IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijfss/v7y2019i1p13-d207709.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Performance Bonuses and Effort: Evidence from Fight Night Awards in Mixed Martial Arts

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Gift

    (Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA)

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of fight night bonus awards on fighter behavior in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and World Extreme Cage (WEC) fighting mixed martial arts (MMA) promotions. Behavior is analyzed using detailed fighter performance statistics, exploiting variation in bonus size across events and over time. Findings suggest that fighters are not meaningfully influenced by bonus levels within the range observed in the sample period and possible explanations are discussed. Fight night bonuses appear to serve as a lottery compensation mechanism to ex post reward performances consistent with an MMA promotion’s desires rather than ex ante incentivize such performances. Findings have implications for strategic MMA promoter decisions and contribute more broadly to the personnel economics literature on incentives and compensation.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Gift, 2019. "Performance Bonuses and Effort: Evidence from Fight Night Awards in Mixed Martial Arts," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-15, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijfss:v:7:y:2019:i:1:p:13-:d:207709
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/7/1/13/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/7/1/13/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raymond Sauer, 2005. "The state of research on markets for sports betting and suggested future directions," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 29(3), pages 416-426, September.
    2. Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L’haridon & David van Ass, 2018. "The Risk Attitudes of Professional Athletes: Optimism and Success are Related," Post-Print halshs-01354816, HAL.
    3. James G. Lynch & Jeffrey S. Zax, 2000. "The Rewards to Running," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(4), pages 323-340, November.
    4. Rafael Tenorio, 2000. "The Economics of Professional Boxing Contracts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 1(4), pages 363-384, November.
    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. Roulleau-Pasdeloup, Jordan, 2020. "A Puncher’s chance: Expected gain and risk taking in a market for superstars," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    2. Giovanni Bernardo & Massimo Ruberti & Roberto Verona, 2022. "Image is everything! Professional football players' visibility and wages: evidence from the Italian Serie A," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(5), pages 595-614, January.

    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. Markus LANG & Alexander RATHKE & Marco RUNKEL, 2010. "The Economic Consequences Of Foreigner Rules In National Sports Leagues," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 31, pages 47-64.
    2. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Martin Grossmann & Markus Lang, 2009. "Contest Theory and its Applications in Sports," Working Papers 0105, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).
    3. Jason P. Berkowitz & Craig A. Depken II & John M. Gandar, 2018. "The Conversion of Money Lines Into Win Probabilities," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(7), pages 990-1015, October.
    4. Ghazala Azmat & Marc Möller, 2018. "The Distribution of Talent Across Contests," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(609), pages 471-509, March.
    5. Thierry Lallemand & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2008. "Women and Competition in Elimination Tournaments," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(1), pages 3-19, February.
    6. Stekler, H.O. & Sendor, David & Verlander, Richard, 2010. "Issues in sports forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 606-621, July.
      • Herman O. Stekler & David Sendor & Richard Verlander, 2009. "Issues in Sports Forecasting," Working Papers 2009-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    7. Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "The Economic Design of Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 1, pages 1-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Keith F. Gilsdorf & Vasant A. Sukhatme, 2008. "Testing Rosen's Sequential Elimination Tournament Model," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 9(3), pages 287-303, June.
    9. Benno Torgler & Sascha L. Schmidt & Bruno S. Frey, 2006. "Relative Income Position And Performance: An Empirical Panel Analysis," IEW - Working Papers 268, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    10. John List & Jan Stoop & Daan van Soest & Haiwen Zhou, 2014. "On the Role of Group Size in Tournaments: Theory and Evidence from Lab and Field Experiments," Artefactual Field Experiments 00589, The Field Experiments Website.
    11. Brian Hill, 2014. "The Heat Is On," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(4), pages 315-337, August.
    12. Kpegli, Yao Thibaut & Corgnet, Brice & Zylbersztejn, Adam, 2023. "All at once! A comprehensive and tractable semi-parametric method to elicit prospect theory components," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    13. Christoph Bühren & Philip J. Steinberg, 2017. "The impact of psychological traits on performance in sequential tournaments: Evidence from a tennis field experiment," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201705, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    14. Lallemand, Thierry & Plasman, Robert & Rycx, François, 2005. "Women and Competition in Elimination Tournaments: Evidence from Professional Tennis Data," IZA Discussion Papers 1843, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Jeremy T. Schwartz & Justin P. Isaacs & Anthony M. Carilli, 2007. "To Race or to Place?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(6), pages 633-641, December.
    16. Matthew Hood, 2006. "The Purse Is Not Enough," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 7(3), pages 289-308, August.
    17. Justina A.V. Fischer & Benno Torgler, 2006. "Does Envy Destroy Social Fundamentals? The Impact of Relative Income Position on Social Capital," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2006 2006-04, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    18. Bentley Coffey & M. T. Maloney, 2010. "The Thrill of Victory: Measuring the Incentive to Win," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 87-112, January.
    19. Migheli, Matteo, 2019. "Competing for promotion: Are “THE BEST” always the best?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 149-161.
    20. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2016. "The pros and cons of workplace tournaments," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 302-302, October.

    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:gam:jijfss:v:7:y:2019:i:1:p:13-:d:207709. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.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.