Exam 1 Flashcards
- Why do some feel America’s preoccupation with sports is unhealthy (6 reasons)?
1. High School emphasis on sports o No correlation between education and GPA 2. Focus on winning 3. Little chance of going pro 4. Sports are a priority in college 5. Cover-Up crimes 6. Salaries
- Why is it that fans perceive that the game is all about the money?
o Players changing teams to get a bigger check
o Team re-location
o Amount it costs to build stadiums
- When it comes to assessing the value of sports, what elements cannot be quantified (3 elements)?
When the city celebrates a championship
- Why do sports generate so much more news coverage than other industries (3 reasons)?
o They are small industries
o Many cities/countries define themselves based on their sports teams
o To assist in progressing political goals
- Define “economics”
a. The study of choices based on scarcity
- What are the four limited resources in sports?
a. Roster size, limited capital (salary cap (how much you can allocate to each player) and luxury tax), limited # of games, # of teams
- Define opportunity cost
a. What you give up to do something else
- Define law of increasing opportunity cost
a. The more you decide to do something, the more you must give up
- Define marginal benefit, marginal cost and marginal analysis.
a. Marginal Benefit (Marginal Revenue) – How much that product revenues
b. Marginal Cost – Cost per player
- What are the assumptions used with the production possibilities curve (in the context of sports)?
a. Fixed roster size, number of teams, number of games, and capital
i. If we change any of these, the curve will shift in/out
A. Team rebuilding
Rebuilding for the future
B. Win-maximizers
Focused on winning today
C. Profit-maximizers
Focused on making money, not as much on winning
D. Under-performing
The worst spot to be. You spent the money to put the team together and it didn’t work
E. Tanking
The teams that deliberately lose to get a better draft pick. Mainly in the NFL
- Define the production function, marginal product and total product.
a. Production functions show how much output a firm generates from its inputs
b. MP – Output of each player
c. TP – All MP added together
- What is meant by ‘diminishing marginal returns?’
a. When output produced diminishes because there are too many workers
b. Marginal product is going up, while marginal returns is going down
c. When you add a variable resource (players) to a fixed resource (roster size)
- Define marginal cost and marginal revenue
a. MC – Cost per player
b. MR – Revenue per player
- When does a firm achieve profit-maximization?
a. MR = MC
What is output in sports
o Tickets sold
o Players adding wins
What inputs to use
o Players performance
o Historical stats
o Players ability
Impact of managerial/coaching quality
o Impossible to measure
o Could Golden State do what they do without their coach…we don’t know
o Coaching is more important in NFL and MLB
Total product
All wins
Marginal product
Per player wins
Marginal cost
Cost per player
Marginal revenue
Revenue per player
- Know the difference between correlation and causation.
a. Correlation – When two things relate that show a relationship
b. Causation – A causes B
- Be able to interpret the correlation coefficient.
a. Positive correlation – Both A and B go up
b. Negative correlation – Both A and B go down
c. Closer to 0 means less related
- Why is there a small correlation between payroll spending and winning percent in MLB? NFL?
a. Because of the minor leagues where they do not pay players much, but still get training
b. Arbitration – the contracts are decided by the arbitrator in the MLB, so a player can be paid more than they are performing
c. You cannot buy wins in the NFL; almost no correlation between player spending and winning
d. There are too many players involved in the game to attribute winning to any group of players. It’s a true team sport
e. Injuries in the NFL are very random
f. NFL has the lowest marginal product
- Why is there a higher correlation between payroll spending and winning percent in the NBA?
a. The one league that you can effectively buy wins
b. One player can affect the game more significantly
c. NBA has the highest marginal product