It is generally thought that competitive equilibrium in sports leagues involves too little competitive balance (the strong dominate the weak too much- a more even contest would be more attractive). However, it is possible to sow in a standard logit contest model that the reverse is true – the strong do not win “enough”- i.e. more wins by the strong team would increase attendance or revenues. This is consistent with Hirshleifer’s paradox of power. However, this is only true so long as the strong do not become too dominant- otherwise the regime switches to one of pre-emption: the strong never lose. This paper identifies the conditions under which the paradox of power and pre-emption will manifest themselves.
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Paper provided by International Association of Sports Economists in its series Working Papers with number
0618.
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