the effect of home advantage while accounting for relative team strengths. We also demonstrate that the Negative Binomial distribution is the most appropriate likelihood to use in modelling North American sports leagues as they are prone to overdispersion in their points scored. Our model gives strong evidence that home advantage was negatively impacted in the NHL and NBA during their strongly restricted COVID-19 playoffs, while the MLB and NFL showed little to no change during their weakly restricted COVID-19 seasons.

COVID-19 and the Changes in Daily Streaming Behavior of Consumers in the United States

In response to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, many aspects of day-to-day life were considerably altered. Professional sports leagues, educational institutions, public worship, and workplace closures were commonplace. Quarantines and lockdowns put public life on hold due to social distancing requirements. As a result, internet users increased their web activity as a way of staying connected and passing the time. In this manuscript, streaming activity on Facebook Gaming, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Twitch is analyzed to discover changes in consumption. It is compared to school closures and stay-at-home orders in US states to better understand changes in social media platform utilization during the global pandemic. This helps to provide insights into user patterns that firms can consider in planning their future social media efforts.

From the Lingerie Girls to the Legends Gladiators: Exploring Erotic Capital and Media sexualization of the LFL’s commercials

This study explains how women’s football strategically transfers the sports league’s image from hyper-sexualized women’s sports entertainment to the real football league. By focusing on the commercial messages from the Lingerie Football League and the Legends Football League, the author could understand the nature of the sexualized culture as the unique entertainment women’s sports league. By adopting reading sport critically (McDonald & Birrell, 1999), the purpose of this study is to understand the difference between the Lingerie and Legends Football League (LFL). This study further examined how women’s erotic capital performed in the LFL. Thus, in what follows, the author explores the extent to which the LFL strategically manages the mediated athletic bodies—in terms of adornments, types of movement, and media framing—presented to its viewership. In so doing, this analysis looks at the mediated feminine body as it is transformed, made into a site for maximum erotic capital. The findings indicate how the critical perspectives explain the LFL context and provide suggestions for further exploring a newly formed women’s professional sports league.

CVM을 이용한 프로스포츠 리그의 공공재적 가치 추정: COVID-19 상황을 중심으로

본 연구는 COVID-19 상황에서 프로스포츠 리그가 우리 사회에 창출하는 비시장적 가치, 그중에서도 공공재적 가치를 중심에 두고 경제적 가치 평가를 수행하였으며, 조건부가치평가법(CVM)을 분석 기법으로 활용하였다. 온라인을 통해 총 1,000부의 설문지가 배포되었으며, 불성실 응답과 저항성 응답을 제외한 총 800부를 최종유효표본으로 활용하여 분석하였다. 로그-로지스틱모형과 토빗 모형을 통해 폐쇄형과 개방형 응답 결과 모두를 제시함으로써 연구결과의 신뢰성과 타당성을 확보하고자 하였다. 분석 결과, 프로스포츠 리그에 대한 1인당 WTP는 DBDC 모형에서 5,590.5원, Tobit 모형에서 6,634.3원으로 추정되었다. 이를 다시 사용가치와 비사용가치로 분해하였으며, DBDC 모형에서 1,414.4원과 1,678.5원, Tobit 모형에서 4,176.1원과 4,955.8원으로 각각 추정되었다. 특히, 비사용가치가 사용가치에 약 3배에 달하는 것으로 나타나 한국의 프로스포츠 리그는 NHL, NFL, NBA 등 해외 리그 구단에 상대적으로 더 높은 공공재적 가치를 갖는 것을 확인하였다. 이상의 결과를 토대로 학술적, 실무적 시사점을 논의하였다.

Eliminating buyer's remorse: An examination of the sunk cost fallacy in the National Hockey League draft.

The sunk cost effect describes the tendency to escalate one's commitment toward a certain endeavor, despite diminishing returns, as a consequence of irreversible resource expenditure that has already been made (Organ Behav Hum Decis Process. 1985;35:124). This effect has been observed in a number of professional sports leagues, wherein teams escalate their commitment toward players selected early in the draft, regardless of performance outcomes, due to large financial commitments invested in them (J Sports Econom. 2017;18:282; Adm Sci Q. 1995;40:474). This effect, however, has yet to be explored in the National Hockey League (NHL). The purpose of this study was to test for sunk cost effects in the NHL, by examining the relationship between draft order and playing time, while controlling for a myriad of confounding variables. Findings from our analyses provide support for the existence of this effect in the NHL, as first-round draftees were given significantly more playing time than their peers selected in the second round, regardless of injury, player relocation, penalties, or on-ice performance outcomes. We offer some plausible underlying mechanisms driving this effect. Furthermore, we suggest the observed effects have valuable implications for NHL talent development, given the importance of playing time on various aspects of expertise attainment.

Prevalence of Inflammatory Heart Disease Among Professional Athletes With Prior COVID-19 Infection Who Received Systematic Return-to-Play Cardiac Screening

The major North American professional sports leagues were among the first to return to full-scale sport activity during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Given the unknown incidence of adverse cardiac sequelae after COVID-19 infection in athletes, these leagues implemented a conservative return-to-play (RTP) cardiac testing program aligned with American College of Cardiology recommendations for all athletes testing positive for COVID-19. To assess the prevalence of detectable inflammatory heart disease in professional athletes with prior COVID-19 infection, using current RTP screening recommendations. This cross-sectional study reviewed RTP cardiac testing performed between May and October 2020 on professional athletes who had tested positive for COVID-19. The professional sports leagues (Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, National Football League, and the men's and women's National Basketball Association) implemented mandatory cardiac screening requirements for all players who had tested positive for COVID-19 prior to resumption of team-organized sports activities. Troponin testing, electrocardiography (ECG), and resting echocardiography were performed after a positive COVID-19 test result. Interleague, deidentified cardiac data were pooled for collective analysis. Those with abnormal screening test results were referred for additional testing, including cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and/or stress echocardiography. The prevalence of abnormal RTP test results potentially representing COVID-19-associated cardiac injury, and results and outcomes of additional testing generated by the initial screening process. The study included 789 professional athletes (mean [SD] age, 25 [3] years; 777 men [98.5%]). A total of 460 athletes (58.3%) had prior symptomatic COVID-19 illness, and 329 (41.7%) were asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic (minimally symptomatic). Testing was performed a mean (SD) of 19 (17) days (range, 3-156 days) after a positive test result. Abnormal screening results were identified in 30 athletes (3.8%; troponin, 6 athletes [0.8%]; ECG, 10 athletes [1.3%]; echocardiography, 20 athletes [2.5%]), necessitating additional testing; 5 athletes (0.6%) ultimately had cardiac magnetic resonance imaging findings suggesting inflammatory heart disease (myocarditis, 3; pericarditis, 2) that resulted in restriction from play. No adverse cardiac events occurred in athletes who underwent cardiac screening and resumed professional sport participation. This study provides large-scale data assessing the prevalence of relevant COVID-19-associated cardiac pathology with implementation of current RTP screening recommendations. While long-term follow-up is ongoing, few cases of inflammatory heart disease have been detected, and a safe return to professional sports activity has thus far been achieved.

Free Agency for the Front Office: How Data Analytics and Noncompete Agreements Threaten to Disrupt Competitive Balance in U.S. Professional Sports Leagues

U.S. professional sports teams are increasingly relying on sophisticated forms of data analysis to identify potential areas of competitive advantage over their league rivals. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests that the most sophisticated teams in this area are using the insights that they derive from data analytics to establish durable and significant gains over their competition on the playing field. At the same time, sports franchises frequently utilize noncompete agreements to protect the resulting, proprietary information that their data analysis yields. Unfortunately, recent academic research suggests that this reliance on covenants not to compete can decrease the rate of knowledge diffusion within an industry, making it more difficult for teams to catch up to early adopters of data analytics. Thus, teams’ growing reliance on data analytics—and their use of noncompete agreements to protect their resulting findings—could have significant, but heretofore unrecognized, ramifications for league efforts to maintain an adequate level of competitive balance amongst their franchises. This article explores this state of affairs, as well as the implications it presents for the governance of U.S. professional sports leagues.

코로나19 최초 확진선수 발생 사건에서 프로스포츠리그 운영조직의 위기커뮤니케이션 전략 분석

코로나19 최초 확진선수 발생 사건에서 프로스포츠리그 운영조직의 위기커뮤니케이션 전략 분석

What NCAA v. Alston Means for Professional Sports Leagues

The Supreme Court in Alston held that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member conferences violated the antitrust laws by collectively restricting, in the name of amateurism, the education-related benefits offered to college athletes. While the Court accepted that NCAA amateurism serves consumers by offering a brand of athletic contests distinct from professional sports, it found the NCAA’s fluctuating and incoherent definition of amateurism insufficient to justify the breadth of its student-athlete compensation rules. As a result, student athletes will now have access to, for example, graduate or vocational school tuition, payments for academic tutoring, paid post-eligibility internships, and similar education-related benefits, as long as these benefits are not tantamount to a professional athlete’s salary. Despite this defeat for the NCAA joint venture, the Court recognized the value of joint ventures generally, and clarified the framework for evaluating their competitive impact. Specifically referring to sports leagues, the unanimous Alston Court warned the lower courts against reflexively condemning joint venture arrangements that are necessary to create a product and advised deference to the business judgments of venture participants. Mining that vein of thought, this essay identifies three significant take-aways for professional sports leagues from the Alston decision: (1) “quick look” review is generally not appropriate to summarily disapprove sports league coordinated conduct under the antitrust laws; (2) “rule of reason” antitrust analysis does not require sports leagues to structure their business in the “least restrictive” way; and (3) to the extent a professional sports league is more analogous to an individual college athletic conference, as opposed to the entire NCAA, member clubs may have more latitude to coordinate their conduct without violating the antitrust laws.

The Weibull Burr XII distribution in lifetime and income analysis.

We study a five-parameter model called the Weibull Burr XII (WBXII) distribution, which extends several models, including new ones. This model is quite flexible in terms of the hazard function, which exhibits increasing, decreasing, upside-down bathtub, and bathtub shapes. Its density function allows different forms such as left-skewed, right-skewed, reversed-J, and bimodal. We aim to provide some general mathematical quantities for the proposed distribution, which can be useful to real data analysis. We develop a shiny application to provide interactive illustrations of the WBXII density and hazard functions. We estimate the model parameters using maximum likelihood and derive a profile log-likelihood for all members of the Weibull-G family. The survival analysis application reveals that the WBXII model is suitable to accommodate left-skewed tails, which are very common when the variable of interest is the time to failure of a product. The income application is related to player salaries within a professional sports league and it is peculiar because the mean of the player's salaries is much higher than for most professions. Both applications illustrate that the new distribution provides much better fits than other models with the same and less number of parameters.

The Tweet Heard Round the World: Daryl Morey, the NBA, China, and Attribution of Responsibility

Following Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey’s social media post advocating for Hong Kong independence, a 2 (NBA, Houston Rockets) × 3 (attacking the accuser, justification, apology) experimental design was utilized to explore the effects of different crisis response strategies on sports fan relationships between/among a professional sport league, one of its teams, and crisis responsibility attribution. Results indicated that apology strategy functioned better in reducing the blame placed on the organization than attacking strategy. Also, people with a more positive relationship or a higher level of identification with the organization would attribute less responsibility. However, when controlling the organization-public relationship or sport identification, response strategies could no longer predict attribution of responsibility significantly, suggesting that the previous relationship matters more than which response strategy is utilized in a crisis.