IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inn/wpaper/2008-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Distance Matters - Evidence from Professional Team Sports

Author

Listed:
  • Harald Oberhofer
  • Tassilo Philippovich
  • Hannes Winner

Abstract

This paper assesses the role of distance in professional team sports, taking the example of football (soccer). We argue that a team's performance in terms of scored and conceded goals decreases with the distance to the foreign playing venue. To test this hypothesis empirically, we investigate 6,389 away games from the German Football Premier League ('Erste Deutsche Bundesliga') between the playing seasons 1986-87 and 2006-07. We find that distance contributes significantly in explaining a guest team's propensity to concede goals, but not so for scoring goals. Focusing on the difference between scored and conceded goals ('goal difference') as a measure of the overall success of a football team, we observe a significant and non-monotonic impact of distance on team performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Harald Oberhofer & Tassilo Philippovich & Hannes Winner, 2008. "Distance Matters - Evidence from Professional Team Sports," Working Papers 2008-16, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2008-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.uibk.ac.at/downloads/c4041030/wpaper/2008-16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van Ommeren, Jos & Rietveld, Piet & Nijkamp, Peter, 1997. "Commuting: In Search of Jobs and Residences," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 402-421, November.
    2. Jos van Ommeren & Piet Rietveld & Peter Nijkamp & Jos van Ommeren & Piet Rietveld & Peter Nijkamp, 2004. "Job Moving, Residential Moving, and Commuting: A Search Perspective," Chapters, in: Location, Travel and Information Technology, chapter 11, pages 223-246, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oberhofer, Harald & Philippovich, Tassilo & Winner, Hannes, 2010. "Distance matters in away games: Evidence from the German football league," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 200-211, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gutiérrez-i-Puigarnau, Eva & van Ommeren, Jos N., 2010. "Labour supply and commuting," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 82-89, July.
    2. Maite Blázquez & Carlos Llano & Julian Moral, 2010. "Commuting Times: Is There Any Penalty for Immigrants?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(8), pages 1663-1686, July.
    3. Klaus Nowotny, 2011. "Commuting, Residence and Workplace Location Attractiveness and Local Public Goods," SCIENZE REGIONALI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2011(1), pages 109-136.
    4. Oberhofer, Harald & Philippovich, Tassilo & Winner, Hannes, 2010. "Distance matters in away games: Evidence from the German football league," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 200-211, April.
    5. Eva Gutierrez-i-Puigarnau & Jos van Ommeren, 2009. "Labour Supply and Commuting: Implications for Optimal Road Taxes," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 09-008/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Sharma, Ajay & Chandrasekhar, S., 2014. "Growth of the Urban Shadow, Spatial Distribution of Economic Activities, and Commuting by Workers in Rural and Urban India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 154-166.
    7. Dauth, Wolfgang & Haller, Peter, 2020. "Is there loss aversion in the trade-off between wages and commuting distances?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    8. repec:dgr:uvatin:20090008 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Clark, William A. V. & Huang, Youqin & Withers, Suzanne, 2003. "Does commuting distance matter?: Commuting tolerance and residential change," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 199-221, March.
    10. Reichelt, Malte & Haas, Anette, 2015. "Commuting farther and earning more? : how employment density moderates workers commuting distance," IAB-Discussion Paper 201533, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    11. Taha Rashidi & Abolfazl Mohammadian & Frank Koppelman, 2011. "Modeling interdependencies between vehicle transaction, residential relocation and job change," Transportation, Springer, vol. 38(6), pages 909-932, November.
    12. Tillema, Taede & van Wee, Bert & Ettema, Dick, 2010. "The influence of (toll-related) travel costs in residential location decisions of households: A stated choice approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 44(10), pages 785-796, December.
    13. Dauth, Wolfgang & Haller, Peter, 2016. "The valuation of changes in commuting distances: an analysis using georeferenced data," IAB-Discussion Paper 201643, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    14. Christian Schmidt, 2014. "Optimal Commuting and Migration Decisions under Commuting Cost Uncertainty," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(3), pages 477-492, February.
    15. Dauth, Wolfgang & Haller, Peter, 2019. "Loss aversion in the trade-off between wages and commuting distances," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203611, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Martijn Smit, 2017. "Following Your Job," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1718, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Jul 2017.
    17. Arnott, Richard & Shevyakhova, Elizaveta, 2014. "Tenancy rent control and credible commitment in maintenance," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 72-85.
    18. Modarres, Ali, 2003. "Polycentricity and transit service," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 841-864, December.
    19. Peter Huber & Klaus Nowotny, 2013. "Moving across Borders: Who is Willing to Migrate or to Commute?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(9), pages 1462-1481, October.
    20. Elisa Guglielminetti & Rafael Lalive & Philippe Ruh & Etienne Wasmer, 2015. "Spatial search strategies of job seekers and the role of unemployment insurance," SciencePo Working papers hal-03393225, HAL.
    21. De Vos, Jonas, 2016. "Road pricing in a polycentric urban region: Analysing a pilot project in Belgium," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 134-142.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Professional team performance; distance; event count data; poisson regression model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • C29 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:inn:wpaper:2008-16. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Janette Walde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fuibkat.html .

    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.