Explore our knowledge

The Eco­nom­ics of Sports

About the course

Subjects
Microeconomics Macroeconomics International economics

Course content

The aim of this course is to understand the economic aspects of professional sports. Sport represents a significant part of the GDP in most OECD countries and involves several important issues which can be answered employing the basic principles of business, economics and econometrics.
The structure of this course could be divided into three parts. The first part of the course will analyse the demand for sports and the composition of team and league revenues. The organization of leagues, tickets and revenues, advertising and the role played by media will be studied. The second part will deal with the labor markets in professional sports - in particular, how players’ salaries are determined and how they impact on competitive balance and accounting. Finally, the third part will show new issues that are affecting professional sports, such as gambling, cheating and doping.
 
Outline of the course

 

1. The industrial organization of sports: Financial and account aspects

  • Team revenues and the demand for sports
  • Media and TV rights
  • Marketing and advertisement

 2. Labor markets in professional sports:

  • Contracts and sport agents
  • Players’s salaries, discrimination players as superstars and tax considerations

3. New issues:

  • Betting markets
  • Cheating and corruption
  • Doping.
See course description in course catalogue

What you will learn

After completing this course, the students should be able to:

  • Analyze the main issues of sport using economic tools.
  • Study the management decisions of professional sports organizations.
  • Identify critical challenges that all professional sport teams and leagues have to face both in competitive and business environments.
  • Understand the distinctive features of sports at both league and at team level.
  • Develop a well-defined and coherent research question in regard to the course topic
  • Identify relevant literature and prove evidence of a comprehensive knowledge of the literature and the theories
  • Answer a research question in a comprehensible, precise and logical manner in a paper matching the formal standards of academic writing

Course prerequisites

The course requires a basic knowledge of microeconomics and applied econometrics.

Facts

Level
Master
Type
Elective
ECTS
7.5
Code
CCMVV4037U
Teaching periods
Spring – semester
Academic year
2024/2025
Status
Available places
Teaching language
English
Teaching Format
On campus
Exams
  • Written assignment
    Individual exam, summer
Assessment type
  • 7 point grading scale