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SPORTS ECONOMICS – DOES TANGIBLE ECONOMIC GAINS, OR INTANGIBLE BENEFITS, TRIGGER BETTER PERFORMANCE?

Both tangible economic advantages as well as intangible benefits together come to know as “Sportometrics”.  Sportometrics is a totally new theory propounded by Robert D Tollison, which introduces the concept of  “Sports as Economics” in contrast to the traditional viewpoint of economists who focused on the “Economics of Sports”. The people who use sportometric analysis are called “SPORTOMETRICIANS”. 

Sportometricians attribute sportsmen behavior directly to the benefits/incentives and constraints/hurdles faced by them. In other words, performance of sportspersons is determined by monetary and other non-monetary factors (like good tracks, professional coaches, competition, awareness among spectators and status in society). 

Various studies have lent credence to the view that, when the incentives are increased, players will aim higher and perform better. 

For example, players tend to maximize their performance and spend less time on injury layoffs, as the opportunity loss due to missing games is enormous. 

Another important benefit of incentives is that they make sportsmen as well as sports administrators more creative to ensure peak performance consistently and increase the career longevity. 

Sportometrics has also studies the effects of competition on NBA players.  Competition is of two types – open competition where all teams play for the championships while under classified competition teams are segregated into divisions. 

Players in open category are fitter and better as open competition prevents cartels and reduction in standards and level of competition. 

Another factor that affects team performance is that of the coach enforcing ‘arbitrage’. In basketball, a good coach ensures each player is allocated shots to maximize the number of successful shots. This develops a healthy competition within a team and acts as an incentive to improve the percentage of number of successful shots to total shots taken.