IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/semchp/978-3-319-10037-1_15.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Does Versatility Matter in Match-Play Sports?

In: The Sports Business in The Pacific Rim

Author

Listed:
  • Sang-Hyop Lee

    (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

  • Sumner La Croix

    (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Abstract

In match-play sports, the best players seem to be both versatile and unpredictable in their use of techniques during play. Our analysis extends empirical work on player versatility and unpredictability to the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling. While earlier studies of tennis serves and football penalty kicks were motivated by game-theoretic analysis of choices made by players to start a match, our study is motivated by labor market theories that tie the success of workers to their portfolio of skills and its application to particular situations. We analyze panel data on tournament records of top sumo wrestlers participating in Japan’s grand sumo tournaments over the 1995–2004 time period to test whether players with better physical attributes and a balanced, unpredictable portfolio of winning techniques are more likely to win matches. Our econometric results show that better physical attributes, a diverse portfolio of techniques to finish a match, and unpredictable use of techniques are all associated with more wins per tournament.

Suggested Citation

  • Sang-Hyop Lee & Sumner La Croix, 2015. "Does Versatility Matter in Match-Play Sports?," Sports Economics, Management, and Policy, in: Young Hoon Lee & Rodney Fort (ed.), The Sports Business in The Pacific Rim, edition 127, pages 277-291, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:semchp:978-3-319-10037-1_15
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-10037-1_15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:semchp:978-3-319-10037-1_15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.