Sports Business and the Theory of Multisided Markets
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Abstract
Despite still being younger than a decade, the theory of multisided market has
offered numerous valuable insights for the analysis of non-ordinary industries in which a
supplier serves two distinct customer groups that are indirectly interrelated by externalities.
Examples include payment systems, matching agencies, commercial media and software
platforms. However, professional sports markets have largely been neglected so far in this
kind of research although they possess the characteristics of multisided markets. We
contribute to filling this gap by describing the platform elements of professional suppliers of
sports events and outlining problems where an application of this theoretical framework is
likely to provide valuable insights and to add to the existing knowledge. Among these
problems are integrative pricing strategies of sports clubs towards such different customer
groups like attendees, broadcasters, sponsors, etc., including their welfare and antitrust
implications, design decisions of sports associations in order to promote positive feedback
loops among the customer groups as well as strategies to reinforce positive externalities
among customer groups and alleviate negative ones.
Keywords
broadcasting rights, multisided platforms, sports economics, professional sports business, two-sided markets, pricing strategies