EclectEcon

Typically a sports franchise says to everyone, "Look at all the economic benefits we can confer upon your fine city." But in Seattle the Sonics are calling sports economists to testify that they conferred NO benefits on Seattle! For a good summary of the testimony by two of the economists involved by Dennis Coates, see this at The Sports Economist.

And for some of my earlier work in this field, showing similar results see this.

From an article in the Trono Star,

A secret NHL report detailing the ticket revenues of its 30 teams reveals [that]... The six Canadian teams account for 31 per cent of the $1.1 billion (U.S.) in league ticket revenue, and have gone through league-leading double-digit increases over last season, according to the internal NHL report.

Overall, the league has seen its ticket revenue rise almost 10 per cent, but 11 of the 24 U.S.-based clubs were either revenue-flat or lost ticket income.

Twenty percent of the teams account for 31% of the ticket revenue, which doesn't seem all that surprising to me — some markets are more lucrative than others.

Nevertheless, some people are using these data to argue that there should be more Canadian teams in the NHL. From the same source,

"This really makes the case for another team in Canada, whether it's Hamilton, Winnipeg or Quebec City," says former Vancouver Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths.

"I think Hamilton has the best facility, but obviously faces challenges in what it would have to pay Toronto and Buffalo. Winnipeg is a good possibility, but the market there has shown a resistance to paying top dollar for tickets, and you wouldn't want to add a team that was going to be in the middle-of-the-pack for revenue, while Quebec City needs a huge infusion of investment for a new facility."...

NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly has reviewed the document and said it highlights the importance of placing more franchises in Canada, instead of potential expansion cities such as Las Vegas, Houston or Kansas City.

"I think it would be a huge error not to relocate one of the existing franchises to Hamilton or Winnipeg," Kelly said.

It might very well be the case that an NHL franchise in Hamilton, Winnipeg, or Quebec City or even Halifax would do better, in terms of ticket sales, than, say, the Phoenix Coyotes, who lost something like $30m last season. But the appropriate comparison is franchise-to-potential-franchise, and the fact that, on average, Canadian franchises brought in more ticket revenue than US franchises is entirely irrelevant.

Remember how, just a few years ago, many sports writers and others were decrying the state of hockey in Canada and worrying that perhaps only three or four franchises could survive in Canada? Remember how NHL teams left Winnipeg and Quebec City, not just because they received better offers from other cities but also because of the comparatively low fan turn-out in those cities? In fact the Canadian average revenue is so high for two big reasons:

1. The largest revenue generator in the league is the Toronto Maple Leafs [despite their relatively poor performances of late] with Montreal a close second. Still from the same source,
   

   Atop the list of income winners is the Maple Leafs, who nudged out the Montreal Canadiens to lead the league this past season with $1.9 million worth of ticket revenue per game. Based on 41 home games, that's $77.9 million a year – not counting revenue from pre-season games. A year ago, the Leafs generated $1.5 million a game, according the report obtained by the Star from several league sources.



2. And keep in mind that these figures are all in terms of US dollars. The appreciation of the Canuck Buck during the past few years has played a major role in the rise in Canadian ticket-sale revenues. Even with no increase in Canadian dollar revenues, the Canadian teams would, cet. par., be reporting 20 - 30% more revenues in US dollars.
   

   The increase in the value of the Canadian dollar may be responsible for as much as half of the league's revenue gains since the NHL went through the lockout of 2004-05, say several sources familiar with NHL finances.
   
   "If you take out the Canadian teams, which have done so well since the lockout largely because of the Canadian dollar, the league's revenues are actually only growing at a 2 per cent clip per year," says an executive with a U.S.-based NHL team, who requested anonymity.

   Given these points, and given the potentially weak markets in possible 7th hockey cities in Canada, it is difficult to see how the fact that Canadian teams earn 31% of the NHL ticket revenue would support having another NHL franchise in Canada.
   
   I, personally, would be thrilled to see a franchise in Hamilton or in Kitchener-Waterloo. And it might well be the case that even considering the losses that would inevitably be suffered by the Toronto Maple Leafs (and quite likely the Buffalo Sabres) if a team were to locate in one of these cities, a franchise in Hamilton or in K-W would do better than the franchises currently located in, say, Phoenix or Atlanta or Columbus or....
   But if so, that has nothing to do with comparisons of average revenue per game in Canada vs. the US.

I don't like pitchers' duels in baseball. I like to see high-scoring games. Low-scoring games remind me too much of all the things I didn't like about pre-2005 hockey games and the old pre-free-guard-zone curling bonspiels and still don't much like about soccer.

I realize that many sports fans will disagree with me on this, but overall I suspect that most fans and potential fans share my views that low-scoring games are pretty boring no matter how artistic or professional or whatever a well-pitched and well-defenced game might be. Curling changed its rules to generate more scoring (and more fan interest). Baseball made several moves to increase scoring after the doldrums of the 1960s. Basketball added the 3-point shot. And baseball entered its revival phase as players started hitting more home runs and as teams began to score more runs.

But the past two years have been different, as Tom Boswell pointed out in last Friday's Washington Post.

This spring, for the second straight year, home run totals... have shrunk dramatically. Last season's 8 percent drop in home runs was welcomed, but with caution. ... [H]ome runs have fallen this spring by another 10.4 percent.

Suddenly, a sport that produced 5,386 home runs in 2006 is on pace for 4,442 this year — a 17.5 percent drop, or a loss of almost 1,000 home runs in just two seasons. ...

This season, major league teams have scored 8.98 runs per game. Since 1871, there have been 1,750,230 runs in the majors, an average of 9.11 per game. Warm weather, when fly balls carry farther, might bring the game almost exactly back to its long-term scoring trend.

Every sportswriter or sportscaster I am aware of has attributed this reduction in runs scored and decline in home runs to the reduced use of steroids in professional baseball. Some, like Boswell, might argue that this is "a good thing", but I am not so sure.

Typically when sports economists talk about steroid use, they/we present it as a negative-sum game: each player is made stronger, but since all players are made stronger, the benefit to each player is near zero but those on steroids must then bear the later health costs that come from using steroids. Following this logic, many of us have been puzzled that players' associations have been so reluctant to support bans on steroid use. And while this scenario seems plausible, I'm not so convinced by it any more.

So let's make some assumptions:

1. In general, ceteris paribus, fans prefer more home runs to fewer. Again, quoting Boswell,

   "From a personal and aesthetic point of view, I like this kind of baseball better," MacPhail said. "I like a well-played game more than a slugfest. But plenty of fans like runs." [Emphasis added]. One test of this assumption will be to see what happens overall to MLB attendance.

2. Conditional on the first assumption, (and again, cet. par.) the marginal revenue of runs is positive, the marginal revenue of home runs is positive, and the marginal revenue product of slugging is positive; i.e. for a given winning percentage, etc., if fans expect more runs and more home runs, they'll shell out more to attend games and buy team merchandise. There is an implication in the Boswell piece that general managers on the whole are relieved to see the home run totals decline since they anticipate not having to pay so much for the big-bopper-type players.
   
3. The health costs of steroid use (assuming there are any) are borne by the player-users themselves; there are no negative externalities from steroid use.

I realize this last assumption is open to question. To the extent that health insurance providers do not risk-rate their premia according to steroid use, other people in the same risk pools might be bearing some of the health costs of steroid use, if there are any (and I don't accept anecdotal, Lyle Alzedo-type evidence on this score). Also, to the extent that steroid use leads to undesirable personality changes (do we know that it doesn't also lead to some desirable personality changes in many players?), that might be a cost which is not taken into account by the player-users. But if these costs are negligible or small, and if the revenue and salary gains are large, maybe overall the expected net gains to the teams and to the players from steroid use would be positive.

And maybe, just maybe, that is why professional sports teams and players' associations did NOT rush to ban the use of steroids, especially in baseball. I am less persuaded that steroid use was a positive-sum game in the NFL, which also might help explain why it was banned so much earlier in the NFL than in MLB.

The final bonspiel of the season, the Spring Thaw:



Update: The top two photos were from Friday night's draw. The next two are from the Saturday morning draw. Note the morning coat and burgundy (vs. black) cummerbund and tie; the shirt is pink, but was washed out by the flash.



Update #2: And from the evening draw, my Hawaiian dinner jacket.

My prediction, which will probably lose me several friends, is that the Trono (pronounced Trah-nah) Blue Jays will win 79 games this season. Here's hoping that's just pessimism on my part.

Alex, a student in my Economics of Sports course, sent me this logo, which would be perfect for an economics department hockey team sweater. Maybe for a physics or math department, too.

Yesterday, the Boston Red Sox voted unanimously not to go to Japan for their opening game against Oakland unless the coaches, trainers, assistants, etc. would be paid what MLB originally promised them. From ESPN [note: the dispute was resolved by mid-afternoon, about an hour after the Red Sox refused to take the field for an exhibition game against the Blue Jays],

"We had an agreement," Curt Schilling, one of a handful of Red Sox players who talked with Major League Baseball on ground rules for the trip, told ESPN's Claire Smith.

"Some of the promises have already been taken away, now this," Schilling said. "As far as the players are concerned, [withholding the coaches' bonuses] can't happen."

''When we voted to go to Japan, that was not a unanimous vote,'' Lowell told the Globe, "but we did what our team wanted us to do for Major League Baseball. They promised us the moon and the stars, and then when we committed, they started pulling back. It's not just the coaches, it's the staff, the trainers, a lot of people are affected by this.

From what the players were saying, it sounded as if MLB was going to be in breach of its contract with the team players and staff. But the MLB breach would have been with the staff and assistants, not with the players, and so I wonder whether the players' refusing to go would have put them in breach. More likely, the trainers and assistants would be viewed as essential complements for the players, and if they had not gone on the trip (because of the breach), then likely the players could also have refused to go.

But do you really think the refusal to go to Japan would have had "profound global ramifications"? Ordinarily, I think Jayson Stark [sidebar column here] has a lot of valuable insight, and I enjoy reading his columns, but this is a bit over the edge:

I have no doubt that these guys completely understand the profound global ramifications of this trip. Nobody needs to explain to them that this isn't just another road series on their pocket schedules. This is an event of major significance for the sport, for the franchise and for the nation they're about to visit.

It is probably obvious, but I decided to blog this after the Red Sox refused to play the Blue Jays but before the resolution, and especially after I read Stark's column, which I found amusing (though clearly prescient).

There are cheerleaders for flag football?

Well, I guess I can imagine there might be, given that this sign was along the highway in Texas, the high school football and cheerleading centre of the universe.

Kip Esquire agreed with my assessment. Didn't that game in week 17 of the regular season mean anything to all those bettors who thought the Patriots would win by 12 or more?

Over a week ago, I suggested that the posted spread for the SuperBowl, favouring NE by 12 points, was surely too high and would be bid downward by bettors during the next few days or so.

I was wrong. The spread is still at or near NE -12 according to many sources. I hope nobody took my advice...

Further evidence for why I don't bet on sporting events.

[btw, I'm cheering for the Patriots. Reason? Belichek majored in economics as an undergrad]

Update: I see Kip Esquire agrees that the Giants +12 is a good bet. He actually spoke with his wallet.

Also, I see that Tradesports has NE-12.5 trading at almost even money at 10pm EST, Saturday. I wonder if a bunch of late money will come in on the NYG side of this bet...

Since I would take the NYG side of the bet if I bet on sporting events, you might want to do the opposite, given my recent lack of success at forecasting sporting events.

I tend to think that markets are efficient or pretty darned close to being efficient. But I'm not sure about this one:
Sunday night, the oddsmakers set the spread for the Superbowl at NE -14 or -14.5. On Tuesday the spread was down to NE -12, and some students were telling me that someone had seen Tom Brady (or a lookalike) in a cast.
From the way the NYG played and the way NE played, and from the way the NYG played against NE at the end of the season, I can easily imagine that the spread will be bid down to NE -7 or so within the next week.

If you agree, then plunk down a bunch on NE -12 now and then hedge that bet by plunking an equal amount on NYG -7 when that spread becomes available. It doesn't matter who you think will win, if you make both bets you will lose the commissions (transactions costs) on the bets if the outcome is outside those two spreads. But if it's between the spreads, you get to clean up, collecting on both bets.

But that strategy should be followed only if you agree with my prediction that the spread will drop.

And if you do this, please remember me kindly, no matter how it turns out.

The Seattle Sonics want to get out of their lease. So they're making all the arguments that economists have made for years: having a sports team in a city does little or nothing for the economy of that city:

"The financial issue is simple, and the city's analysts agree, there will be no net economic loss if the Sonics leave Seattle. Entertainment dollars not spent on the Sonics will be spent on Seattle's many other sports and entertainment options. Seattleites will not reduce their entertainment budget simply because the Sonics leave," the Sonics said in the court brief.

[h/t Skip Sauer at The Sports Economist]

Here they are, worth just what you paid for them. Living evidence of why I'm an academic, not an oddsmaker. [Spreads courtesy of USA Today]

SD at NE: the oddsmakers have picked NE by 14. I would take SD plus the 14 points.

NYG at GB: the oddsmakers have picked GB by 7. I would take GB minus the 7 points.

Update at 6pm EST: 1 for 1. Patriots win by 9, so if I had taken SD plus the 14 points, I'd have won that bet (thanks to 3 interceptions thrown by Tom Brady).

Update at 10:05pm EST: Overtime, so my bet would lose. 1 for 2. Just the type of random result one would expect in efficient markets (see comment #1).

Here is something I wrote nearly two years ago after Owens recovered very quickly from an injury. It is just as apt today:

Is Terrell Owens on Steroids?
I just Googled "Terrell Owens" + "on steroids" and got nothing. Then I Googled "Terrell Owens" + steroids. That got lots of hits, but nothing discussing the question of whether Terrell Owens is on steroids. This seems odd to me, since

1. Steroids have a big effect on promoting healing, and
2. Terrell Owens recovered very quickly from some serious damage.

How else did he make such an amazingly fast recovery? Was it steroids or was it God?
Or was it something else?

When an athlete is injured, I'm all in favour of their using steroids if doing so promotes healing. And for major-league athletes, I suspect the negative externalities of their doing so are pretty minor.

Every day I receive an e-mail from The Washington Post with headlines and blurbs about the day's news. The one I received this morning had the following sports stories [links omitted]:

SPORTS
U-Md. Hangs Tough, Nets Confidence-Boosting Win
James Gist, above, scores 25 points and Greivis Vasquez scores 24 as Maryland nearly blows a 21-point second-half lead before dispatching Charlotte, 76-74, for a third-straight victory Saturday.
(By Marc Carig, The Washington Post)

These Statistics Do Not Lie: Georgetown Wins Ugly
The Hoyas Hold Rutgers to 31 Percent Shooting, but Give Up 43 Rebounds: Georgetown 58, Rutgers 46
(By Camille Powell, The Washington Post)

Patriots Rebound To Beat Towson
(By Steven Goff, The Washington Post)

Celtics Top Pistons in East Showdown
Boston 92, Detroit 85
(By Larry Lage, AP)

Louisiana State's Miles Balances Risk, Reward
Coach's Gutsy Decisions Have Propelled Tigers Into the BCS Championship Game
(By Eric Prisbell, The Washington Post)

Notice anything missing? No story there about the Redskins' meltdown in the game with Seattle yesterday. If I click on "more sports", that NFL game is the lead story. Odd that it wasn't in their distribution of stories, though.

Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN knows. It's greater than one (in absolute value):

The NFL's insistence on asking too much for its channel is yet another example of how often big business, with zillions of dollars in executive-suite and economic-consultant spending, nevertheless acts as if it's ignorant of basic economics. To increase revenues, cut prices; this raises demand. (A high price suppresses demand.)

No, Gregg. If you cut prices, that will lead to an increase in the quantity demanded, not demand; if you cut prices, you move downward along the demand curve, you don't shift it.

And whether that will lead to an increase in the revenues for the firm depends on the price elasticity of demand. And it is not at all clear that the price elasticity of demand for NFL Network is greater than one.

In his latest weekly column (Nov 13, 2007, mostly about sports but also with a good dose of economics) at ESPN, Gregg Easterbrook writes,

Economics note: As the sense that creatine possesses forbidden powers has declined, so has its price. Five years ago, General Nutrition Centers sold a canister for $100 or more; now, canisters sell for $25 or so.

It looks as if Easterbrook is attributing the drop in the price of creatine to a decline in demand. But it is also quite likely that the high prices induced entry and increased competition among suppliers. Indeed, most websites devoted to body-building point out that there are now many brands and varieties of creatine to choose from.

If the demand curve shifted leftward, it also seems that the supply curve could have shifted to the right. Either shift (or both) would cause the price to drop, but it would be incorrect to attribute the price decline to either shift alone without more information.

Michael Lewis had an Op-Ed in the NYTimes yesterday morning, pointing out that the present revenue-sharing formula in major league baseball does little to affect the quality of the various teams on average and despite the fact that some small market teams do well now and then.

The reason? Revenue sharing has little impact on the expected marginal revenue and marginal costs of ticket sales, and it especially has little impact on the expected marginal revenue product and marginal factor costs of hiring more talent for the team. As a result, many teams like, say, Tampa Bay, respond to what is essentially a lump-sum transfer by pocketing the extra cash.

Lewis points to several other examples of teams that have received large revenue-sharing payments not by spending the increased revenue on more talent.

Since 1998, millions of dollars have been transferred from richer teams to poorer ones in an attempt to let all teams share in the economic advantages associated with playing in big markets — a large fan base, lots of press coverage and lucrative local cable television contracts. Last year, more than $300 million was transferred.

Yet since revenue sharing began, at least one team from each of the big four markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston — has appeared in every World Series except 2006. In the 10 years before 1998, in contrast, only two Series included one of those big-market teams.

The problem is that the teams receiving payments have come to use them as a primary source of income — rather than to build winning teams. The most extreme example has been the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In 2006, this team had a payroll of about $35 million, $42 million less than the 2006 league average. Not surprisingly, it won only 38 percent of its games and filled less than 40 percent of its seats for home games. It also collected more than $30 million in revenue-sharing transfers. This past season, the team reduced its payroll to $24 million and had about the same level of success.

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Kansas City Royals have also received significant revenue-sharing payments but kept payrolls low. These teams may well be slowly destroying their customer base. (The Rockies were not so parsimonious. With the team receiving $16 million in 2006, it increased its payroll for the next season by around $15 million.)

The problem is that transfers are based on local revenues. Teams that receive money are encouraged to invest it in their payrolls. But if a team actually attracts fans by fielding a winning team, its revenue-sharing receipts will be reduced.

So revenue-sharing also reduces the marginal revenue of an expected win, and not just for the big-market teams that are taxed to support the programme; it also reduces the incentive for small market teams, the recipients of revenue-sharing, to win too.

Of course there have been exceptions. But if this is the general case, perhaps it is time for a second look at the revenue-sharing formula.

Isn't basic economics fun?

Have you noticed that when they show the owners' boxes at major league sporting events, none of them is wearing a hoodie?

Former student Ravi sent me this item about Tiger Woods' possible pension funds. It asserts, in part,

If Woods keeps winning at his current rate, enjoys a nine percent annual return and captures just seven FedEx Cups in his career, he could reach $1 billion in retirement payouts courtesy of the PGA Tour Inc.

Nine percent? NINE PERCENT??? Using the Fisher Equation (named for its discoverer, Professor Equation), that means (assuming a real rate of interest of about 3%) that they think the expected rate of inflation will be about 6% over the rest of Tiger Woods' career. I don't really know of many people who expect the rate of inflation to be that high, and the money markets certainly imply a much lower expected rate of inflation with long-term nominal rates down around 5% or so.

What kind of risk do they assume Tiger Woods is willing to assume to get that kind of return? Are they thinking he will place his entire nest egg in sub-prime mortgages (I gather many are available cheap these days)? Or did they just keep messing with different interest rates until they found one that yielded the desired results?

While watching the Mets-Marlins baseball game last Thursday night, Ms. Eclectic and I were shocked and stunned to see that a Marlin fan had thrown a baseball onto the field and actually hit the Met's pitcher on the wrist [see this].

My immediate reaction was that the Marlins (the home team) should be required to forfeit the game. Actually I was surprised that the Mets stayed on the field after that happened. At least play was stopped until stadium security removed several people from the stands.

In saner moments, I realize that probably the Marlin security team did the right thing. Sometimes harsh punishment is called for; sometimes it isn't.

Addendum: and then on Friday night, a fan in the upper deck at Yankee Stadium threw a ball at Alex Rios (Trono Blue Jay) after Rios hit a home run. What do you figure the odds are that Yankee Stadium security found the culprit or did much about it?

Me neither.

Yesterday I finally had a chance to watch some NFL pregame and postgame shows. I found I was enjoying them more than I had in the past few years and wondered why.

Then it hit me: the talking heads were actually offering analysis and commentary. They weren't yelling at each other like drunks in a sports bar (though I confess I didn't see all the shows, and some -- Terry Bradshaw? -- might still be shouting a bunch).

Here's hoping the media folks and the producers got to all the commentators and told them to calm down and be serious. It is a wonderful change; may this please not be just a temporary phenomenon or, worse, a figment of my imagination.

Last weekend, my older son, David Ricardo Palmer, suggested we go golfing together at The Woodlands, a links-type golf course of well-above average difficulty. I hadn't been golfing for over six years; and the last time I golfed, I averaged losing one ball per hole and shot an embarrassingly high score.

This time was much better: my score was still very high, but not outrageously so, and I lost only one ball over the entire 18 holes (well, I lost three and found two, so it was a net loss of only one). Despite that comparative success, I have decided I am much too old for that silliness — especially when it involves walking and golfing 18 holes. From now on, it's 9 holes or get an electric cart.

In the end, between us, I was the minimum-average-cost golfer, a prize I have often claimed in golf tournaments. Minimum-average-cost golfer means I paid the least amount per stroke.

I watched an interview with Boo Weekley, a golfer on the PGA Tour last weekend. He essentially said (sorry for the paraphrase),

I love golf and I like to play the game, but after I've done it for maybe ten or twelve years and got enough money saved up, I'm gonna retire and go home. I'd much rather be huntin' and fishin'.

It's not that I would rather be "huntin' and fishin'"; rather, it's that I enjoy the refreshing honesty of Weekley, who appears to have few pretentions. For example, see this article from a few years ago:

Wonders follow wonders in this world, few more delightful than that wrought by Thomas Brent Weekley, known as Boo because of a childhood fascination with the Yogi Bear TV cartoon character Boo-Boo.

Boo Weekley has come in from the campfire to play the 2002 PGA Tour. He's teeing it up with the city folk. He's walking where Tiger Woods walks.

Only he doesn't walk in fancy shoes. Real golf shoes hurt his feet, so Weekley plays in sneakers. Most times he ties the laces. Cotton and polyester exacerbate a skin disease on his right leg. ("Maybe got it rubbin' against my granddaddy's cow.") To abide by tour rules against players wearing shorts, he wears rain pants.

No, I'm not a golf addict. I consider it a success if I score under 100 ... for nine holes.

Scalping tickets to sporting events has been legalized in Minnesota. As I see it, ticket scalping is a wonderful form of intermediation and risk bearing, wherein ticket scalpers bear the risk of price changes and the risk of being arrested (where scalping is illegal) and receive on average a premium for bearing this risk.

Phil Miller (here, here, and here) and King Banaian (here) have good posts on scalping.

I initially figured, "Yup, rich kids of privilege; athletes. They did it." Obviously, in canceling the remainder of last year's season, the president of Duke agreed with me.

Then I started reading things indicating there were holes in the prosecution's case. Big holes. But I never read much about it; and I never followed the details.

Here is a tidy summary from the NYTimes. I must say, no DNA match looks more like "innocent" than just "not guilty" to me.

The weather forecast for last night still wasn't very good — rain and thunderstorms — but the forecasts have been wrong ever since I got here two days ago, forecasting rain and cold when in fact we'd get sun amd warmth.

So I took the subway to the bullfight arena in Madrid. It's sort of like going to a Jays baseball game... tonnes of people on public transportation all emerging at the stop for the bullfight arena.



I was told by someone who spoke English in the lineup for tickets that the only tickets left were the really expensive ones for 42 Euros (about $60 Cdn), but they were hoping to get some cheap ones that hadn't been claimed. I figured that since I was alone I had a good chance of getting a cheap seat. I was right. I got one in the top tier for 4.2 Euros. Here is another photo from in front of the arena with the famous bull-and-matador sculpture off to the left.



The stadium holds only about 20,000 people or so, so top tier seats still aren't all that far away from the action. At a baseball game, they'd be good seats. Nevertheless some of the true aficionados in the top tier bring binoculars to watch the detailed moves of the matador.

One reason my ticket was so cheap was that it was for the section that would be in the sun, if it shone, but I wasn't at all worried about that, given the clouds. Also I have a hat with a good brim, and the action would all be down, way below me; if the sun did shine, I'd be looking down, not into the sun, and that late in the evening I didn't expect the sun to be too warm.



Those clouds look ominous, don't they. Also, notice the chalked white circles.

The "seats" at the arena are just over-sized concrete steps with numbers painted on them. The result is that you often have someone's knees touching your back, and your knees are often touching someone in front of you. It's all very intimate.



You can see that if it rains, the people in the cheap seats are covered, but the ones down close get dumped on. Also, you can see that the cheap seats, as well as the ones in the tier below them, have tonnes of posts, blocking some views, but my seat was right between the posts. I knew I'd get a good view there.

As you look around the arena, one thing you notice is that there are absolutely zero ads anywhere. How long do you expect it will be before that changes?

A few minutes after I found my seat, it started to rain. The people in the lower seats put on brightly coloured thin plastic rain ponchos and opened their umbrellas.



The rains continued, and became quite drenching. Also, the winds picked up, and those in the first couple of rows on the "in the sun" side where I was got soaked and went back inside the arena, as did almost all the people in the open, lower sections.







I got a woman behind me to take this photo of me just about this time.



You can see how the rain had blown in on us in this section. Also, look how wet that ring is. And the chalk circles were pretty much gone -- washed out by the rain. I couldn't imagine it would be safe for a matador to try to fight a bull in those conditions.

I was right. A few minutes later they canceled the bullfights and told people their tickets would be good for June 4th, or something like that.

Given the rain, I was glad I hadn't coughed up 42 Euros for a ticket. I'm not coming back for the rain date.

My biggest disappointment, though, was not hearing a crappy band play. Seriously, I was looking forward to that, wondering what they'd really sound like in Madrid.

Yup, along the west coast. These photos are from the village of Fanore.

I started to write a brief thing about randomness in sports and how the page playoff system in curling tends to reduce the influence of randomness on determining a champion in curling, but it got out of hand and way too long. If you're interested, the full thing is available either at Curling or at The Sports Economist (it was cross-posted with only slight differences to both places).

Ms. Eclectic and I have a subscription to MLBtv, which means we can watch any games not involving the Trono Blue Jays via broadband over the internet. Here are two photos I took of the game on Friday between the Seattle Mariners and the Cleveland Indians (in Cleveland)



Those are leaf-blowers the ground crew is using to try to remove the snow.

By the way, I'm not at all pleased with the MLBtv product.

1. Technically, it freezes up and jerks way too often, even in the crappy low-res format.
2. The black-outs of the Blue Jays are annoying since our cable system doesn't carry the away games that are blacked out.
3. And most amusing of all, I called them to ask about the black outs and was kept on hold for an hour and and twenty minutes before someone came on the line to explain that even though my cable company didn't carry the Blue Jays away game in Tampa Bay on Friday night, they couldn't lift the black out anywhere in Canada because Rogers was making the game available to some customers on its cable network.

I have a feeling MLBtv will not be a product we buy again in the future. I can live without watching baseball while I'm in England.

... and, as a result, has some advantages heading into the playoffs. To celebrate the team's excellent performance, today I wore my curling cuff-links:



Team USA was the only team to defeat Canada in the round robin, and finished in second place. The two teams will meet each other at least once in the playoffs.

It is not what you might think:

Mr. Thomas, a designated hitter, is one of the club's new additions and a bona fide star. A former U.S. college football player who stands 6 foot 5 and weighs 275 pounds, he is one of baseball's top home-run hitters with 487 in his career.

In the original version of the 30-second commercial, one of a series promoting the start of the Blue Jays' new season, a smiling Mr. Thomas enters a bedroom where a couple of boys are jumping on a bed and engaging in a pillow fight.

"Hey, you guys are supposed to be in bed," he says. One of the boys then hits him with a pillow.

"Oh yeah?" Mr. Thomas responds, grabbing the pillow and striking the child with a mighty baseball-like swing. Feathers fly, and the child rockets backward off the bed and can be heard thudding to the floor.

The commercial cuts to a smiling Mr. Thomas trotting out of the room as he would around the base paths after hitting a home run. The fallen child pops his head up and proclaims, "Wow."

The Blue Jays and Publicis Toronto, the company that came up with the ad, felt the spot was innocuous. However, the Television Bureau of Canada, the watchdog that approves TV commercials for private broadcasters, thought otherwise.

TBC refused to approve the commercial until the part showing the child being knocked to the floor was edited out.

I've seen the ad many times (I guess the regulators didn't have to preview it). The commercial is in the same theme as some from last year, e.g. when Troy Glaus took a stick and hit some kid's party pinata over a fence, or when kids were throwing rocks at a beehive or wasps' nest hanging from a branch (nice kids, eh?), and Doc Halliday threw one so hard the hive smashed open, and the bees/wasps chased the kids. I thought this one with Frank Thomas was pretty dumb, whereas the one with the pinata was pretty funny. But all of them were sort of mean to kids, and didn't make me think much of either the Jays or their ad agency. Nevertheless, I'd rather the Jays suffer in the marketplace for dumb/mean ads than be regulated for airing such dumb/mean ads.

The Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League haven't won the Stanley Cup since sometime before radio was invented. Or so it seems. In recent decades they have rarely placed well within their division, and they have missed the playoffs at times. These results are probably profit-maximizing for their team (and not unlike the Chicago Cubs in major league baseball).

When a team has tonnes and tonnes of die-hard fans — fans who love their team year after year and continue to buy tickets and merchandise no matter how well or how poorly the team does each season — the team has a strong profit motive NOT to finish first in their division. Why spend the money to do better if the extra revenue from winning more games is less than the extra costs?

Of course the strategy is probablistic, and sometimes the team gets lucky, winning more games than expected; and sometimes they are unlucky and win fewer than expected.

This year, the Maple Leafs seem to be doing just about right. They have been part of a massive play-off race, trying to qualify for the play-offs as the season draws to a close. Excitement among fans is high, and perhaps even higher than it would be if the Leafs had clinched a play-off spot by now.

It looks as if the optimal strategy is for the Toronto Maple Leafs to be good enough to be in a play-off race, to make the play-offs often, but not to finish at the top of their division.

The Leafs, like the Cubs, seem to be maximizing the net present value of their team by not winning. Teams that have more fickle fans have to do better to maximize their team value.

Not that I am all that keen on subsidizing the Vancouvre 2010 Winter Olympics, but I enjoy curling enough that I bought an entire roll of these quarters last week (10 bucks! big spender, eh?)

I would have let this person write a make-up exam. From Curling, a blog I maintain along with Alan Adamson,

Last year, Denmark's Jensen had to leave the competition early due to health concerns. Her team battled valiantly without her, losing the final round-robin game to finish 6-5 and one win away from tiebreakers.

This year, another Dane will be departing early. Second Camilla Jensen, Angelina's sister, leaves Friday to write a critical university exam back home. She is now out of the starting lineup with two round-robin matches left to play.

"It's my whole education, so sadly I must go," said Jensen. "So let's go Denmark, let's get those Olympic points."

I realize this was a huge exam at the end of her educational career, unlike the examinations we give our students in North America, even at the end of a year-long course in Canada. But I still would have let her write a make-up exam somehow. Hell, we let people write make-up exams for competitions in every other sport; why not the Women's World Championships in Curling? As it was, Denmark lost to Canada in the first game the team played without her, and then proceeded to lose to last place Italy in the next game Denmark played.

All that having been said, it certainly is nice to learn about a student with so much dedication to her education.

It is disappointing that no one is telecasting the Women's World Championship curling games to Canada. I'm especially puzzled that TSN didn't send a crew there to do at least one game per day. Fortunately for us addicts, CBC will televise the semi-finals on Saturday morning (March 24th) at 7am and the finals on Sunday morning at 1am. But what about the rest of the games which started today???

If you know of any site from Japan, Europe, or China that might be telecasting the round robin via broadband please let us know!

Surely it must be worthwhile for someone to do a minimalist web-cam type telecast at the very least.

After spending some time in England last summer, and planning to return this summer, I have spent much more time than I ever imagined watching soccer, both live and on television, during the past year or so. I still do not find it all that gripping, which probably stems from my lack of knowledge and understanding about the game. In fact, the most fun I have had watching soccer so far has been in pubs that do not encourage drunken teenagers (see this) and at small stadia in lesser leagues. The hooting, yelling, singing, chanting, and atmosphere are lots of fun, but the downright deadly stupors of some of the younger crowd at some pubs during the World Cup last summer were very off-putting.

If I am remotely representative of the potential North American audience, does soccer have any chance of ever becoming a major sport in North America? Will it ever be as big, by some measure, as MLB or the NFL? [notice I omit the NHL because soccer probably does have a chance of surpassing hockey by some measures; in terms of participation, it already has.].

1. One big plus for soccer is that its games typically last less than two hours, which is great for the television market. This scheduling (with a half hour studio show between each game) allows us (in Canada, anyway) to watch three UK Premiership soccer matches every Saturday in 7 hours, about the time it takes to see two NFL games. Instead of the NFL double-headers, we could easily have soccer/football triple-headers on weekends and double-headers on Tuesday and/or Wednesday evenings. Also, even if soccer/football games begin to take more time (see below) as has happened with both MLB and the NFL, they are unlikely to become much longer than 2 1/4 or 2 1/2 hours, which would still permit the weekend triple-headers with no difficulty [I know, I know: the NFL has Sunday triple-headers now, but they take for-friggin'-ever].
2. At the same time, to make the product more attractive to potential sponsors, soccer will almost surely start guaranteeing that there will be 10-second or 15-second breaks when the ball goes out of bounds or especially when a team is granted a corner kick or free kick near the goal; mark my words, this will happen in FIFA even if soccer never takes off in North America. Purists will hate this, but purists also hated all the commercial time-outs that have become so prevalent in the NFL and that have added to the time baseball games last. Adding time-outs for commercials is, after all, a minor alteration in the game, and doing so would not unduly lengthen the games, so this is a change I can imagine would be comparatively easy.
3. Lots and lots and zillions and tonnes of kids grow up playing soccer/football in North America these days. So there is some interest in the game at the young participatory level. But that interest does not necessarily translate into yuppie, high-income spectator interest [reductio ad absurdum?: kids like lots of things that do not translate into major adult markets].
4. To capture the young adult, high-income, and corporate-account market segment, soccer/football will have to be more exciting for North American spectators. Some possibilities might include:
   • loud music during every break. MLB seems to think this is a good idea, but I hate it; as one MLB executive once told me, "Doc, your demographic isn't really the one we're targeting..."
   • Scantily clad cheerleaders?
   • More body contact; this change in the NBA over the past fifty years seems to have played a role in the growth of interest in the NBA. At the same time, though, it hasn't helped the NHL, which seems to be trying to reduce the amount of contact to some extent. Maybe the marginal revenue product of body contact in team sports is diminishing as the amount of contact increases, becoming negative at some point. [note: Brian Goff thinks there is already too much body contact in soccer.]
   • Scoring. I'm sure I'm revealing my ethnocentric loutish ignorance, but soccer/football is boring when there are so few goals scored. What a drag! We watch for a couple of hours and maybe there's a goal scored. And maybe it's the result of skill, but some/much of the time, it seems to be the result of randomness (in play, in officiating, in wind currents, in hair length [Peter Crouch's big goal last summer in the World Cup], etc.]. But nobody can agree on what to do to increase the scoring.

Brian Goff made some very interesting suggestions here (be sure to see the string of comments, too). Also, see this by Skip Sauer. And here is something Tyler Cowen wrote on the topic several years ago.

Update: Stumbling and Mumbling has more: see this and this.

Last night at our curling club, Ms. Eclectic and I entered the pool to predict who would win the 2007 Tim Hortons Brier. It is a pretty simple pool: everybody puts in $2 and the name of the team they think will win the tournament, and the pot is divided up between all those who correctly picked the winner.

Ms. Eclectic thinks it will be a toss-up between Glenn Howard (Ontario) and Kevin Martin (Alberta). Deep in my heart, though, I predict Glenn Howard will win.

Who did we pick in the club pool? Not Glenn Howard; and our choices were reasonable because of how the pool works.

Given that we curl in Ontario, and (as a result) given that we expect most of our fellow club members would pick Howard to win the Brier, we realized that if we also picked Howard, and Howard won, then the size of the prize (split among everyone who picked Howard to win) would be pretty small.

So, even though I think there's a somewhat higher chance Howard will win, I picked Brad Gushue (NF/L) to win in the pool, and Ms. Eclectic very reasonably picked Kevin Martin.

Algebraically, for each bettor, E(W) = p(S/N), where

• E(W) is each bettor's probablistic, expected dollar winnings,
  
• p represents that bettor's subjectives guess as to the probability that his/her selection will win the Brier;
  
• S is the size of the pot that is to be divided between all those who correctly pick the winner; and
  
• N is the number of people each bettor thinks will have selected the same winner s/he did.

For Howard, p might be high, but N is expected to be high, too, offsetting the high value of p. For Martin and Gushue, we expect that N will be much lower so that if we do pick the winner, we will win more money.

Note: this strategy assumes risk neutrality on our part. It also assumes that nobody else (or not many others) in the club have the same betting strategy.

Techno-babble from a techno-ignorant sports fan:

Ms. Eclectic and I have full internet subscriptions to both CurlTV and to the Major League Baseball Premium broadband telecasts. In part, so we could view the events on a larger screen than my laptop's 13" screen, we bought a 32" Samsung HDTV a couple of months ago. We hooked it up to the "monitor-out" connection from the laptop and saw..... no action. We could get the screen from the computer, but where there was supposed to be action, the screen was just black.

After many more hours than most of you would need, here is the solution we found.

1. The problem lies with something in Windows Media Player. Open WMP.
2. Click on Tools.
3. Click on Options.
4. Click on Performance.
5. Near the bottom of that screen, adjust the accelerator slide. For our tv, we just had to slide it back to the medium position.

It works well for both CurlTV and MLB Premium.

The All-England Club, which hosts the Wimbledon tennis tournament, has announced that beginning in 2007, the prize money will be the same for male and female winners. But there has been considerable resistance to providing equal prize money there, even though the other grand slam tournaments do.

The All England Club has gradually reduced the pay gap over the years, but held out against equal prizes as a matter of principle.

[Club Chairman (sic), Tom] Phillips had cited surveys showing that men give better value than the women. The men play best-of-five set matches, while the women play best of three. Also, the women make more money overall because they also play in doubles, while the top men usually play only singles.

"It just doesn't seem right to us that the lady players could play in three events and could take away significantly more than the men's champion who battles away through these best-of-five matches," Phillips said last year. "We don't see it as an equal rights issue."

The important question is not who works harder or who has what opportunities to earn extra income from other matches. Instead, the important question is who is expected to generate how much revenue. And judging from the ratings and attendance, it appears that a three-game women's tournament generates at least as much revenue as a five-game men's tournament. If so, it makes sense that the women's prize money would be at least as large as the men's prize money.

What puzzles me, though, is why these grand slams do not extract more rent from the contenders.

Last year, men's champion Roger Federer received $1.170 million and women's winner Amelie Mauresmo got $1.117 million.

Would the top talent really give Wimbledon a miss if the prize money were "only" $1 million?

The answer, presumably, has to do with entry conditions. If Wimbledon offered only $500,000 as the top prize, how long would it take for some other tournament to emerge, claiming a position as one of the top four grand slam tournaments? Possibly Dubai?

This weekend, I curled in my very first bonspiel. It was called the Gay Lea Bonspiel because Gay Lea dairy products sponsored the event and provided huge bags full of dairy products as prizes. I gather they do this for a number of clubs; it's a great promotion.

I curled lead for our rink, which was so desperate in their search for a fourth member that they called me when they couldn't get anyone else. Fortunately the rest of the rink is very good, so we ended up as Draw B Champions:


What a fun weekend!

What would you guess is the third-largest industry in Italy? Wine? Apparel? the Roman Catholic Church? Housing? Tourism? Automobiles?

According to Aldo Spinelli, quoted in The Economist [$], it is soccer/football.

The level of violence—some of it politically motivated—at Italy’s football grounds is said by the interior minister, Giuliano Amato, to be still rising. Despite this, club presidents have been pressing hard for a re-think on the government’s draconian measures. Ivan Ruggeri, the chairman of one team, Atalanta, said clubs should simply stop playing till the government changed its mind. “Italy’s third-biggest industry cannot be penalised in this way”, stormed Aldo Spinelli, who chairs Livorno, another Serie A side.

If so, the Italian economy is in big trouble.

Wikipedia lists the following as the major industries in Italy:

tourism, machinery, iron and steel, chemicals, food processing, textiles, automobiles, clothing, footwear, ceramics

Sports, despite our immense interest in them, are small potatoes, economically speaking.

I wrote on Sunday that I didn't think Peyton Manning should have been named the Superbowl MVP; rather, I was so impressed by the protection provided to Manning and the huge holes created for the Colts' running backs, that I thought the Colt's offensive line should receive the MVP award for the game:

I'd give it to the five men on the Colts offensive line and let them share it. In fact, I think the league ought to pony up the cash for the extra trophies and everything else so they all get the prize.

Robert Weintraub, writing in Slate, put forward similar views, but with much greater sophistication:

With Chicago missing stud defensive tackle Tommie Harris, it fell to Saturday and his line to take advantage and blow open holes in the middle of the Bears D. Mission accomplished, to the tune of 191 total rushing yards from Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes. [Colts' Centre, Jeff] Saturday also coordinated the pass protection that kept Manning clean and gave him time to complete the short dump-off passes that won him the MVP award. Come on, Peyton, give the award to the man who snapped you the ball.

Saturday was good, but the complementarities on the offensive line are pretty strong. I'd be inclined to give Cadillacs to all five of them. Read Weintraub and see what you think.

After a shaky start, the Colts looked very good, and the Bears were just plain horrible. Everything we saw them do against New Orleans was absent from this game. Aside from the opening kick-off return by Hester for the Bears for one of their two touchdowns, the Bears looked beat/beaten and the Colts looked pretty much like the good team we have seen before.

At the two-minute warning, Phil Simms said both Colts running backs should share the game MVP. I disagree. I saw some holes that even I could have run through. I'd give it to the five men on the Colts offensive line and let them share it. In fact, I think the league ought to pony up the cash for the extra trophies and everything else so they all get the prize.

The odds makers did it again. I was 0-3 in the play-offs against the spread. If you took my advice and bet against my predictions, you owe me an ice-cream cone. Please don't mail it to me.

Update: Peyton Manning was good, but I didn't think he deserved the SuperBowl MVP.

I posted earlier that I was impressed by the Bears in their wins during the playoffs and that I was underwhelmed by Manning and the Colts. But when the Colts convincingly defeated the Patriots, I was pretty uncertain about whether to pick the Bears or Colts to win SuperBowl XLI.

Ms. Eclectic says the Bears will win the Superbowl, so I'll pick the Colts. Colts by 4.

We both stick with our predictions (barring unforeseen injuries, deaths, arrests, or whatever). I have noticed, though, that the line in Vegas seems to be the Colts by 7. At the same time, as I write this, the equilibrating bet on Tradesports seems to be right near Colts by 6.5.

Allen St.John in the WSJ (subscription only) agrees with Ms. Eclectic. Here is just one reason:

The Bears and Colts played five common opponents this season — the New York Jets, New York Giants, Patriots, Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins. Indianapolis went 5-0 against these teams, while the Bears were 3-2. However, in those games, the Bears scored 114 points and surrendered only 75, outscoring their opponents by 39 points. The Colts? Despite their perfect record, they scored 128 but gave up 107, for a 21-point differential, just over half that of the Bears.

For more, see this at Cafe Hayek.

Conclusion: both Ms. Eclectic and I recommend taking the Bears plus the 7 points. It looks as if Tyler would agree, judging from his comment on my earlier posting.

Caveat: most people in the past have found that it's a good idea to bet the opposite of my predictions. ;-)

Update: King Banaian picks the Bears to win outright. Check out this link to see why.

There are two types of quality or talent that provide the bases of competition and hence enhance the demand by fans to watch or attend sporting events. Phil Miller has a terrific discussion. Here's a summary:

1. Absolute quality. The better the players, the more fans want to watch them. To use Phil's example, people'd generally rather watch a Grand Slam tennis event than a high school championship because the players are better.
2. Relative quality. Fans seem to prefer close games.

Read the whole thing. It's good.

I didn't much mind the SuperBowl Shuffle of 1985, but it does seem awfully tacky to keep bringing it out nowadays. If you're tired of it, try this:



[h/t to Rebekah]

Update #1: It looks as if this video is no longer available. Too bad. I thought it was funny, but Ms. Eclectic thought it was pretty stupid.

Update #2: Check the comments for a link to a site that still has/had the video.

Stephen Karlson at Cold Springs Shops has some good examples of the trade-offs that many universities are forced to make:

Students are affected by poor resource allocation in other ways. Class sizes have grown since 2000 because of a 20 percent increase in undergraduate enrollment, without an equivalent increase in full-time faculty. Students are closed out of classes because there are not enough faculty to teach them. Graduate students, the life-blood of a research university, have dropped by 10 percent since 1970. Instead of hiring new faculty and attracting new graduate students, the university has devoted scarce resources to boosting the number of athletic coaches and staff by 25 percent since 1994. What's more important at the university, better education or better games?

(We continue to manage with half the faculty we had in the late 1980s, and I have now counted 10 or 11 requests to get into my closed classes, which sold out during November early registration. If there were some way I could run my classes as an independent contractor ...)

... Ask a professor to meet more classes or larger classes, see if he hits the top journals as frequently. Hire adjuncts to meet multiple sections of introductory classes: the remaining tenured faculty who were hired to direct dissertations will get the message. Devote some of your capacity to chasing the excess demand for prestige degrees, listen to the discontent from in-state parents and students.

I realize that some universities claim that having a top-ranked athletic programme will attract better scholars, better students, and more donations for academic programmes. I have yet to see any evidence supporting this argument.

Well, it sure was close. The oddsmakers set the spread at Indianapolis to win by 3.5; I picked the New England Patriots to win by 3. The Patriots were up by 3 with a minute to go, and then the Colts scored, putting them up by 4.

But two things emerged from this game:

1. the Colts staged a VERY impressive comeback after being down by 18 points in the second quarter.
2. the Colts looked maybe good enough to give the Bears a good game. The line spread on Superbowl 41 should be pretty small.

After having picked both games wrong this week I'll plunge on ahead. I was prepared to pick the Bears, given their performance against the Saints this afternoon, but after seeing the performance of the Colts, I'm not so sure now. Ms. Eclectic says the Bears will win the Superbowl, so I'll pick the Colts. Colts by 4.

[Hint: given my record at handicapping, bet on the Bears! 8-)]

I missed the first half of the game because of this, but man did I ever assess these teams incorrectly! The Bears defence was phenomenal, as was their running game. And Grossman didn't really suck. If the Bears play this well next week, I don't really see how either the Patriots or the Colts can beat them.